respect to pain is not confined to it. We should apply this exertion of
the soul to everything else. Is anger inflamed? is lust excited? we
must have recourse to the same citadel, and apply to the same arms. But
since it is pain which we are at present discussing, we will let the
other subjects alone. To bear pain, then, sedately and calmly, it is of
great use to consider with all our soul, as the saying is, how noble it
is to do so, for we are naturally desirous (as I said before, but it
cannot be too often repeated) and very much inclined to what is
honorable, of which, if we discover but the least glimpse, there is
nothing which we are not prepared to undergo and suffer to attain it.
From this impulse of our minds, this desire for genuine glory and
honorable conduct, it is that such dangers are supported in war, and
that brave men are not sensible of their wounds in action, or, if they
are sensible of them, prefer death to the departing but the least step
from their honor. The Decii saw the shining swords of their enemies
when they were rushing into the battle. But the honorable character and
the glory of the death which they were seeking made all fear of death
of little weight. Do you imagine that Epaminondas groaned when he
perceived that his life was flowing out with his blood? No; for he left
his country triumphing over the Lacedæmonians, whereas he had found it
in subjection to them. These are the comforts, these are the things
that assuage the greatest pain.

XXV. You may ask, How the case is in peace? What is to be done at home?
How we are to behave in bed? You bring me back to the philosophers, who
seldom go to war. Among these, Dionysius of Heraclea, a man certainly
of no resolution, having learned fortitude of Zeno, quitted it on being
in pain; for, being tormented with a pain in his kidneys, in bewailing
himself he cried out that those things were false which he had formerly
conceived of pain. And when his fellow-disciple, Cleanthes, asked him