XVI. For what is not only more miserable, but more base and sordid,
than a man afflicted, weakened, and oppressed with grief? And little
short of this misery is one who dreads some approaching evil, and who,
through faintheartedness, is under continual suspense. The poets, to
express the greatness of this evil, imagine a stone to hang over the
head of Tantalus, as a punishment for his wickedness, his pride, and
his boasting. And this is the common punishment of folly; for there
hangs over the head of every one whose mind revolts from reason some
similar fear. And as these perturbations of the mind, grief and fear,
are of a most wasting nature, so those two others, though of a more
merry cast (I mean lust, which is always coveting something with
eagerness, and empty mirth, which is an exulting joy), differ very
little from madness. Hence you may understand what sort of person he is
whom we call at one time moderate, at another modest or temperate, at
another constant and virtuous; while sometimes we include all these
names in the word frugality, as the crown of all; for if that word did
not include all virtues, it would never have been proverbial to say
that a frugal man does everything rightly. But when the Stoics apply
this saying to their wise man, they seem to exalt him too much, and to
speak of him with too much admiration.

XVII. Whoever, then, through moderation and constancy, is at rest in
his mind, and in calm possession of himself, so as neither to pine with
care, nor be dejected with fear, nor to be inflamed with desire,
coveting something greedily, nor relaxed by extravagant mirth--such a
man is that identical wise man whom we are inquiring for: he is the
happy man, to whom nothing in this life seems intolerable enough to
depress him; nothing exquisite enough to transport him unduly. For what
is there in this life that can appear great to him who has acquainted
himself with eternity and the utmost extent of the universe? For what