opinion of Zeno and his pupil Aristo be true that nothing is good but
what is honorable; but, admitting that, then, whether the whole of a
happy life can be rested on virtue alone. Wherefore, if we certainly
grant Brutus this, that a wise man is always happy, how consistent he
is, is his own business; for who, indeed, is more worthy than himself
of the glory of that opinion? Still, we may maintain that such a man is
more happy than any one else.

XII. Though Zeno the Cittiæan, a stranger and an inconsiderable coiner
of words, appears to have insinuated himself into the old philosophy;
still, the prevalence of this opinion is due to the authority of Plato,
who often makes use of this expression, "That nothing but virtue can be
entitled to the name of good," agreeably to what Socrates says in
Plato's Gorgias; for it is there related that when some one asked him
if he did not think Archelaus the son of Perdiccas, who was then looked
upon as a most fortunate person, a very happy man, "I do not know,"
replied he, "for I never conversed with him." "What! is there no other
way you can know it by?" "None at all." "You cannot, then, pronounce of
the great king of the Persians whether he is happy or not?" "How can I,
when I do not know how learned or how good a man he is?" "What! do you
imagine that a happy life depends on that?" "My opinion entirely is,
that good men are happy, and the wicked miserable." "Is Archelaus,
then, miserable?" "Certainly, if unjust." Now, does it not appear to
you that he is here placing the whole of a happy life in virtue alone?
But what does the same man say in his funeral oration? "For," saith he,
"whoever has everything that relates to a happy life so entirely
dependent on himself as not to be connected with the good or bad
fortune of another, and not to be affected by, or made in any degree
uncertain by, what befalls another; and whoever is such a one has
acquired the best rule of living; he is that moderate, that brave, that