considered without fear who is free from all fear, not he who is but in
little fear. For what else is courage but an affection of mind that is
ready to undergo perils, and patient in the endurance of pain and labor
without any alloy of fear? Now, this certainly could not be the case if
there were anything else good but what depended on honesty alone. But
how can any one be in possession of that desirable and much-coveted
security (for I now call a freedom from anxiety a security, on which
freedom a happy life depends) who has, or may have, a multitude of
evils attending him? How can he be brave and undaunted, and hold
everything as trifles which can befall a man? for so a wise man should
do, unless he be one who thinks that everything depends on himself.
Could the Lacedæmonians without this, when Philip threatened to prevent
all their attempts, have asked him if he could prevent their killing
themselves? Is it not easier, then, to find one man of such a spirit as
we are inquiring after, than to meet with a whole city of such men?
Now, if to this courage I am speaking of we add temperance, that it may
govern all our feelings and agitations, what can be wanting to complete
his happiness who is secured by his courage from uneasiness and fear,
and is prevented from immoderate desires and immoderate insolence of
joy by temperance? I could easily show that virtue is able to produce
these effects, but that I have explained on the foregoing days.

XV. But as the perturbations of the mind make life miserable, and
tranquillity renders it happy; and as these perturbations are of two
sorts, grief and fear, proceeding from imagined evils, and as
immoderate joy and lust arise from a mistake about what is good, and as
all these feelings are in opposition to reason and counsel; when you
see a man at ease, quite free and disengaged from such troublesome
commotions, which are so much at variance with one another, can you
hesitate to pronounce such a one a happy man? Now, the wise man is