The glory of virtue.
328. Thus the Stoics founded their moral ideal on the triple basis of the good citizen, the healthily-disposed soul, and the examples of wise men. In impressing this part of their system on their pupils, they made little use of definitions or syllogisms, but all the more they resorted to rhetorical description. As in their physics the Logos became almost a person, so here the picture of Virtue is drawn, as by Prodicus in the old allegory of the choice of Hercules, drawing men to her not by the pleasures she offers but by her majesty and beauty[187]. Cleanthes in particular heaps epithets of praise on virtue[188]; more usually it is sufficient to insist that virtue is good, praiseworthy, and expedient. That ‘the wise man is a king[189]’ almost ceases to be a paradox, since the soul is rightly compared to a kingdom; that he is rich, handsome, free, and invincible can equally be argued on Stoic principles[190]. To carry such statements further seems to savour of pedantry, to ridicule them at any stage is easy. Yet the statement that seems the boldest of all, that ‘the wise man is happy even on the rack[191],’ was many a time verified by the experience of individual Stoics[192]. That the wise man is a god, though subject to the limitations of mortality, is maintained without hesitation[193].
Stoic ethics.
329. The Stoic morality differs not only in form and in its reasoned basis, but in substance, both from the popular morality of the time and the ideals of rival philosophical schools. The Stoic heroes differ from those of Homer by a world-age; they possess what the Romans called humanitas, powers of reasoning and of sympathizing unknown to an age of warriors. The Epicurean sage was not, as popular criticism and that of many Stoics unjustly described him, a man of gross tastes and reckless selfishness; but he was essentially easy-going and a quietist, little inclined to risk his peace of mind by meddling with the troubles of others. To the Cynics the Stoics owed much in their principles, to the Academics (as we shall see) much in their application of them; they stood between the two, more reasonable and judicious than the former, firmer in principle than the latter, possessed of a breadth of outlook which neither of these schools could claim.
FOOTNOTES
[1] e.g. Zeller, Stoics etc. pp. 16, 17; Stein Psych. ii p. 141.
[2] See Alex. Aph. de fato, chs. 35 and 37 (Arnim ii 1003 and 1005).
[4] λόγος ὀρθὸς προστακτικὸς μὲν ὧν ποιητέον, ἀπαγορευτικὸς δὲ ὧν οὐ ποιητέον Alex. Aph. 35, p. 207, 8 B; cf. Diog. L. vii 88.