Tusculan Disputations by Cicero (reading books for 7 year olds .txt) 📕

possessing; and, as those who are too dejected are said to be effeminate, so they who are too elated with joy are properly called volatile; and as feeling envy is a part of grief, and the being pleased with another’s misfortune is a kind of joy, both these feelings are usually corrected by showing the wildness and insensibility of them; and as it becomes a man to be cautious, but it is unbecoming in him to be fearful, so to be pleased is proper, but to be joyful improper. I have, in order that I might be the better understood, distinguished pleasure from joy. I have already said above that a contraction of the mind can never be right, but that an elation of it may; for the joy of Hector in Naevius is one thing:

’Tis joy indeed to hear my praises sung
By you, who are the theme of honor’s tongue;

but that of the character in Trabea another: “The kind procuress, allured by my money, will observe my nod, will watch my desires, and study my will. If I but move the door with my little finger, instantly it flies open, and if Chrysis should unexpectedly discover me, she will run with joy to meet me, and throw herself into my arms.”

Now he will tell you how excellent he thinks this:

Not even fortune herself is so fortunate.

Anyone who attends the least to the subject will be convinced how unbecoming this joy is. And as they are very shameful who are immoderately delighted with the enjoyment of venereal pleasures, so are they very scandalous who lust vehemently after them. And all that which is commonly called love (and, believe me, I can find out no other name to call it by) is of such a trivial nature that nothing, I think, is to be compared to it, of which Caecilius says,

I hold the man of every sense bereaved
Who grants not Love to be of Gods the chief:
Whose mighty power whate’er is good effects,
Who gives to each his beauty and defects:
Hence, health and sickness; wit and folly, hence,
The God that love and hatred doth dispense!

An excellent corrector of life this same poetry, which thinks that love, the promoter of debauchery and vanity, should have a place in the council of the Gods! I am speaking of comedy, which could not subsist at all without our approving of these debaucheries. But what said that chief of the Argonauts in tragedy?

My life I owe to honor less than love.

What, then, are we to say of this love of Medea? What a train of miseries did it occasion! And yet the same woman has the assurance to say to her father, in another poet, that she had a husband

Dearer by love than ever fathers were.

However, we may allow the poets to trifle, in whose fables we see Jupiter himself engaged in these debaucheries. But let us apply to the masters of virtue⁠—the philosophers who deny love to be anything carnal; and in this they differ from Epicurus, who, I think, is not much mistaken. For what is that love of friendship? How comes it that no one is in love with a deformed young man, or a handsome old one? I am of opinion that this love of men had its rise from the Gymnastics of the Greeks, where these kinds of loves are admissible and permitted. Therefore Ennius spoke well:

The censure of this crime to those is due
Who naked bodies first exposed to view.

Now, supposing them chaste, which I think is hardly possible, they are uneasy and distressed, and the more so because they contain and refrain themselves. But, to pass over the love of women, where nature has allowed more liberty, who can misunderstand the poets in their rape of Ganymede, or not apprehend what Laius says, and what he desires, in Euripides? Lastly, what have the principal poets and the most learned men published of themselves in their poems and songs? What does Alcaeus, who was distinguished in his own republic for his bravery, write on the love of young men? And as for Anacreon’s poetry, it is wholly on love. But Ibycus of Rhegium appears from his writings to have had this love stronger on him than all the rest.

Now we see that the loves of all these writers were entirely libidinous. There have arisen also some among us philosophers (and Plato is at the head of them, whom Dicaearchus blames not without reason) who have countenanced love. The Stoics, in truth, say not only that their wise man may be a lover, but they even define love itself as an endeavor to originate friendship out of the appearance of beauty. Now, provided there is anyone in the nature of things without desire, without care, without a sigh, such a one may be a lover, for he is free from all lust⁠—but I have nothing to say to him, as it is lust of which I am now speaking. But should there be any love⁠—as there certainly is⁠—which is but little, or perhaps not at all, short of madness, such as his is in the Leucadia⁠—

Should there be any God whose care I am⁠—

it is incumbent on all the Gods to see that he enjoys his amorous pleasure.

Wretch that I am!

Nothing is more true, and he says very appropriately,

What, are you sane, who at this rate lament?

He seems even to his friends to be out of his senses. Then how tragical he becomes!

Thy aid, divine Apollo, I implore,
And thine, dread ruler of the wat’ry store!
Oh! all ye winds, assist me!

He thinks that the whole world ought to apply itself to help his love; he excludes Venus alone, as unkind to him.

Thy aid, O Venus, why should I invoke?

He thinks Venus too much employed in her own lust to have regard to anything else, as if he himself had not said