Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

De Providentia
enough for the immortal gods to have beheld Cato
once only; his courage was restrained and called back
that it might show itself in a more difficult part.
For death may be said not so much to have come
upon so great a soul as to have been sought by it.
Why should they not rejoice to see their favorite
pass from life in a way so glorious and memorable?
Death deifies those whose departure fills with admi
ration even those who stand aghast at the manner of it.
III.
But as I proceed with my discourse, I shall show
that not all those things which seem to be evils are
such. For the present, I affirm that the conditions
you call hard, adverse, and terrible, are in the first
place best for those very persons whom they befall;
and in the second, for all men, since the gods are
more concerned for mankind as a whole than for
individual; and lastly; that they happen
their approval, or to men who are worthy of
the
either with
them, if
without their approval. To these propositions I shall
add that such things take place in the fixed order of
the world and rightly happen to the good, in virtue
of the same law which makes them good.
From this
point of view I shall then convince you that you
never need feel pity for the good man; for though he
may be called unfortunate, he never is so.
2. The most difficult of the affirmations I have
made seems to be the first, to wit, that it is for our
own good these very things happen which we dread
85