Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

De Providentia
well-known exemplar of good faith,
patient endurance?
an exemplar of
Nails pierce his skin, and what
ever way he lays down his weary body
he lies on a
wound, while his open eyes doom him to perpetual
wakefulness.
9. The greater the anguish, the greater will be the
glory. Wouldst thou know how little he regretted
the high value he set on fortitude? Heal his wounds
and send him back to the senate he will give the
same advice (as before). Dost thou think Maecenas
happier when a prey to the torments of love and when
grieving over the daily repulses of a wayward wife,
he courts sleep amid the sound of symphonies softly
sounding in the distance? Though he stupify him
self with wine, and seek diversion in the murmur of
waters, or trick his troubled mind with a thousand
pastimes, he lies awake on his bed of down no less
than the other on his bed of torture. But for the
former there is the solace that he is enduring hard
ness for a noble purpose, and he can look away from
his pain to its cause; the latter, surfeited with pleas
ures, weighed down by an excess of good fortune, is
more tormented by the cause of his sufferings than
by the sufferings themselves.
10. Not yet has vice so completely taken posses
sion of the human race as to make it doubtful that
the majority, if
they had the choice of their lot,
would prefer that of Regulus
to that of Maecenas.
Or, if there should be anybody who had presumption
enough to say that he had rather be born a Maecenas
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