allow that the happiness of the wise man would remain unimpaired even if he were thrust into the bull of Phalaris[103].  In another place he admits the purely Stoic doctrine that virtue is one and indivisible[104].  These opinions, however, he will not allow to be distinctively Stoic, but appeals to Socrates as his authority for them[105].  Zeno, who is merely an ignoble craftsman of words, stole them from the Old Academy.  This is Cicero’s general feeling with regard to Zeno, and there can be no doubt that he caught it from Antiochus who, in stealing the doctrines of Zeno, ever stoutly maintained that Zeno had stolen them before.  Cicero, however, regarded chiefly the ethics of Zeno with this feeling, while Antiochus so regarded chiefly the dialectic.  It is just in this that the difference between Antiochus and Cicero lies.  To the former Zeno’s dialectic was true and Socratic, while the latter treated it as un-Socratic, looking upon Socrates as the apostle of doubt[106].  On the whole Cicero was more in accord with Stoic ethics than Antiochus.  Not in all points, however:  for while Antiochus accepted without reserve the Stoic paradoxes, Cicero hesitatingly followed them, although he conceded that they were Socratic[107].  Again, Antiochus subscribed to the Stoic theory that all emotion was sinful; Cicero, who was very human in his joys and sorrows, refused it with horror[108].  It must be admitted that on some points Cicero was inconsistent.  In the De Finibus he argued that the difference between the Peripatetic and Stoic ethics was merely one of terms; in the Tusculan Disputations he held it to be real.  The most Stoic in tone of all his works are the Tusculan Disputations and the De Officiis.

With regard to physics, I may remark at the outset that a comparatively small importance was in Cicero’s time attached to this branch of philosophy.  Its chief importance lay in the fact that ancient theology was, as all natural theology must be, an appendage of physical science.  The religious element in Cicero’s nature inclined him very strongly to sympathize with the Stoic views about the grand universal operation of divine power.  Piety, sanctity, and moral good, were impossible in any form, he thought, if the divine government of the universe were denied[109].  It went to Cicero’s heart that Carneades should have found it necessary to oppose the beautiful Stoic theology, and he defends the great sceptic by the plea that his one aim was to arouse men to the investigation of the truth[110].  At the same time, while really following the Stoics in physics, Cicero often believed himself to be following Aristotle.  This partly arose from the actual adoption by the late Peripatetics of many Stoic doctrines, which they gave out as Aristotelian.  The discrepancy between the spurious and the genuine Aristotelian views passed undetected, owing to the strange oblivion into which the most important works of Aristotle had fallen[111].  Still, Cicero contrives to correct many of the extravagances of the Stoic physics by a study of Aristotle and Plato.  For a thorough understanding of his notions about physics, the Timaeus of Plato, which he knew well and translated, is especially important.  It must not be forgotten, also, that the Stoic physics were in the main Aristotelian, and that Cicero was well aware of the fact.