The five days debate at Cicero's house in Tusculum between master and sophister.

SECT. XX. Vertue exhorting personated.

WILL you, when you see Children at Lace∣daemon, young men at Olympia, Barbarians in the Amphitheater receive the severest Strokes, and put them up quietly, will you, I say, upon the least ail, cry out like a Woman? Will you not bear it with Constancy and Calmness? It is intoler∣able, Nature cannot brook it; these are words; Children endure it for love of Glory, others en∣dure it for shame, many out of fear, and yet do we apprehend, that Nature cannot stand under that which is endur'd by so many, and in so many places? Now she is so far from not abiding it, that she even requireth it: For she hath nothing more ex∣cellent, nothing she more desireth than Honour, than Praise, than Dignity, than Decency of Demeanour. By these several Names I mean one and the same thing; but I use different Expressions, that I may make it out with the greatest plainness. Now my meaning is, that, to be far the choicest good for man, which is to be chosen for its own sake, as proceeding from Vertue, or plac'd in it, and is in its own Nature praise-worthy; which I would

sooner call his only, than not his chief good. And as this hath been said of Honour, so must the con∣trary of Baseness: Nothing goeth so much to the Heart, nothing carrieth that Antipathy with it, nothing is so un∣suitable to man's Dignity; which, if you be tho∣roughly perswaded of, for at first you yielded it to be your judgment, that there was more evil in Dishonour than in Pain; it remains that you go∣vern your self; although this be a pretty odd Ex∣pression, as if the same Man consisted of two; The one the Governour, and the other the Go∣verned; yet it is handsomly enough said.