the quiet enjoyment of a peaceful life,
surrounded with friends and without concern for imaginary goods. For
the Stoics the supreme good is virtue, which consists in conducting
one's self according to reason, with a view to the good of the whole
universe. Riches, honor, health, beauty, all the goods of earth are
nothing for the wise man; even if one torture him, he remains happy in
the possession of the true good.

The Romans took sides for one or the other philosophy, usually without
thoroughly comprehending either. Those who passed for Epicureans spent
their lives in eating and drinking and even compared themselves to
swine. Those calling themselves Stoics, like Cato and Brutus, affected
a rude language, a solemn demeanor and emphasized the evils of life.
Nevertheless these doctrines, spreading gradually, aided in destroying
certain prejudices of the Romans. Epicureans and Stoics were in
harmony on two points: they disdained the ancient religion and taught
that all men are equal, slaves or citizens, Greeks or barbarians.
Their Roman disciples renounced in their school certain old
superstitions, and learned to show themselves less cruel to their
slaves, less insolent toward other peoples.

The conquest of Greece by the Romans gave the arts, letters, and
morals of the Greeks currency in the west, just as the conquest of the
Persian empire by the Greeks had carried their language, customs, and
religion into the Orient.

FOOTNOTES:

[102] In almost all the Greek cities there was no middle class. In this
regard Athens with its thirteen thousand small proprietors is a
remarkable exception.

[103] Polybius, v., 104.

[104] The Achaean league had illustrious leaders. In the third century,
Aratus, who for twenty-seven years (251-224) traversed Greece, expelling
tyrants, recalling the rich and returning to them their property and the
government; in the second century Philopoemen, who fought the tyrants of
Sparta and died by poison.

[105] There were two kings of Syria by the name of Antiochus, between
193 and 169.--ED.

[106] The decisive battle (Pydna) was fought in 168. Perseus walked in
the triumph of Paullus the next year.--ED.

[107] The party policies of the Greeks of this period were hardly so
clearly drawn as the above would seem to indicate. Thus the Achaean
League allied itself with Macedon against the AEtolians and against
Sparta. The AEtolians leagued with the Romans against Macedon.--ED.

CHA