eration is right, you are living
in the right way. Your mind may act as rightly in poverty as in
riches; you may be equally wise and virtuous whether you have the
external advantages or not. You must therefore learn to ignore these
things--pain, grief, fear, joy, and all the other perturbing
influences. Cultivate, therefore, right reason and the absence of
emotions.

This, you will say, is a very high, unattainable, if not inhuman,
standard. Quite so, and therefore, while Epicureanism often produced
vicious men, this often produced pretenders and even hypocrites.
Nevertheless it is better to set oneself a high standard than a low
one, and a Roman who endeavoured to control himself by reason, and to
place himself above fear and pain, was thereby on the way to be brave,
patient, truthful, and just. Those who would see what high character
could be associated with Stoicism--whether as the result or as the
motive of the choice of the school--should read Epictetus, whose text,
written early in the next century, was "sustain and abstain," and also
the great-minded gentle Emperor Marcus Aurelius. A logical outcome of
Stoicism was that you should say only the thing which reason approved,
and say it unafraid. A good republican virtue, this, but under the
emperors a dangerous one, as an honest Stoic like Thrasea found out.
In practice there was naturally much qualifying or mellowing of the
rigid Stoic attitude: the exigencies of actual life had to be met part
of the way, and both Greek and Roman Stoics were often only Stoics in
part--the complete "sage" was of course impossible.

As for the gods, it is obvious that the Stoics were pantheists; there
was one God, and He was the soul of the universe. They also, of
course, recognised His providence. What then of the gods of the state?
Some did not attempt to discuss them. Others treated the various
so-called separate deities in the list as being only so many
manifestations or avatars of the same divine power, and whether they
were content or not with that attempt at harmonisation, who shall say?

Meanwhile, at least in the eastern part of the empire, you might meet
with another type of philosopher, the Cynic, belonging to the same
school as the famous Diogenes, who had lived in that large earthenware
jar commonly known as his "tub." Like the Stoic, the Cynic held that
externals were of no value, and therefore he contented himself with a
piece of bread, a wallet full of beans, and a