A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

by William B. Irvine

think, is that the Roman Stoics had less confidence than the Greeks in the power of pure reason to motivate people. The Greek Stoics thought that the best way to get people to pursue virtue was to make them understand what things were good: If a person understood what the truly good things were, he, being rational, would necessarily pursue them and thereby become virtuous. The Greek Stoics therefore saw little need to mention the beneficial by-products of the pursuit of virtue, including, most significantly, the attainment of tranquility. The Roman Stoics, in contrast, apparently thought it wouldn’t be obvious to their fellow Romans why they should pursue virtue. They also recognized that ordinary Romans would instinctively value tranquility and would consequently be receptive to strategies for attaining it. The Roman Stoics therefore seem to have concluded that by sugarcoating virtue with tranquility—more precisely, by pointing to the tranquility people would gain by pursuing virtue—they would make Stoic doctrines more attractive to ordinary Romans.