Book 1, Chapter 32
Original Latin
num non vis igitur audire, cur, etiamsi ita sit, mors tamen non sit in malis?
Ut videtur, sed me nemo de inmortalitate depellet.
Laudo id quidem, etsi nihil nimis oportet confidere;
78 movemur enim saepe aliquo acute concluso, labamus mutamusque sententiam clarioribus etiam in rebus; in his est enim aliqua obscuritas. id igitur si acciderit, simus armati.
Sane quidem, sed ne accidat, providebo.
Num quid igitur est causae, quin amicos nostros Stoicos dimittamus? eos dico, qui aiunt manere animos, cum e corpore excesserint, sed non semper.
Istos vero qui, quod tota in hac causa difficillimum est, suscipiant, posse animum manere corpore vacantem, illud autem, quod non modo facile ad credendum est, sed eo concesso, quod volunt, consequens, id vero non dant, ut, cum diu permanserit, ne intereat.
79 Bene reprehendis, et se isto modo res habet. credamus igitur Panaetio a Platone suo dissentienti? quem enim omnibus locis divinum, quem sapientissimum, quem sanctissimum, quem Homerum philosophorum appellat, huius hanc unam sententiam de inmortalitate animorum non probat. volt enim, quod nemo negat, quicquid natum sit interire; nasci autem animos, quod declaret eorum similitudo qui procreentur, quae etiam in ingeniis, non solum in corporibus appareat. alteram autem adfert rationem, nihil esse quod doleat, quin id aegrum esse quoque possit; quod autem in morbum cadat, id etiam interiturum; dolere autem animos, ergo etiam interire.
Musean translation
Complete machine-assisted translation from the Latin. Latin transcription by the Perseus Project, Trustees of Tufts University, CC BY-SA 4.0.
“Would you not like to hear, then, why death is nevertheless no evil, even if that is so?”
“As you please. But no one will dislodge my belief in immortality.”
“I commend that, though we should never be too confident;
78 “we are often swayed by some neatly framed argument, and waver and change our minds even on clearer matters; in these there is some obscurity. So, should that happen, let us be armed.”
“Certainly; but I shall see that it does not happen.”
“Is there any reason, then, not to dismiss our friends the Stoics? I mean those who say that souls remain after leaving the body, but not forever.”
“Dismiss them indeed! They accept what is hardest of all in this question—that the soul can survive without a body—but refuse to grant what is not merely easy to believe but follows from their own concession: that, once it has endured for a long time, it should not perish.”
79 “Your criticism is sound: that is how the matter stands. Are we, then, to believe Panaetius when he disagrees with his beloved Plato? The man he everywhere calls divine, supremely wise, supremely holy, the Homer of philosophers—on this one opinion, the immortality of souls, he rejects his authority. He maintains that whatever is born perishes, which no one denies; and that souls are born, as is shown by the resemblance of offspring to their parents, apparent in their dispositions as well as their bodies. He also adduces another argument: nothing can feel pain without also being capable of illness; whatever can fall ill will also perish; but souls feel pain, and therefore also perish.”
Plain English translation
Complete independent machine-assisted translation directly from the Latin. Latin transcription by the Perseus Project, Trustees of Tufts University, CC BY-SA 4.0.
“So don’t you want to hear why death still isn’t something bad, even if that’s true?”
“I suppose so. But no one will shake my belief in immortality.”
“That’s admirable, though we shouldn’t be too sure of anything.
78 “A cleverly constructed argument often influences us. We lose our footing and change our minds even about things that are clearer than these, which do have some obscurity about them. So let’s be ready in case that happens.”
“Certainly. But I’ll see to it that it doesn’t happen.”
“Then is there any reason we shouldn’t send away our friends the Stoics? I mean those who say souls continue to exist after leaving the body, but not forever.”
“Yes, send them away. They accept the hardest point in this whole question: that a soul can continue to exist without a body. But they won’t grant that once it has continued for a long time, it won’t perish. That’s not only easy to believe; it follows from the very thing they want us to accept.”
79 “Your criticism is right. That’s exactly how the matter stands. So should we believe Panaetius when he disagrees with his beloved Plato? Everywhere he calls Plato divine, supremely wise, supremely upright, the Homer of philosophers. Yet this one belief of Plato’s, the immortality of souls, he doesn’t accept. His point is that everything born must perish, which no one denies. Souls, he says, are born: this is shown by children’s resemblance to their parents, which appears in their personalities as well as in their bodies. He also offers another argument. Anything that feels pain can also be sick; anything that becomes sick will also perish. Souls feel pain, so they too perish.”
About this section
Book 1, Chapter 32 is part of Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero. This page sets the Latin original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is chapter 32 of 189 in the work, which is kept in the Roman tradition.
Open the work page for the full contents, every edition, and the download links, or go back to Explore to browse other complete works in the Roman tradition. The reader keeps your place when you are signed in and lets you compare the original with each translation, one edition at a time.