The final book of the Tusculans is intended to bring together the results of the preceding books in two ways. It concludes the argument that virtue is sufficient for happiness, where that is understood as invulnerable tranquillity and peace of mind. The book also fills out its opening praise of philosophy, understood as Academic sceptical method. However, the forceful final coda raises problems of philosophical consistency which, when examined carefully, cannot be reconciled with the book’s initial aims.

In Tusculans 2 the interlocutors discuss the value of physical pain. They swiftly agree that it is not the greatest evil but take longer to consider whether it is bad or, as the Stoics think, merely indifferent. Enduring pain is taken to be an indication of courage and manliness (virtus) and this is undermined by the claim that physical pain is not bad. Therefore neither the Epicureans nor the Stoics provide a wholly satisfactory account of the value of physical pain and its relationship to virtue.

This chapter focuses on Cicero’s treatment of the emotions in Books 3 and 4, and more specifically on his account of the dispute between the Stoics and the Peripatetics. At first sight, the dispute seems uncomplicated: the Stoics advocate the complete absence of emotions whereas the Peripatetics hold that emotions should rather be moderated or controlled. But Cicero’s stress on the idea that emotions are beliefs seems to come at the expense of other central parts of the theory of emotions, most prominently the theory of action.  I argue that these features of his presentation serve him in securing a thesis that he is keen to defend in Book 5: that virtue guarantees happiness and that this happiness is invulnerable to the accidents of fortune.