3. Unhappy do I adjudge thee, if thou hast never been unhappy; thou hast passed thy life without an adversary. No one knows what thou mightest have done; thou dost not even know it thyself. We need to be tried that we may find out what we are; what a man can do can be ascertained only by trial. For this reason men have sometimes voluntarily encountered obstacles that seemed to evade them and sought an opportunity for demonstrating to others the virtue that was passing into oblivion. 4. I assert that great men sometimes rejoice in tribulation like valiant soldiers in battles. I heard Triumphus, a gladiator under Caius Caesar (Caligula) complain because he had so little to do. “How my best days are speeding away,” said he! Courage is eager for danger and looks to the end in view, not at what it is likely to encounter, for the reason that what it encounters is part of the glory. Warriors are proud of their wounds; joyfully they point to the blood it was their good fortune to shed. Those who return from the combat unscathed may have been just as brave—it is the wounded man that is the observed of all eyes. God shows his good will to those whom he would have attain the highest excellence every time he gives them an opportunity to display courage and endurance; this is possible only in some contingency beset with difficulties. You form your opinion of a pilot in a storm; of a soldier, in battle. By what test am I to know how thou wilt bear up against poverty, if thou aboundest in wealth? By what test am I to know how thou wilt bear up under ignominy and disgrace and popular hatred, if thou growest old amid public applause? if a strong and unswerving popular partiality supports thee in all thou doest? 6. How am I to know with what equanimity thou wilt bear the loss of children, if thou seest about thee all those thou hast begotten? I have listened to thee when thou wert offering consolation to others; then should I have seen thee when thou wert thyself in need of consolation; when thou wert trying to restrain thyself from sorrowing. Do not, I beseech thee, shrink from these things which the immortal gods send upon thee as stimuli to thy courage. A disaster is an occasion of virtue. Those persons one can rightly call wretched who grow effeminate in superabounding prosperity; whom a dead calm bears along, as it were, in a motionless sea.