But conceptions of this kind had little or no place in the philosophy of Rome. The issue of human enterprises and the disposition of the gifts of fortune were recognised as under the control of Providence; but man was master of his own feelings, and was capable of attaining such excellence that he might even challenge comparison with the gods. Audacious as such sentiments may now appear, they were common to most schools of Roman moralists. “We boast justly of our own virtue,” said the eclectic Cicero, “which we could not do if we derived it from the Deity and not from ourselves.” “All mortals judge that fortune is to be received from the gods and wisdom from ourselves.”(247) The Epicurean Horace, in his noblest ode, described the just man, confident in his virtue, undaunted amid the crash of worlds, and he tells us to pray only for those things which Jupiter gives and takes away. “He gives life, he gives wealth; an untroubled mind I secure for myself.”(248) “The calm of a mind blest in the consciousness of its virtue,” was the expression of supreme felicity the Epicureans had derived from their master.(249) Lucretius, in a magnificent passage, designates Epicurus as a god, and boasts that the popular divinities dwindle into insignificance before him. Ceres, he says, gave men corn, and Bacchus wine, but Epicurus the principles of virtue. Hercules conquered monsters, Epicurus conquered vice.(250) “Pray,” said Juvenal, “for a healthy mind in a healthy body. Ask for a brave soul unscared by death.... But there are things you can give yourself.”(251) “Misfortune, and losses, and calumny,” said Seneca, “disappear before virtue as the taper before the sun.”(252) “In one point the sage is superior to God. God owes it to His nature not to fear, but the sage owes it to himself. Sublime condition! he joins the frailty of a man to the security of a god.”(253) “Except for immortality,” he elsewhere writes, “the sage is like to God.”(254) “It is the characteristic of a wise man,” added Epictetus, “that he looks for all his good and evil from himself.”(255) “As far as his rational nature is concerned, he is in no degree inferior to the gods.”(256)