The second book is a continuation of the same meeting. The word is taken up by Cicero, and he refutes Torquatus. It seems to us, however, that poor Epicurus is but badly treated--as has been generally the case in the prose works which have come down to us. We have, indeed, the poem of Lucretius, and it is admitted that it contains fine passages. But I was always told when young that the writing of it had led him to commit suicide--a deed on his part which seems to have been painted in black colors, though Cato and Brutus, the Stoics, did the same thing very gloriously. The Epicureans are held to be sensualists, because they have used the word "pleasure" instead of "happiness," and Cicero is hard upon them. He tells a story of the dying moments of Epicurus, quoting a letter written on his death-bed. "While I am writing," he says, "I am living my last hour, and the happiest. I have so bad a pain in my stomach that nothing can be worse. But I am compensated for it all by the joy I feel as I think of my philosophical discourses."[284] Cicero then goes on to declare that, though the saying is very noble, it is unnecessary; he should not, in truth, have required compensation. But whenever an opinion is enunciated, the reader feels it to be unnecessary. He does not want opinion. He is satisfied with the language in which Cicero writes about the opinions of others, and with the amusing manner in which he deals with things of themselves heavy and severe. In the third book he, some time afterward, discusses the Stoic doctrine with Cato at the Tusculan villa of Lucullus, near to his own. He had walked over, and finding Cato there by chance, had immediately gone to work to demolish Cato's philosophical doctrines. He tells us what a glutton Cato was over his books, taking them even into the Senate with him. Cicero asks for certain volumes of Aristotle, and Cato answers him that he would fain put into his hand those of Zeno's school.