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altogether in a faint. 24 Cicero asserts that all emotions can be considered akin to a state of insanity:‘the term insania refers to an infirmity or sickness of the mind…and sanitas or health for the mindconsist[s] in having a serene and consistent temper’ (3. 8-9). Sane people are those who are notdisturbed by their emotions – they are therefore also healthy people, since they know how toovercome ‘insanity’ to attain that peace of mind. For Cicero, the role of philosophy is to root out thefalse opinions that produce unhealthy emotional states and cause unhappiness. He uses the term‘insanity’ to refer to a state of mind overcome by ‘emotion’ which can be cured by philosophy – andthis is distinct from forms of madness caused by actual physical disease of the mind. He also makes adistinction between the ‘insanity’ caused by emotional distress, and another form of madness, that offrenzy or furor, ‘which the Greeks call mania’. Such furor can even overwhelm the wise man, andcannot be controlled by reason. 25In his preferred ‘rhetorical’ presentation of the syllogistic arguments expressed by the Stoics,Cicero notes that the Aristotelian school accepts the emotions, in moderation, in the belief that theyalso play a role in defining the virtuous life. Aristotle was more pragmatic and realistic inacknowledging the emotional realities of human existence. But Cicero is concerned to pursue thestronger Stoic position that would do away with emotional disturbance completely – if emotions are‘sicknesses’, as he has defined them to be, then surely they should be cured. In discussing ‘Distress’(aegritudo), 26 he sets out a fourfold classification that originates in the philosophy of the early Stoics,‘whose reasoning is strongest’:The cause of distress, as of all the emotions, is to be found entirely in belief …every emotionis a movement of the mind which is apart from reason or heedless of reason or disobedient toreason, the stimulus for such a movement may be of two kinds: it may be a belief either aboutwhat is good or about what is bad. This yields a neat fourfold classification. Beliefs aboutwhat is good give rise to two emotions. One is wild delight (voluptas gestiens) that is gladnesscarried away to excess: it arises from the belief that some great good is present. The other isdesire (libido), which can be termed ‘longing’: it is ungoverned reaching, not subject toreason, toward some great good that is anticipated. Thus two genera, wild delight and desire,are caused by beliefs about what is good. The other two, fear and distress, (metus etaegritudo) are caused by beliefs about what is bad. Fear is a belief that some serious evil isimpending; distress is a belief that a serious evil is present…These are the emotions whichfolly has stirred up against human life, unleashing them and setting them upon us like Furies.We must resist them with all our strength if we truly wish to spend the allotment of our life inpeace and tranquillity. (TD 3. 24-25)In Book 4 of the Tusculans, Cicero revisits this four-fold classification as his discussion turnsto the emotions in general. In developing it further he invokes the distinction made by Pythagoras, andused by Plato, that divides the mind into a rational and irrational part: ‘In the part which has a share in24 The sailor in Adventures on Salisbury Plain faints at the sight of a gibbet, indicating his feelings of guilt andremorse. Mortimer in The Borderers wanders in a state of ‘absence’, his mind ‘overturned’.25 In his essay on The Borderers Wordsworth compares Rivers’ frenzied or furious state of mind with that of the‘Orlando of Ariosto’, and ‘the Cardenio of Cervantes, who lays waste the groves that should shelter him’(The Borderers 63). Mortimer, on the other hand shows classic symptoms of insanitas.26 Wordsworth uses the term ‘deep distress’ with an awareness of Cicero’s taxonomy of the emotions whencomposing ‘Elegiac Stanzas’.213