Augustine emphasized the misery which accompanies most people in life. Aristotle treated pain largely as self-inflicted due to the excess of some passion, e.g. as when the passion for intoxication induces a hangover. But pain is a universal condition of the human race, as Augustine and other philosophers were to emphasize.
The universal fact of pain is the starting point of another ancient philosophy, Buddhism, which began in India with the teachings of Siddhartha. Schools of thought that developed after Aristotle in the Greco-Roman world also addressed the issue of pain, the common theme being the promise of relief of pain in the body and in the mind. The good for the mind, is repose or quietude.
The followers of Epicurus emphasized the minimization of pain as the highest principle. They defined pleasure as "the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul." Pleasure, then, is not sensual, is not excessive. "He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid. . . . Pleasure is our first and kindred good." To this end, the Epicureans promoted the moral virtue of prudence, which is practiced by the wise man. Thus there remains an intellectualist element in this vision of the good.
Another group of philosophers, the Stoics, also promoted the ideal of the wise man who is able to attain release from pain. They had a more specific plan than advocacy of prudence, however. Any pain is either avoidable or not. If it is not avoidable, there is no reason to do anything but accept it. Resistance is futile and only adds to the original pain. "What disturbs men's minds is not events but their judgments on events. . . . Let your will be that events should happen as they do, and you shall have peace" (Epictetus the slave). If it is avoidable, we should take every measure to avoid it. The overall prescription is to avoid desiring anything but what is in our direct control. "If then you try to avoid only what is unnatural in the region within your control, you will escape from all that you avoid; but if you try to avoid disease or death or poverty you will be miserable. Therefore, let your will to avoid have no concern with what is not in man's power; direct it only to things in man's power that are contrary to nature" (Epictetus).
A final group, the skeptics, located much of the source of pain in the intellectual sphere, in confusion over what the good and the bad are. The good is "quietude in respect of matters of opinion and moderate feeling in respect of things unavoidable." In the latter respect, the skeptics' view resembles the stoics'. It is in its emphasis on the practical consequences of the suspension of belief that the skeptical philosophy is distinctive.
"For the man who opines that anything is by nature good or bad is for ever being disquieted: when he is without the things which he deems good he believes himself to be tormented by things naturally bad and he pursues after the things which are, as he thinks, good; which when he has obtained he keeps falling into still more perturbations because of his irrational and immoderate elation, and in his dread of a change of fortune he uses every endeavor to avoid losing the things which he deems good. On the other hand, the man who determines nothing as to what is naturally good or bad neither shuns nor pursues anything eagerly; and, in consequence, he is unperturbed" (Sextus Empiricus).
If one gives up making judgments about what specific acts are good or bad, on what basis can one act at all? The answer is to follow the customs of the place in which one finds one's self. As the popular saying goes, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." This is a "conventionalist" view of how one ought to behave. It is custom or agreement which is the right basis of action.
We may summarize these three Greco-Roman philosophies as shifting away from Aristotle's emphasis on the excellence of action to an emphasis on a kind of inaction. In a way, it is a kind of escapism from the tribulations of the world, rather than an energetic engagement with the world. Perhaps this was a sign of a weary time, when empires were crumbling, as opposed to the optimistic view of Aristotle which arose when the Greek domination of the Mediterranean world was at its height.
Let us now turn to another sort of criticism is that Aristotle's theory: that it is unacceptably abstract. The notion of human good is based on a model of optimality of functioning. The virtuous person is like a well-tuned car or a well-conditioned body. The state (this applies to Plato) is also best when it has achieved maximum functionality. What seems to be missing here is an element that in Aristotle's scheme is merely animal, i.e. the compassion or sympathy persons feel for one another. Love of neighbor plays absolutely no role in the scheme of things we have examined. It fell to Christianity to supplement the ethical picture by adding the element of love.