In Ambrose’s Jacob and the Happy Life, the Bishop of Milan addressed one of the seminal issues in the eudaemonist tradition: Is virtue sufficient for happiness or must external goods (e.g. health, material resources) be added to virtue? Aristotle’s answer had been that virtue was not sufficient for human flourishing but allowed one to use the necessary external goods to achieve eudaimonia. The Stoics, who argued for the sufficiency of virtue, countered with the example of Socrates. Surely the best and the wisest of men must have attained eudaimonia despite being betrayed and sentenced to death by his native city. Ambrose, in his catechetical homilies on Jacob, sides with the stoics. He appeals to the case of the mother in 2 Maccabees, whose sons were tortured and executed before her eyes because they refused to worship Antiochus Epiphanius, as an example of how the virtuous Christian might attain happiness even in the midst of hardship and profound suffering (Iac. 1.8.36). Happiness lies in the pure conscience of the faithful, even during persecution, because the wise find pleasure and tranquility in the nobility of their faithful deeds, which are a sharing in Christ’s passion (Iac. 1.6.23). Thus hardships do not negate happiness but are the occasion for the highest degree of human flourishing (Iac. 1.7.28). Such was the life of magnanimous Joseph and Paul.