For the Stoics, the good is what benefits and cannot be put to evil use; strictly speaking, the only good is TERMvirtue (ἀρετή) and what partakes in it. Everything external — health, wealth, reputation — belongs to the indifferents (ἀδιάφορα), though it may be "preferred" (προηγμένον). The good is inseparable from the fine (καλόν): what is good is also noble.

SVF III 74–77 (Chrysippus); DL VII 94–101; Stob. Ecl. II 69–70 W; LS 60. In Marcus: Med. 2.1; 2.11; 05-12 (what the many think good is no good: test it by imagining its possessor); 05-15; 05-16 (the good of the rational being lies in the rational-social soul); 05-37 (the good is good turns of soul, impulses, deeds); 06-30; 06-41; 06-51; 07-15 (ἐμὲ δεῖ ἀγαθὸν εἶναι — whatever anyone does, I must be good, as the emerald keeps its colour); 07-26 (what the wrongdoer took for ἀγαθόν — the root of his offence); 07-59 (ἔνδον ἡ πηγὴ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ — the spring of good is within); 08-01 (the good — only what makes one just, temperate, brave, free); 08-05 (ἀγαθόν σε ἄνθρωπον εἶναι δεῖ — you must be a good man); 08-10 (pleasure is not ἀγαθόν — the syllogism from repentance); 08-14 (a man's doctrines about ἀγαθά and κακά explain his acts); 08-20 (neither "good" for the ball to rise nor "harm" to fall — phases of a natural motion); 09-16 (the ἀγαθόν of a rational being is in ἐνέργεια, not in what is undergone); 09-17 (to the stone the rise is no ἀγαθόν, the fall no evil: the external is indifferent).

In passage 02-01 Marcus relies on the classical Stoic identification of the good with the fine (καλόν): "the nature of the good is that it is fine; the nature of evil, that it is shameful." This knowledge — knowledge of the very TERMnature of good and evil — frees the sage from being harmed, because genuine harm is possible only in the sphere of TERMevil, that is, of vice, and vice cannot be imposed from outside (see no-harm-to-virtuous).