Marcus Tullius Cicero

“ For riches, titles, and power, devoid of wisdom, of the knowledge of self-government, and that of the government of others, exhibit nothing but insolent and disgraceful pride. Nor can the condition of any city be more deplorable, than where the richest men pass for the best. But what can be more delightful than a state virtuously governed? What more illustrious than the man, who while he governs others, is himself the slave of no bad passions? Who, while he calls upon the citizens to observe the regulations he has formed, lives up to them all himself? ”

“ My dear Laelius and Scipio, we must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks by taking pains. We must fight it as we should an illness. We must look after our health, use moderate exercise, take just enough food and drink to recruit, but not to overload, our strength. Nor is it the body alone that must be supported, but the intellect and soul much more. For they are like lamps: unless you feed them with oil, they too go out from old age. Again, the body is apt to get gross from exercise; but the intellect becomes nimbler by exercising itself. ”

“ Not but that art can contribute some refinements; for I am sensible that learning may improve what is already good, and in some measure polish and correct what is none of the best. But there are some men so stuttering in their expression, so harsh in their tone of voice, so forbidding in their look, so unwieldy and so savage in their make, that, with all the genius and art in the world, they can never become orators. There are others so happily turned, so endued by nature for the same attainments, that they seem not to be born, but moulded by the finger of a god. ”

“ For, by the faith of gods and men, who is there that would be willing to have a superabundance of all objects of desire and to live in the utmost fulness of wealth and what wealth can bring, on condition of neither loving any one nor being loved by any one? This, indeed, is the life of tyrants, in which there is no good faith, no affection, no fixed confidence in kindly feeling, perpetual suspicion and anxiety, and no room for friendship; for who can love either him whom he fears, or him by whom he thinks that he is feared? ”

“ Have all our rights fallen so far, that in a province of the Roman people,—in a town of our confederate allies,—a Roman citizen should be bound in the forum, and beaten with rods by a man who only had the fasces and the axes through the kindness of the Roman people? What shall I say? When fire, and red-hot plates, and other instruments of torture were employed? If the bitter entreaties and the miserable cries of that man had no power to restrain you, were you not moved even by the weeping and loud groans of the Roman citizens who were present at that time? ”

“ Supposing there are many who have taken bribes to condemn an innocent man, will you not punish all of them, but will you pick as you choose, and select a few out of the many to brand with ignominy? Shall the senate then, while you see and know it to be the case, have a senator—shall the Roman people have a judge—shall the republic have a citizen, unmarked by any ignominy, who, to cause the ruin of an innocent man, has sold his good faith and religion for a bribe? ”

“ Why is Rutilius, my uncle, a man of the greatest virtue and learning, now in banishment? Why was my own friend and companion Drusus assassinated in his own house? Why was Scævola, the high-priest, that pattern of moderation and prudence, massacred before the statue of Vesta? Why, before that, were so many illustrious citizens put to death by Cinna? Why had Marius, the most perfidious of men, the power to cause the death of Catulus, a man of the greatest dignity? But there would be no end of enumerating examples of good men made miserable and wicked men prosperous. ”

“ We have slightly touched upon the ornaments of language, both in single words, and in words as they stand connected with each other;—in which our Orator will so indulge himself, that not a single expression may escape him, but what is either elegant or weighty. But he will most abound in the metaphor; which, by an aptness of similitude, conveys and transports the mind from object to object, and hurries it backwards and forwards through a pleasing variety of images;—a motion which, in its own nature, (as being full of life and action) can never fail to be highly delightful. ”

“ Who has ever come from the statue of Vertumnus into the Circus Maximus, without being reminded at every step of your avarice? for that road, the road of the sacred cars and of such solemn processions, you have had repaired in such a way that you yourself do not dare go by it. Can any one think that when you were separated from Italy by the sea you spared the allies? You who chose the temple of Castor to be the witness of your thefts which the Roman people saw every day, and even the judges at the very moment that they were giving their decision concerning you. ”

“ Wherefore, if, as you granted in the beginning, infamy is worse than pain, pain is certainly nothing; for while it appears to you base and unmanly to groan, cry out, lament, or faint under pain—while you cherish notions of probity, dignity, honour, and keeping your eye on them, refrain yourself—pain will certainly yield to virtue, and by the influence of imagination, will lose its whole force.—For you must either admit that there is no such thing as virtue, or you must despise every kind of pain. ”

“ I should exhort you to defend the republic. I myself in arms should, with your aid, resist the armed enemy. Now, when there is no suspicion of arms, when I see no weapons, when there is no violence, or slaughter, or occupation of the Capitol and citadel, but only a mischievous prosecution, a cruel trial, a business undertaken by a tribune of the people contrary to the interests of the republic, I have not thought that I ought to summon you to arms, but that it was sufficient to exhort you to give your votes against those who are attacking your majesty. ”

“ What do brave men do? Do they enter into an exact calculation of pleasure, and so enter the battle, and shed their blood for their country? or are they excited rather by a certain ardour and impetuosity of courage? Do you think, O Torquatus, that that imperious ancestor of yours, if he could hear what we are now saying, would rather listen to your sentiments concerning him, or to mine, when I said that he had done nothing for his own sake, but everything for that of the republic; and you, on the contrary, affirm that he did nothing except with a view to his own advantage? ”

“ What do you think will be the feelings of all Italy? Do you suppose that it will continue to glow with the same zeal with which it burnt before to extinguish this common conflagration? Do we not suppose that those men will repent of having professed and displayed so much hatred to Antonius, who promised us money and arms, who devoted themselves wholly, body, heart, and soul, to the safety of the republic? How will Capua, which at the present time feels like a second Rome, approve of this design of yours? That city pronounced them impious citizens, cast them out, and kept them out. ”

“ It is by these means, my dear Scipio,—for you said that you and Laelius were wont to express surprise on this point,—that my old age sits lightly on me, and is not only not oppressive but even delightful. But if I am wrong in thinking the human soul immortal, I am glad to be wrong; nor will I allow the mistake which gives me so much pleasure to be wrested from me as long as I live. But if when dead, as some insignificant philosophers think, I am to be without sensation, I am not afraid of dead philosophers deriding my errors. ”

“ But, by the argument you just now formed, you confessed that a man may be, as many have been, a lawyer, without that eloquence which is the subject of our present inquiry; but you deny that without the knowledge of the civil law it is possible to form an orator. Thus, you make a lawyer in himself nothing, but a sly cunning limb of the law, a crier of actions, a bawler of forms, and a word-catcher. But, because an orator in his pleading often makes use of law, therefore you have joined the study of the law to that of eloquence, as if the former were the waiting-maid of the latter. ”

“ But do not you, who are so great an adept in physics, see what a soothing flatterer, what a sort of procuress, nature is to herself? Do you think there is any creature on the land or in the sea that is not highly delighted with its own form? If it were not so, why would not a bull become enamored of a mare, or a horse of a cow? Do you believe an eagle, a lion, or a dolphin prefers any shape to its own? If nature, therefore, has instructed us in the same manner, that nothing is more beautiful than man, what wonder is it that we, for that reason, should imagine the Gods are of the human form? ”

“ Who is there, then, that does not lament the loss of his friends, principally from imagining them deprived of the conveniences of life? Take away this opinion, and you remove with it all grief; for no one is afflicted merely on account of a loss sustained by himself. Perhaps we may be sorry, and grieve a little; but that bitter lamentation, and those mournful tears, have their origin in our apprehensions that he whom we loved is deprived of all the advantages of life, and is sensible of his loss. And we are led to this opinion by nature, without any arguments or any instruction. ”

“ I have noticed, O conscript fathers, that some people have said before now, that even Brutus is too much extolled by me, that Cassius is too much extolled; and that by this proposition of mine absolute power and quite a principality is conferred upon Cassius. Whom do I extol? Those who are themselves the glory of the republic. What? have I not at all times extolled Decimus Brutus whenever I have delivered my opinion at all? Do you then find fault with me? or should I rather praise the Antonii, the disgrace and infamy not only of their own families, but of the Roman name? ”

“ Well, then, if it is true that to give and receive advice—the former with freedom and yet without bitterness, the latter with patience and without irritation—is peculiarly appropriate to genuine friendship, it is no less true that there can be nothing more utterly subversive of friendship than flattery, adulation, and base compliance. I use as many terms as possible to brand this vice of light-minded, untrustworthy men, whose sole object in speaking is to please without any regard to truth. In everything false pretence is bad, for it suspends and vitiates our power of discerning the truth. ”

“ For when you deny what appears very dreadful to me to be an evil, I am deceived, and am at a loss to know why that which appears to me to be a most miserable thing should be no evil. The answer is, that nothing is an evil but what is base and vicious. You return to your trifling, for you do not remove what made me uneasy. I know that pain is not vice—you need not inform me of that: but show me that it makes no difference to me whether I am in pain or not. It has never anything to do, say you, with a happy life, for that depends upon virtue alone; but yet pain is to be avoided. ”

“ For what can be more foolish than to prefer useless power, such influence as brings envy in its train, and a rash and slippery ambition of reigning, to real, dignified, solid glory? Has he seen this truth as a boy, and when he has advanced in age will he cease to see it? "But he is an enemy to some most illustrious and excellent citizens." That circumstance ought not to cause any fear Caesar has sacrificed all those enmities to the republic; he had made the republic his judge; he has made her the directress of all his counsels and actions. ”

“ But of friendship all think alike to a man, whether those have devoted themselves to politics, or those who delight in science and philosophy, or those who follow a private way of life and care for nothing but their own business, or those lastly who have given themselves body and soul to sensuality—they all think, I say, that without friendship life is no life, if they want some part of it, at any rate, to be noble. For friendship, in one way or another, penetrates into the lives of us all, and suffers no career to be entirely free from its influence. ”