{"schema_version":1,"access":"public","rights":"Public-domain or compatibly licensed source editions; provenance is retained per record.","work":{"slug":"cicero-paradoxa","title":"Stoic Paradoxes","author":"Marcus Tullius Cicero","tradition":"roman","language":"la","genre":"philosophical essay","period":"46 BCE","source_url":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/8b536bdf3ed1f43494055efe112433b4a58eab67/data/phi0474/phi047/phi0474.phi047.perseus-lat2.xml","original":{"text":"### Preface\n\nSECTION 1\n\nAnimadverti, Brute, saepe Catonem, avunculum tuum, cum in senatu sententiam diceret, locos gravis ex philosophia tractare abhorrentis ab hoc usu forensi et publico, sed dicendo consequi tamen, ut illa etiam populo probabilia viderentur;\n\nSECTION 2\n\nquod eo maius est illi quam aut tibi aut nobis, quia nos ea philosophia plus utimur, quae peperit dicendi copiam et in qua dicuntur ea, quae non multum discrepent ab opinione populari, Cato autem, perfectus mea sententia Stoicus, et ea sentit, quae non sane probantur in volgus, et in ea est haeresi, quae nullum sequitur florem orationis neque dilatat argumentum: minutis interrogatiunculis quasi punctis quod proposuit efficit.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nsed nihil est tam incredibile, quod non dicendo fiat probabile, nihil tam horridum, tam incultum, quod non splendescat oratione et tamquam excolatur. quod cum ita putarem, feci etiam audacius quam ille ipse, de quo loquor: Cato enim dum taxat de magnitudine animi, de continentia, de morte, de omni laude virtutis, de dis inmortalibus, de caritate patriae Stoice solet oratoriis ornamentis adhibitis dicere; ego tibi illa ipsa, quae vix in gymnasiis et in otio Stoici probant, ludens conieci in communis locos.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nquae quia sunt admirabilia contraque opinionem omnium [ab ipsis etiam παράδοξα appellantur], temptare volui possentne proferri in lucem [id est in forum] et ita dici, ut probarentur, an alia quaedam esset erudita, alia popularis oratio, eoque hos locos scripsi libentius, quod mihi ista παράδοξα quae appellant maxime videntur esse Socratica longeque verissima.\n\nSECTION 5\n\naccipies igitur hoc parvum opusculum, lucubratum his iam contractioribus noctibus, quoniam illud maiorum vigiliarum munus in tuo nomine adparuit, et degustabis genus exercitationum earum, quibus uti consuevi, cum ea, quae dicuntur in scholis θετικῶς, ad nostrum hoc oratorium transfero dicendi genus. hoc tamen opus in acceptum ut referas nihil postulo; non enim est tale, ut in arce poni possit, quasi Minerva illa Phidiae, sed tamen, ut ex eadem officina exisse adpareat.\n\n### Paradox 1\n\nParadoxon I\n\nὅτι μόνον τὸ καλὸν ἀγαθόν.\n\nSECTION 6\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nvereor ne cui vestrum ex Socraticorum hominum disputationibus, non ex meo sensu deprompta haec videatur oratio; dicam quod sentio tamen et dicam brevius quam res tanta dici potest. numquam hercule ego neque pecunias istorum neque tecta magnifica neque opes neque imperia neque eas, quibus maxime astricti sunt, voluptates in bonis rebus aut expetendis esse duxi, quippe cum viderem rebus his circumfluentis ea tamen desiderare maxime, quibus abundarent; neque enim umquam expletur nec satiatur cupiditatis sitis, neque solum ea qui habent libidine augendi cruciantur, sed etiam amittendi metu.\n\nSECTION 7\n\nin quo equidem continentissimorum hominum, maiorum nostrorum, saepe requiro prudentiam, qui haec inbecilla et conmutabilia [pecuniae membra] verbo “bona” putaverunt appellanda, cum re ac factis longe aliter iudicavissent. potestne bonum cuiquam malo esse aut potest quisquam in abundantia bonorum ipse esse non bonus? atqui ista omnia talia videmus, ut et inprobi habeant et absint probis.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nquam ob rem licet inrideat si qui volt, plus apud me tamen vera ratio valebit quam volgi opinio; neque ego umquam bona perdidisse dicam, si quis pecus aut supellectilem amiserit, nec non saepe laudabo sapientem illum, Biantem, ut opinor, qui numeratur in septem: cuius cum patriam Prienam cepisset hostis ceterique ita fugerent, ut multa de suis rebus asportarent, cum esset admonitus a quodam ut idem ipse faceret, “ego vero” inquit “facio; nam omnia mecum porto mea.”\n\nSECTION 9\n\nille haec ludibria fortunae ne sua quidem putavit, quae nos appellamus etiam bona. quid est igitur, quaeret aliquis, bonum? si, quod recte fit et honeste et cum virtute, id bene fieri vere dicitur, quod rectum et honestum et cum virtute est, id solum opinor bonum.\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nsed haec videri possunt odiosiora, cum lentius disputantur: vita atque factis inlustrata sunt summorum virorum [haec quae verbis subtilius quam satis est, disputari videntur]; quaero enim a vobis, num ullam cogitationem habuisse videantur ii, qui hanc rein publicam tam praeclare fundatam nobis reliquerunt, aut argenti ad avaritiam aut amoenitatum ad delectationem aut supellectilis ad delicias aut epularum ad voluptates? ponite ante oculos unum quemque [regum].\n\nSECTION 11\n\nvoltis a Romulo? voltis post liberam civitatem ab iis ipsis, qui liberaverunt? quibus tandem Romulus gradibus escendit in caelum? iisne, quae isti bona appellant, an rebus gestis atque virtutibus? quid? a Numa Pompilio minusne gratas dis inmortalibus capudines ac fictilis urnulas fuisse quam felicatas Saliorum pateras arbitramur? omitto reliquos; sunt enim omnes pares inter se praeter Superbum.\n\nSECTION 12\n\nBrutum si qui roget, quid egerit in patria liberanda, si quis item reliquos eiusdem consilii socios, quid spectaverint, quid secuti sint: num quis exsistat, cui voluptas, cui divitiae, cui denique praeter officium fortis et magni viri quicquam aliud propositum fuisse videatur? quae res ad necem Porsennae C. Mucium inpulit sine ulla spe salutis suae? quae vis Coclitem contra omnis hostium copias tenuit in ponte solum? quae patrem Decium, quae filium devota vita inmisit in armatas hostium copias? quid continentia C. Fabricii, quid tenuitas victus M’. Curii sequebatur? quid duo propugnacula belli Punici, Cn. et P. Scipiones, qui Karthaginiensium adventum corporibus suis intercludendum putaverunt? quid Africanus maior? quid minor? quid inter horum aetates interiectus Cato? quid innumerabiles alii?—nam domesticis exemplis abundamus—: cogitassene quicquam in vita sibi esse expetendum nisi quod laudabile esse et praeclarum videretur?\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nveniant igitur isti inrisores huius orationis ac sententiae, et iam vel ipsi iudicent, utrum se horum alicuius, qui marmoreis tectis ebore et auro fulgentibus, qui signis, qui tabulis, qui caelato auro et argento, qui Corinthiis operibus abundant, an C. Fabricii, qui nihil habuit eorum, nihil habere voluit, similis malint?\n\nSECTION 14\n\natque haec quidem, quae modo huc, modo illuc transferuntur, facile adduci solent ut in bonis rebus esse negent; illud arte tenent accurateque defendunt, voluptatem esse summum bonum: quae quidem mihi vox pecudum videtur esse, non hominum. tu, cum tibi sive deus sive mater, ut ita dicam, rerum omnium natura dederit animum, quo nihil est praestantius neque divinius, sic te ipse abicies atque prosternes, ut nihil inter te atque inter quadripedem aliquam putes interesse? quicquam bonum est, quod non eum, qui id possidet, meliorem facit?\n\nSECTION 15\n\nut enim est quisque maxime boni particeps, ita est laudabilis maxime, neque est ullum bonum, de quo non is, qui id habeat, honeste possit gloriari. quid autem est horum in voluptate? melioremne efficit aut laudabiliorem virum? an quisquam in potiendis voluptatibus gloriando se et praedicatione ecfert? atqui si voluptas, quae plurimorum patrociniis defenditur, in rebus bonis habenda non est, eaque quo est maior, eo magis mentem ex sua sede et statu demovet, profecto nihil est aliud bene et beate vivere nisi honeste et recte vivere.\n\n### Paradox 2\n\nParadoxon II\n\nὅτι αὐτάρκης ἡ ἀρετὴ πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν\n\n[In quo virtus sit, ei nihil deesse ad beate vivendum.]\n\nSECTION 16\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nnec vero ego M. Regulum aerumnosum nec infelicem nec miserum umquam putavi; non enim magnitudo animi cruciabatur eius a Poenis, non gravitas, non fides, non constantia, non ulla virtus, non denique animus ipse, qui tot virtutum praesidio tantoque comitatu, cum corpus eius caperetur, capi certe ipse non potuit. C. vero Marium vidimus, qui mihi secundis rebus unus ex fortunatis hominibus, adversis unus ex summis viris videbatur, quo beatius esse mortali nihil potest.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nnescis, insane, nescis, quantas viris virtus habeat; nomen tantum virtutis usurpas, quid ipsa valeat ignoras: nemo potest non beatissimus esse, qui est totus aptus ex sese quique in se uno sua ponit omnia. cui spes omnis et ratio et cogitatio pendet ex fortuna, huic nihil potest esse certi, nihil quod exploratum habeat permansurum sibi unum diem; eum tu hominem terreto, si quem eris nanctus, istis mortis aut exsilii minis: mihi vero quicquid acciderit in tam ingrata civitate, ne recusanti quidem evenerit, non modo [non] repugnanti. quid enim ego laboravi aut quid egi aut in quo evigilarunt curae et cogitationes meae, si quidem nihil peperi tale, nihil consecutus sum, ut eo statu essem, quem neque fortunae temeritas neque inimicorum labefactaret iniuria? mortemne mihi minitaris,\n\nSECTION 18\n\nut omnino ab hominibus, an exsilium, ut ab inprobis demigrandum sit? mors terribilis iis, quorum cum vita omnia exstinguuntur, non iis, quorum laus emori non potest; exsilium autem illis, quibus quasi circumscriptus est habitandi locus, non iis, qui omnem orbem terrarum unam urbem esse ducunt. te miseriae, te aerumnae premunt omnes, qui te beatum, qui florentem putas; te lubidines torquent; tu dies noctisque cruciaris, cui nec sat est quod est et id ipsum ne non diuturnum sit futurum times; te conscientiae stimulant maleficiorum tuorum; te metus exanimant iudiciorum atque legum; quocumque adspexisti, ut furiae sic tuae tibi occurrunt iniuriae, quae te suspirare libere non sinunt.\n\nSECTION 19\n\nquam ob rem ut inprobo et stulto et inerti nemini bene esse potest, sic bonus vir et sapiens et fortis miser esse nemo potest; nec vero, cuius virtus moresque laudandi sunt, eius non laudanda vita est, neque porro fugienda vita est quae laudanda est, esset autem fugienda, si esset misera. quam ob rem quicquid est laudabile, idem et beatum et florens et expetendum videri decet.\n\n### Paradox 3\n\nParadoxon III\n\nὅτι ἴσα τὰ ἁμαρτήματα καὶ τὰ κατορθώματα\n\nSECTION 20\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n“parva” inquit “est res.” at magna culpa; nec enim peccata rerum eventis, sed vitiis hominum metienda sunt: in quo peccatur, id potest aliud alio maius esse aut minus, ipsum quidem illud peccare, quoquo verteris, unum est. auri navem evertat gubernator an paleae, in re aliquantum, in gubernatoris inscitia nihil interest. lapsa est lubido in muliere ignota, dolor ad pauciores pertinet, quam si petulans fuisset in aliqua generosa ac nobili virgine; peccavit vero nihilo minus, si quidem est peccare tamquam transire lineas, quod cum feceris, culpa commissa est: quam longe progrediare, cum semel transieris, ad augendam transeundi culpam nihil pertinet. peccare certe licet nemini; quod autem non licet, id hoc uno tenetur, si arguitur non licere: id si nec maius nec minus umquam fieri potest, quoniam in eo est peccatum, si non licuit, quod semper unum et idem est, quae ex eo peccata nascuntur aequalia sint oportet.\n\nSECTION 21\n\nquod si virtutes sunt pares inter se, paria esse etiam vitia necesse est: atqui paris esse virtutes nec bono viro meliorem nec temperante temperantiorem nec. forti fortiorem nec sapienti sapientiorem posse fieri, facillume potest perspici. an virum bonum dices, qui depositum nullo teste, cum lucrari inpune posset auri pondo decem, reddiderit, si idem in decem milibus non idem fecerit? aut temperantem, qui se in aliqua libidine continuerit, in aliqua effuderit?\n\nSECTION 22\n\nuna virtus est consentiens cum ratione et perpetua constantia; nihil huc addi potest, quo magis virtus sit, nihil demi, ut virtutis nomen relinquatur: etenim si bene facta recte facta sunt et nihil recto rectius, certe ne bono quidem melius quicquam inveniri potest. sequitur igitur ut etiam vitia sint paria, si quidem pravitates animi recte vitia dicuntur. atqui quoniam pares virtutes sunt, recte facta, quoniam a virtutibus proficiscuntur, paria esse debent, itemque peccata, quoniam ex vitiis manant, sint aequalia necesse est.\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n“a philosophis” inquit “ista sumis.” metuebam ne a lenonibus diceres. “Socrates disputabat isto modo.” bene hercule narras; nam istum doctum et sapientem virum fuisse memoriae traditum est. sed tamen quaero ex te, quoniam verbis inter nos contendimus, non pugnis: utrum nobis est quaerendum quid baioli atque operarii an quid homines doctissimi senserint? praesertim cum hac sententia non modo verior, sed ne utilior quidem hominum vitae reperiri ulla possit. quae vis est enim quae magis arceat homines ab inprobitate omni, quam si senserint nullum in delictis esse discrimen? aeque peccare se, si privatis ac si magistratibus manus adferant? quamcumque in domum stuprum intulerint, eandem esse labem lubidinis?\n\nSECTION 24\n\n“nihilne igitur interest”—nam hoc dicet aliquis—“patrem quis necet anne servum?” nuda ista si ponas, iudicare qualia sint non facile possim. patrem vita privare si per se scelus est, Saguntini, qui parentes suos liberos emori quam servos vivere maluerunt, parricidae fuerunt: ergo et parenti non numquam adimi vita sine scelere potest et servo saepe sine iniuria non potest. causa igitur haec, non natura distinguit, quae quoniam utro accessit, id fit propensius, si utroque adiuncta est, paria fiant necesse est.\n\nSECTION 25\n\nillud tamen interest, quod in servo necando, si id fit iniuria, semel peccatur, in patris vita violanda multa peccantur: violatur is qui procreavit, is qui aluit, is qui erudivit, is qui in sede ac domo atque in re publica conlocavit; multitudine peccatorum praestat eoque poena maiore dignus est. sed nos in vita non quae cuique peccato poena sit, sed quantum cuique liceat spectare debemus: quicquid non oportet scelus esse, quicquid non licet nefas putare debemus. etiamne in minimis rebus? etiam, si quidem rerum modum figere non possumus, animorum modum tenere possumus.\n\nSECTION 26\n\nhistrio si paulum se movit extra numerum aut si versus pronuntiatus est syllaba una brevior aut longior, exsibilatur, exploditur: in vita tu, quae omni gestu moderatior, omni versu aptior esse debet, in syllaba te peccasse dices? poetam non audio in nugis: in vitae societate audiam civem digitis peccata dimetientem sua? si vis, sane sint breviora, leviora qui possunt videri? cum quicquid peccatur perturbatione peccetur rationis atque ordinis, perturbata autem semel ratione et ordine nihil possit addi, quo magis peccari posse videatur.\n\n### Paradox 4\n\nParadoxon IV\n\nὅτι πᾶς ἄφρων μαίνεται\n\n[Omnis stultos insanire.]\n\nSECTION 27\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nego vero te non stultum, ut saepe, non inprobum, ut semper, sed dementem […]\n\n[…] rebus ad victum necessariis esse invictus […] potest. sapientis animus magnitudine consilii, tolerantia rerum humanarum, contemptione fortunae, virtutibus denique omnibus ut moenibus saeptus vincetur et expugnabitur, qui ne civitate quidem pelli potest? quae est enim civitas? omnisne conventus etiam ferorum et inmanium? omnisne etiam fugitivorum ac latronum congregata unum in locum multitude? certe negabis. non igitur erat illa tum civitas, cum leges in ea nihil valebant, cum iudicia iacebant, cum mos patrius occiderat, cum ferro pulsis magistratibus senatus nomen in re publica non erat; praedonum ille concursus et te duce latrocinium in foro constitutum et reliquiae coniurationis a Catilinae furiis ad tuum scelus furoremque conversae non civitas erat.\n\nSECTION 28\n\nitaque pulsus ego civitate non sum, quae nulla erat: accersitus in civitatem sum, cum esset in re publica consul, qui tum nullus fuerat, esset senatus, qui tum occiderat, esset consensus populi liber, esset iuris et aequitatis, quae vincla sunt civitatis, repetita memoria. ac vide quam ista tui latrocinii tela contempserim: iactam et inmissam a te nefariam in me iniuriam semper duxi; pervenisse ad me numquam putavi, nisi forte, cum parietes disturbabas aut cum tectis sceleratas faces inferebas, meorum aliquid ruere aut deflagrare arbitrabare:\n\nSECTION 29\n\nnihil neque meum est neque cuiusquam, quod auferri, quod eripi, quod amitti potest. si mihi eripuisses divinam animi mei conscientiam, meis curis, vigiliis, consiliis stare te invitissimo rem publicam, si huius aeterni beneficii inmortalem memoriam delevisses, multo etiam magis, si illam mentem, unde haec consilia manarunt, mihi eripuisses, tum ego accepisse me confiterer iniuriam; sed si haec nec fecisti nec facere potuisti, reditum mihi gloriosum iniuria tua dedit, non exitum calamitosum. ergo ego semper civis, et tum maxime, cum meam salutem senatus exteris nationibus, ⟨ut⟩ civis optumi, commendabat, tu ne nunc quidem, nisi forte idem hostis esse et civis potest. an tu civem ab hoste natura ac loco, non animo factisque distinguis?\n\nSECTION 30\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\ncaedem in foro fecisti, armatis latronibus templa tenuisti, privatorum domos, aedis sacras incendisti: cur hostis Spartacus, si tu civis? potes autem esse tu civis, propter quem aliquando civitas non fuit? et me tuo nomine appellas, cum omnes meo discessu exsulasse rem publicam putent? numquamne, homo amentissime, te circumspicies? numquam nec quid facias considerabis nec quid loquare? nescis exsilium scelerum esse poenam, meum illud iter ob praeclarissimas res a me gestas esse susceptum?\n\nSECTION 31\n\nomnes scelerati atque inpii, quorum tu te ducem esse profiteris, quos leges exsilio adfici volunt, exsules sunt, etiam si solum non mutarunt. an cum omnes te leges exsulem esse iubeant, ⟨non eris tu exsul? exsul non⟩ appelletur is, qui cum telo fuerit? ante senatum tua sica deprehensa est. qui hominem occiderit? plurimos occidisti. qui incendium fecerit? aedes Nympharum manu tua deflagravit. qui templa occupaverit? in foro castra posuisti.\n\nSECTION 32\n\nsed quid ego communis leges profero, quibus omnibus es exsul? familiarissimus tuus de te privilegium tulit, ut, si in opertum Bonae Deae accessisses, exsulares: at te id fecisse etiam gloriari soles. quo modo igitur tot legibus eiectus in exsilium nomen exsulis non perhorrescis? “Romae sum” inquit. et quidem in operto fuisti. non igitur ubi quisque erit, eius loci ius tenebit, si ibi eum legibus esse non oportebit.\n\n### Paradox 5\n\nParadoxon V\n\nὅτι μόνος ὁ σοφὸς ἐλεύθερος καὶ πᾶς ἄφρων δοῦλος\n\n[Omnis sapientis liberos esse et stultos omnis servos.]\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nlaudetur vero hic imperator aut etiam appelletur aut hoc nomine dignus putetur. quo modo aut cui tandem hic libero imperabit, qui non potest cupiditatibus suis imperare? refrenet primum libidines, spernat voluptates, iracundiam teneat, coerceat avaritiam, ceteras animi labis repellat; tum incipiat aliis imperare, cum ipse inprobissimis dominis, dedecori ac turpitudini, parere desierit: dum quidem iis oboediet, non modo imperator, sed liber habendus omnino non erit. praeclare enim est hoc usurpatum a doctissimis—quorum ego auctoritate non uterer, si mihi apud aliquos agrestis haec habenda esset oratio; cum vero apud prudentissimos loquar, quibus haec inaudita non sint, cur ego simulem me, si quid in his studiis operae posuerim, perdidisse?—dictum est igitur ab eruditissimis viris nisi sapientem liberum esse neminem.\n\nSECTION 34\n\nquid est enim libertas? potestas vivendi, ut velis. quis igitur vivit, ut volt, nisi qui recte vivit, qui gaudet officio, cui vivendi via considerata atque provisa est? qui ne legibus quidem propter metum paret, sed eas sequitur et colit, quod id salutare esse maxime iudicat; qui nihil dicit, nihil facit, nihil cogitat denique nisi lubenter ac libere; cuius omnia consilia resque omnes, quas gerit, ab ipso proficiscuntur eodemque referuntur, nec est ulla res, quae plus apud eum polleat quam ipsius voluntas atque iudicium; cui quidem etiam, quae vim habere maximam dicitur, Fortuna ipsa cedit, si, ut sapiens poeta dixit, “suis ea cuique fingitur moribus.” soli igitur hoc contingit sapienti, ut nihil faciat invitus, nihil dolens, nihil coactus.\n\nSECTION 35\n\nquod etsi ita esse pluribus verbis disserendum est, illud tamen et breve et confitendum est, nisi qui ita sit adfectus, esse liberum neminem. servi igitur omnes inprobi; nec hoc tam re est quam dictu inopinatum atque mirabile: non enim ita dicunt eos esse servos, ut mancipia, quae sunt dominorum facta nexo aut aliquo iure civili, sed, si servitus sit, sicut est, oboedientia fracti animi et abiecti et arbitrio carentis suo, quis neget omnis levis, omnis cupidos, omnis denique inprobos esse servos?\n\nSECTION 36\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nan ille mihi liber, cui mulier imperat? cui leges inponit, praescribit, iubet, vetat quod videtur? qui nihil imperanti negare potest, nihil recusare audet? poscit, dandum est; vocat, veniendum; eicit, abeundum; minatur, extimescendum. ego vero istum non modo servum, sed nequissimum servum, etiam si in amplissima familia natus sit, appellandum puto. atque in pari stultitia sunt, quos signa, quos tabulae, quos caelatum argentum, quos Corinthia opera, quos aedificia magnifica nimio opere delectant. “at sumus” inquit “principes civitatis.” vos vero ne conservorum quidem vestrorum principes estis;\n\nSECTION 37\n\nsed ut in magna familia sunt alii lautiores, ut sibi videntur, servi, sed tamen servi, ut atrienses, at qui tractant ista, qui tergent, qui ungunt, qui verrunt, qui spargunt, non honestissimum locum servitutis tenent, sic in civitate, qui se istarum rerum cupiditatibus dediderunt, ipsius servitutis locum paene infimum obtinent. “magna” inquit “bella gessi, magnis imperiis et provinciis praefui.” gere igitur animum laude dignum: Aetionis tabula te stupidum detinet aut signum aliquod Polycleti; mitto unde sustuleris, quo modo habeas: intuentem te, admirantem, clamores tollentem cum video, servum esse ineptiarum omnium iudico.\n\nSECTION 38\n\n“nonne igitur sunt illa festiva?” sunt; nam nos quoque oculos eruditos habemus. sed, obsecro te, ita venusta habeantur ista, non ut vincla virorum sint, sed ut oblectamenta puerorum. quid enim censes? si L. Mummius aliquem istorum videret matellionem Corinthium cupidissime tractantem, cum ipse totam Corinthum contempsisset, utrum illum civem excellentem an atriensem diligentem putaret? revivescat M’. Curius aut eorum aliquis, quorum in villa ac domo nihil splendidum, nihil ornatum fuit praeter ipsos, et videat aliquem summis populi beneficiis usum barbatulos mullos exceptantem de piscina et pertractantem et murenarum copia gloriantem, nonne hunc hominem ita servum iudicet, ut ne in familia quidem dignum maiore aliquo negotio putet?\n\nSECTION 39\n\nan eorum servitus dubia est, qui cupiditate peculii nullam condicionem recusant durissimae servitutis? hereditatis spes quid iniquitatis in serviendo non suscipit? quem nutum locupletis orbi senis non observat? loquitur ad voluntatem, quicquid denuntiatum est facit, adsectatur, adsidet, muneratur. quid horum est liberi?\n\nSECTION 40\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nquid denique servi non inertis? quid? iam illa cupiditas, quae videtur esse liberalior, honoris, imperii, provinciarum, quam dura est domina, quam imperiosa, quam vehemens! Cethego, homini non probatissimo, servire coegit eos, qui sibi esse amplissimi videbantur, munera mittere, noctu venire domum ad eum, precari, denique supplicare. quae servitus est, si haec libertas existimari potest? quid? cum cupiditatis dominatus excessit et alius est dominus exortus ex conscientia peccatorum, timor, quam est illa misera, quam dura servitus? adulescentibus paulo loquacioribus est serviendum; omnes, qui aliquid scire videntur, tamquam domini timentur; iudex vero quantum habet dominatum, quo timore nocentis adficiti an non est omnis metus servitus?\n\nSECTION 41\n\nquid valet igitur illa eloquentissimi viri, L. Crassi, copiosa magis quam sapiens oratio “eripite nos ex servitute”? quae est ista servitus tam claro homini tamque nobili? omnis animi debilitati et humilis et fracti timiditas servitus est. “nolite sinere nos cuiquam servire.” in libertatem vindicari volt? minime; quid enim adiungit? “nisi vobis universis.” dominum mutare, non liber esse volt. “quibus et possumus et debemus.” nos vero, si quidem animo excelso et alto et virtutibus exaggerato sumus, nec debemus nec possumus: tu posse te dicito, quoniam quidem potes, debere ne dixeris, quoniam nihil quisquam debet nisi quod est turpe non reddere. sed haec hactenus. ille videat, quo modo imperator esse possit, cum eum ne liberum quidem esse ratio et veritas ipsa convincat.\n\n### Paradox 6\n\nParadoxon VI\n\nὅτι μόνος ὁ σοφὸς πλούσιος\n\n[Quod solus sapiens dives.]\n\nSECTION 42\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nquae est ista in commemoranda pecunia tua tam insolens ostentatio? solusne tu dives? pro di inmortales! egone me audisse aliquid et didicisse non gaudeam? solusne dives? quid, si ne dives quidem? quid, si pauper etiam? quem enim intellegimus divitem aut hoc verbum in quo homine ponimus? opinor in eo, cui tanta possessio sit, ut ad liberaliter vivendum facile contentus sit, qui nihil quaerat, nihil adpetat, nihil optet amplius.\n\nSECTION 43\n\nanimus oportet tuus se iudicet divitem, non hominum sermo, neque possessiones tuae. nihil sibi deesse putat, nihil curat amplius, satiatus est aut contentus etiam pecunia: concedo, dives est. sin autem propter aviditatem pecuniae nullum quaestum turpem putas, cum isti ordini ne honestus quidem possit esse ullus; si cotidie fraudas, decipis, poscis, pacisceris, aufers, eripis, si socios spolias, aerarium expilas, si testamenta amicorum ne exspectas quidem atque ipse supponis, haec utrum abundantis an egentis signa sunt?\n\nSECTION 44\n\nanimus hominis dives, non arca appellari solet. quamvis ilia sit plena, dum te inanem videbo, divitem non putabo; etenim ex eo, quantum cuique satis est, metiuntur homines divitiarum modum. filiam quis habet, pecunia est opus; duas, maiore; pluris, maiore etiam; si, ut aiunt Danao, quinquaginta sint filiae, tot dotes magnam quaerunt pecuniam: quantum enim cuique opus est, ad id accommodatur, ut ante dixi, divitiarum modus. qui igitur non filias pluris, sed innumerabilis cupiditates habet, quae brevi tempore maximas copias exhaurire possint, hunc quo modo ego appellabo divitem, cum ipse egere se sentiat?\n\nSECTION 45\n\nmulti ex te audierunt cum diceres, neminem esse divitem, nisi qui exercitum alere posset suis fructibus, quod populus Romanus tantis vectigalibus iam pridem vix potest: ergo hoc proposito numquam eris dives ante, quam tibi ex tuis possessionibus tantum reficietur, ut eo tueri sex legiones et magna equitum ac peditum auxilia possis. iam fateris igitur non esse te divitem, cui tantum desit, ut expleas id quod exoptas. itaque istam paupertatem vel potius egestatem ac mendicitatem tuam numquam obscure tulisti.\n\nSECTION 46\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nnam ut iis, qui honeste rem quaerunt mercaturis faciendis, operis dandis, publicis sumendis, intellegimus opus esse quaesito, sic, qui videt domi tuae pariter accusatorum atque indicum consociatos greges, qui nocentis et pecuniosos reos eodem te actore corruptelam iudicii molientis, qui tuas mercedum pactiones in patrociniis, † intercidas pecuniarum in coitionibus candidatorum, dimissiones libertorum ad defaenerandas diripiendasque provincias, qui expulsiones vicinorum, qui latrocinia in agris, qui cum servis, cum libertis, cum clientibus societates, qui possessiones vacuas, qui proscriptiones locupletium, qui cladis municipiorum, qui illam Sullani temporis messem recordetur, qui testamenta subiecta, tot qui sublatos homines, qui denique omnia venalia, edictum, decretum, alienam suam sententiam, forum, domum, vocem, silentium: quis hunc non putet confiteri sibi quaesito opus esse? cui quaesito autem opus sit, quis umquam hunc vere dixerit divitem?\n\nSECTION 47\n\netenim divitiarum est fructus in copia, copiam autem declarat satietas rerum atque abundantia: quam tu quoniam numquam adsequere, numquam omnino es dives futurus. meam autem quoniam pecuniam contemnis, et recte—est enim ad volgi opinionem mediocris, ad tuam nulla, ad meam modica—, de me silebo, de re loquar.\n\nSECTION 48\n\nsi censenda nobis sit atque aestimanda res, utrum tandem pluris aestimemus pecuniam Pyrrhi, quam Fabricio dabat, an continentiam Fabricii, qui illam pecuniam repudiabat? utrum aurum Samnitium an responsum M’. Curii? hereditatem L. Pauli an liberalitatem Africani, qui eius hereditatis Q. Maximo fratri partem suam concessit? haec profecto, quae sunt summarum virtutum, pluris aestimanda sunt quam illa, quae sunt pecuniae. quis igitur, si quidem, ut quisque quod plurimi est possidet, ita divitissimus habendus est, dubitet quin in virtute divitiae sint? quoniam nulla possessio, nulla vis auri et argenti pluris quam virtus aestimanda est.\n\nSECTION 49\n\no di inmortales! non intellegunt homines quam magnum vectigal sit parsimonia. venio enim iam ad sumptuosos, relinquo istum quaestuosum. capit ille ex suis praediis sescena sestertia, ego centena ex meis; illi aurata tecta in villis et sola marmorea facienti et signa, tabulas, supellectilem et vestem infinite concupiscenti non modo ad sumptum ille est fructus, sed etiam ad faenus exiguus: ex meo tenui vectigali detractis sumptibus cupiditatis aliquid etiam redundabit. uter igitur est divitior, cui deest an cui superat? qui eget an qui abundat? cuius possessio quo est maior, eo plus requirit ad se tuendam, an quae suis se viribus sustinet?\n\nSECTION 50\n\nsed quid ego de me loquor, qui morum ac temporum vitio aliquantum etiam ipse fortasse in huius saeculi errore verser? M’. Manilius patrum nostrorum memoria, ne semper Curios et Luscinos loquamur, pauper tandem fuit? habuit enim aediculas in Carinis et fundum in Labicano. nos igitur divitiores, qui plura habemus? utinam quidem! sed non aestimatione census, verum victu atque cultu terminatur pecuniae modus.\n\nSECTION 51\n\nnon esse cupidum pecunia est, non esse emacem vectigal est: contentum vero suis rebus esse maximae sunt certissimaeque divitiae. etenim si isti callidi rerum aestimatores prata et areas quasdam magno aestimant, quod ei generi possessionum minime quasi noceri potest, quanti est aestimanda virtus, quae nec eripi nec subripi potest, neque naufragio neque incendio amittitur, nec tempestatum nec temporum perturbatione mutatur!\n\nSECTION 52\n\nqua praediti qui sunt, soli sunt divites. soli enim possident res et fructuosas et sempiternas solique, quod est proprium divitiarum, contenti sunt rebus suis, satis esse putant quod est, nihil adpetunt, nulla re egent, nihil sibi deesse sentiunt, nihil requirunt: inprobi autem et avari, quoniam incertas atque in casu positas possessiones habent et plus semper adpetunt nec eorum quisquam adhuc inventus est, cui quod haberet esset satis, non modo non copiosi ac divites, sed etiam inopes ac pauperes existinandi sunt.","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/cicero-paradoxa/original.txt"},"translations":[{"id":"trn_cicero_paradoxa_mouseia","translator":"Mouseia","kind":"curated","note":"Complete machine-assisted Musean translation directly from the Latin, with Latin-source model review. Baiter (1864); Perseus digital text, CC BY-SA 4.0.","text":"### Preface\n\nSECTION 1\n\nI have often noticed, Brutus, that when your uncle Cato delivered his opinion in the Senate, he would discuss weighty themes drawn from philosophy, far removed from the familiar business of the courts and public life, yet through his eloquence make them seem persuasive even to the people.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nThis is a greater achievement for him than for either you or me, because we draw more heavily on the philosophy that has fostered a wealth of eloquence and whose teachings do not differ greatly from popular opinion. Cato, however, in my judgment a consummate Stoic, both holds views that find little favor with the public and belongs to a school that pursues no flowers of rhetoric and gives its arguments no expansive treatment: it establishes its propositions through tiny questions, like pinpricks.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nYet nothing is so unbelievable that eloquence cannot make it persuasive, nothing so rough and unpolished that speech cannot lend it brilliance and, as it were, refinement. Thinking this, I ventured even further than the very man of whom I speak. For Cato generally confines himself to speaking as a Stoic, with the ornaments of oratory, about greatness of spirit, self-restraint, death, every excellence of virtue, the immortal gods, and love of country. I, as a diversion for you, have cast into the form of general rhetorical arguments those very doctrines that the Stoics can scarcely win acceptance for even in their lecture halls and hours of leisure.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nBecause these doctrines are startling and run counter to everyone’s opinion [and are even called “paradoxes” by the Stoics themselves], I wished to test whether they could be brought into the light [that is, into the Forum] and presented persuasively, or whether learned discourse was one thing and popular discourse quite another. I wrote these arguments all the more gladly because these so-called paradoxes seem to me thoroughly Socratic and supremely true.\n\nSECTION 5\n\nYou will therefore receive this little work, composed by lamplight during these nights that are now growing shorter, since the gift that cost me longer vigils has already appeared under your name. You will sample the kind of exercises I regularly practice when I transfer what the schools discuss as general propositions into our own oratorical manner of speaking. Yet I do not ask you to enter this work to my credit. It is not something that could be placed on the citadel, like that Minerva of Phidias, but it should at least be recognizable as a product of the same workshop.\n\n### Paradox 1\n\nParadox I\n\nOnly what is morally honorable is good.\n\nSECTION 6\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nI fear that some of you may think this discourse has been drawn from the discussions of the followers of Socrates rather than from my own convictions. Nevertheless, I shall say what I believe, and say it more briefly than so great a subject allows. By Hercules, I have never counted these people’s money, magnificent houses, wealth, power, or the pleasures to which they are so tightly bound among things good or worth pursuing. For I saw that those who had these things in abundance still craved most keenly the very things they possessed in plenty. The thirst of desire is never quenched or satisfied; and those who possess these things are tormented not only by the longing to increase them but also by the fear of losing them.\n\nSECTION 7\n\nHere I often find myself questioning the wisdom of our ancestors, those men of such exemplary self-restraint. They thought these frail and changeable things [the components of wealth] should be called “goods,” though in practice and conduct their judgment was very different. Can anything good be harmful to anyone? Or can someone possess good things in abundance without being good himself? Yet we see that all these possessions are such that wicked people have them and good people lack them.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nSo let anyone laugh who wishes: sound reasoning will nevertheless carry more weight with me than popular opinion. I shall never say that someone has lost his goods if he has lost livestock or household furnishings. And I shall often praise that wise man—Bias, I believe—who is numbered among the Seven. When the enemy captured his native Priene and the others fled carrying away many of their possessions, someone urged him to do the same. “That is precisely what I am doing,” he said, “for everything that is mine I carry with me.”\n\nSECTION 9\n\nHe did not even regard as his own these playthings of fortune that we go so far as to call goods. “What, then,” someone will ask, “is good?” If an action done rightly, honorably, and virtuously is truly said to be done well, then only what is right, honorable, and virtuous is, in my judgment, good.\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nBut these arguments may seem rather tiresome when pursued at too leisurely a pace. The lives and deeds of the greatest men have cast a clear light on them [these matters that seem to be discussed in language more subtle than necessary]. For I ask you: do the men who left us this republic, so splendidly founded, seem to have given any thought to silver as an object of greed, to pleasant surroundings for their enjoyment, to furnishings for luxurious living, or to banquets for pleasure? Set each one [of the kings] before your eyes.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nWould you begin with Romulus? Or, after the establishment of liberty, with the very men who established it? By what steps, I ask, did Romulus ascend to heaven? By what these people call goods, or by his achievements and virtues? Again, do we suppose that Numa Pompilius’s sacrificial ladles and little earthenware vessels were less pleasing to the immortal gods than the fern-embossed bowls of the Salian priests? I pass over the remaining kings: apart from Tarquin the Proud, they all stand on an equal footing.\n\nSECTION 12\n\nIf someone were to ask Brutus what he had sought in freeing his country, and likewise ask his fellow conspirators what they had aimed at and pursued, would any one of them seem to have had pleasure, riches, or indeed anything whatever as his purpose except the duty of a brave and great-hearted man? What drove Gaius Mucius to attempt to kill Porsenna, without any hope of saving himself? What power held Cocles alone on the bridge against the whole enemy army? What sent Decius the father, and Decius the son, into the enemy’s armed ranks after solemnly devoting their lives to death? What end did Gaius Fabricius’s self-restraint pursue, or Manius Curius’s frugal way of life? What of those two bulwarks of the Punic War, Gnaeus and Publius Scipio, who believed they must bar the Carthaginian advance with their own bodies? What of the elder Africanus? What of the younger? What of Cato, whose lifetime fell between theirs? What of countless others—for examples from our own country abound? Did they ever think that anything in life was worth seeking except what appeared praiseworthy and glorious?\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nLet those who mock this discourse and its doctrine come forward, then, and judge for themselves whether they would rather resemble one of those men whose marble houses gleam with ivory and gold, who abound in statues, paintings, embossed gold and silver, and Corinthian works of art, or Gaius Fabricius, who possessed none of these things and wished to possess none.\n\nSECTION 14\n\nAs for these possessions, which pass now to one person, now to another, people can generally be brought without difficulty to deny that they are good things. But they cling tenaciously to this claim and defend it with care: pleasure is the highest good. To my ears, that is the language of beasts, not human beings. When a god—or nature, the mother, so to speak, of all things—has given you a mind, than which nothing is more excellent or more divine, will you so debase and degrade yourself as to suppose there is no difference between you and some four-footed animal? Can anything be good that does not make its possessor better?\n\nSECTION 15\n\nFor the greater a person’s share in goodness, the more praiseworthy that person is; nor is there any good in which its possessor cannot honorably take pride. But which of these qualities belongs to pleasure? Does it make a man better or more praiseworthy? Does anyone exalt himself by boasting and proclaiming that he has enjoyed pleasures? Yet if pleasure, defended by so many advocates, is not to be counted among good things—and the greater it is, the more it dislodges the mind from its proper place and balance—then surely to live well and happily is nothing other than to live honorably and rightly.\n\n### Paradox 2\n\nParadox II\n\nVirtue is sufficient for happiness.\n\n[Whoever possesses virtue lacks nothing needed for a happy life.]\n\nSECTION 16\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nYet I have never considered Marcus Regulus afflicted, unfortunate, or miserable. It was not his greatness of spirit that the Carthaginians tortured, nor his dignity, his trustworthiness, his steadfastness, or any virtue of his; nor, finally, his soul itself. Protected and attended by so many virtues, his soul certainly could not be taken captive when his body was. And we ourselves saw Gaius Marius, who in prosperity seemed to me one among the fortunate, but in adversity one among the greatest of men—and no mortal can enjoy greater happiness than that.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nYou do not know, madman, you do not know how great the power of virtue is. You merely use its name; you have no understanding of its strength. No one can fail to be supremely happy whose whole being rests upon himself and who places everything that is his in himself alone. But someone whose every hope, plan, and thought depends upon fortune can have nothing certain, nothing he can confidently expect to remain his for a single day. Find such a man, if you can, and frighten him with those threats of death or exile. As for me, whatever may befall me in so ungrateful a state will find me not even objecting, much less resisting. For what have I labored for, what have I accomplished, over what have my anxious thoughts kept watch, if I have produced and achieved nothing that places me beyond the power of fortune’s recklessness or my enemies’ injustice to shake? Do you threaten me with death,\n\nSECTION 18\n\nso that I must leave the company of human beings altogether, or with exile, so that I must leave the company of the wicked? Death is terrible to those for whom everything is extinguished along with life, not to those whose glory cannot die. Exile is terrible to those whose dwelling place is confined, as it were, within fixed boundaries, not to those who regard the whole world as a single city. It is you whom every misery, every affliction oppresses—you who think yourself happy and flourishing. Your desires torment you. You are tortured day and night: what you have is not enough, and you fear that even that will not last. Awareness of your crimes goads you; fear of the courts and the laws drains your spirit. Wherever you look, your own wrongdoings confront you like Furies and will not let you draw an untroubled breath.\n\nSECTION 19\n\nTherefore, just as no wicked, foolish, or cowardly person can fare well, so no good, wise, and courageous man can be miserable. Surely, if a man’s virtue and character deserve praise, his life deserves praise as well. Nor can a life deserving praise be a life to shun; yet it would be one to shun if it were miserable. We should therefore regard whatever deserves praise as also happy, flourishing, and worthy of desire.\n\n### Paradox 3\n\nParadox III\n\nWrong actions are equal, and so are right actions.\n\nSECTION 20\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n“The matter is small,” someone says. But the fault is great. Wrongdoing must be measured not by the outcome of events but by the faults of human beings. The thing involved in a wrong may be greater or smaller in one case than another; the wrongdoing itself, whichever way you turn, is one and the same. Whether a helmsman wrecks a ship loaded with gold or one loaded with straw makes a considerable difference to the cargo, but none to the helmsman’s incompetence. Lust has led a man astray with an obscure woman: the suffering touches fewer people than if he had violated a well-born maiden of noble family. Yet he has done no less wrong, if doing wrong is like crossing a boundary. Once you have crossed it, the fault has been committed; how far you proceed after crossing does nothing to increase the fault of crossing itself. Certainly no one is permitted to do wrong. And what is not permitted is condemned on this ground alone: that it is shown to be impermissible. If this can never be greater or smaller, since the wrong consists in its not being permitted—a condition always one and the same—then the wrong actions arising from it must be equal.\n\nSECTION 21\n\nBut if the virtues are equal to one another, the vices must also be equal. And it is very easy to see that the virtues are equal: no one can become better than a good man, more self-controlled than a self-controlled man, braver than a brave man, or wiser than a wise man. Would you call someone good if, with no witness present, he returned ten pounds of gold entrusted to him, though he could have pocketed it with impunity, but would not do the same with ten thousand pounds? Or would you call someone self-controlled who restrained one desire but gave another free rein?\n\nSECTION 22\n\nVirtue is a single, enduring consistency in harmony with reason. Nothing can be added to make it more fully virtue; nothing can be taken away while leaving it the name of virtue. For if good actions are right actions, and nothing is more right than right, then certainly nothing can be found better than good. It follows that the vices too are equal, if distortions of the soul are rightly called vices. Moreover, since the virtues are equal, right actions, because they proceed from virtues, must be equal; likewise, wrong actions, because they flow from vices, must necessarily be equal.\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n“You get these ideas from philosophers,” someone says. I was afraid you would say from pimps. “Socrates used to argue that way.” By Hercules, that is welcome news! For tradition tells us that he was a learned and wise man. Still, let me ask you, since we are contending with words, not fists: should we inquire what porters and laborers have thought, or what the most learned men have thought? Especially when no view can be found that is truer than this one, or even more useful to human life. For what force could more effectively restrain people from every kind of wickedness than their recognizing that there is no distinction among offenses? That they do equal wrong whether they assault private citizens or magistrates? That whatever household they defile with sexual misconduct, the stain of lust is the same?\n\nSECTION 24\n\n“Does it make no difference, then”—for someone will say this—“whether a man kills his father or a slave?” If you present the acts stripped of their circumstances, I cannot readily judge their character. If depriving a father of life is a crime in itself, then the Saguntines, who preferred that their parents die free rather than live as slaves, were murderers of their parents. Thus a parent can sometimes be deprived of life without a crime, while a slave often cannot be deprived of life without injustice. It is the circumstances, then, not the nature of the act, that make the distinction. Whichever act they attach to weighs more heavily; if they attach to both, the acts must be equal.\n\nSECTION 25\n\nThere is, however, this difference: in killing a slave, if it is done unjustly, a man commits one wrong; in attacking his father’s life, he commits many. He wrongs the man who brought him into the world, the man who nourished him, the man who educated him, the man who established him in a home, a household, and the commonwealth. His offense exceeds the other in the number of wrongs and therefore deserves a greater punishment. Yet in life we should consider not what punishment belongs to each offense, but how much license anyone has to commit it. Whatever ought not to be done we must regard as criminal; whatever is not permitted, as an outrage against what is sacred. Even in the smallest matters? Yes, for even if we cannot set a limit to the scale of events, we can keep our minds within bounds.\n\nSECTION 26\n\nIf an actor moves even slightly out of rhythm, or a line is spoken one syllable too short or too long, he is hissed and driven from the stage. And in life, which ought to be more measured than any gesture, more harmonious than any verse, will you say that your error amounted to a syllable? I will not hear such a plea from a poet over mere trifles; shall I hear it from a citizen in our common life, counting out his offenses on his fingers? Let them be shorter, if you like; how can they seem lighter? Every wrong is committed through a disruption of reason and order; and once reason and order have been disrupted, nothing can be added that would seem to make the wrongdoing greater.\n\n### Paradox 4\n\nParadox IV\n\nEvery fool is mad\n\n[All fools are insane.]\n\nSECTION 27\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nBut I consider you not foolish, as I often have, nor wicked, as I always have, but mad […]\n\n[…] can remain unconquered in matters essential to life […]. Will the wise man’s mind, fortified as though by walls with greatness of judgment, endurance of human misfortunes, contempt for fortune, and, in short, every virtue, be conquered and taken by storm—a man who cannot even be driven from his country? For what is a civil community? Is it every gathering, even of savage and brutal men? Is it any crowd of runaway slaves and robbers collected in one place? Surely you will say no. Then there was no civil community at that time, when its laws had no force, when its courts lay prostrate, when ancestral custom had perished, when the magistrates had been driven out by the sword and the senate no longer had so much as a name in the republic. That gathering of plunderers, that banditry established in the Forum under your leadership, those remnants of the conspiracy diverted from Catiline’s frenzy to your own criminal madness—that was no civil community.\n\nSECTION 28\n\nAnd so I was not driven from a community that did not exist. I was summoned back into a civil community when the republic had a consul, where before there had been none; when it had a senate, which before had perished; when the people could freely express their agreement; when respect for law and justice, the bonds of a civil community, had been restored. And see how thoroughly I despised those weapons of your banditry. I always held that you had launched and hurled a monstrous wrong against me; I never thought it had reached me. Unless perhaps, when you were tearing down walls or setting criminal torches to roofs, you imagined that something belonging to me was collapsing or burning.\n\nSECTION 29\n\nNothing belongs to me—or to anyone—that can be carried off, snatched away, or lost. If you had wrested from me my soul’s divine certainty that the republic stands, despite your bitter opposition, through my care, my sleepless vigilance, and my counsels; if you had erased the undying memory of this everlasting service; still more, if you had wrested from me the mind from which those counsels flowed—then I would admit that I had suffered an injury. But if you neither did nor could do these things, your injustice gave me a glorious return, not a disastrous departure. I was therefore always a citizen, and never more so than when the senate entrusted my safety to foreign nations ⟨as⟩ that of a citizen of the highest worth. You are not a citizen even now—unless perhaps the same man can be both enemy and citizen. Or do you distinguish citizen from enemy by birth and place, rather than by spirit and deeds?\n\nSECTION 30\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nYou committed slaughter in the Forum; you occupied temples with armed bandits; you burned private homes and sacred buildings. Why was Spartacus an enemy, if you are a citizen? Can you be a citizen, when because of you there was once no civil community? And do you call me by the name that belongs to you, when everyone thinks that the republic itself went into exile at my departure? Will you never look at yourself, you utterly senseless man? Will you never consider either what you do or what you say? Do you not know that exile is a punishment for crimes, while that journey of mine was undertaken because of my most illustrious achievements?\n\nSECTION 31\n\nAll criminals and impious men, whose leader you profess to be, whom the laws intend to punish with exile, are exiles even if they have not changed their place of residence. When all the laws command that you be an exile, ⟨will you not be an exile? Should not “exile”⟩ be the name for a man who has carried a weapon? Your dagger was discovered before the senate. For someone who has killed a man? You have killed very many. For someone who has committed arson? The temple of the Nymphs burned down at your hand. For someone who has occupied temples? You pitched your camp in the Forum.\n\nSECTION 32\n\nBut why do I cite the general laws, under every one of which you are an exile? Your closest friend carried a special law directed at you, providing for your exile if you had entered the inner sanctuary of the Good Goddess. Yet you habitually boast that you did precisely that. How, then, after so many laws have driven you into exile, do you not shudder at the name of exile? “I am in Rome,” he says. Indeed, and you were in the inner sanctuary too. A man does not therefore possess the rights of whatever place he happens to be in, if the laws forbid his presence there.\n\n### Paradox 5\n\nParadox V\n\nOnly the wise man is free, and every fool is a slave\n\n[All wise men are free, and all fools are slaves.]\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nLet this man, then, be praised as a commander—or even called one, or thought worthy of the name! How, or over what free man, will someone exercise command when he cannot command his own desires? Let him first rein in his lusts, scorn pleasures, restrain his anger, curb his greed, and drive away the other corruptions of his mind. Then let him begin commanding others, once he himself has ceased obeying the most wicked masters: dishonor and moral baseness. As long as he obeys them, he must not be considered a commander, or even a free man at all. For the most learned thinkers have admirably maintained this principle. I would not appeal to their authority if I had to address some uncultivated audience; but since I am speaking before men of sound judgment, to whom these ideas are not unfamiliar, why should I pretend that any labor I have devoted to these studies has been wasted? These most learned men have declared, then, that no one but the wise man is free.\n\nSECTION 34\n\nFor what is freedom? The power to live as you wish. Who, then, lives as he wishes except the man who lives rightly, who takes joy in duty, whose path through life has been considered and planned? A man who obeys even the laws not out of fear, but follows and honors them because he judges this the surest course to his well-being; who says nothing, does nothing, and, in short, thinks nothing except willingly and freely; whose every purpose and every undertaking originates in himself and is directed back to himself, and for whom nothing carries greater weight than his own will and judgment. Even Fortune herself, who is said to wield the greatest power, yields to him, if, as a wise poet said, “She is fashioned for each by his own character.” Only the wise man, then, enjoys the privilege of doing nothing unwillingly, nothing in distress, nothing under compulsion.\n\nSECTION 35\n\nAlthough establishing this requires a fuller discussion, the following point is brief and must be admitted: no one is free unless he is disposed in this way. All wicked men, therefore, are slaves. This is less startling and paradoxical in substance than in expression. For these thinkers do not call them slaves in the sense of human property that has come to belong to masters through a debt-bond or some other provision of civil law. But if slavery is, as indeed it is, the obedience of a broken and abased spirit that has no will of its own, who can deny that all the fickle, all the covetous, and, in short, all the wicked are slaves?\n\nSECTION 36\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nAm I to call a man free when a woman commands him? When she imposes laws on him, prescribes his conduct, orders and forbids whatever she pleases? When he can deny none of her commands and dares refuse nothing? She demands: he must give. She calls: he must come. She throws him out: he must go. She threatens: he must tremble. I think that man must be called not merely a slave but a thoroughly worthless slave, even if he was born into the most distinguished family. Equally foolish are those who take excessive delight in statues, paintings, chased silver, Corinthian works of art, or magnificent buildings. “But we,” someone says, “are the leading men of the state.” You are not even the leading men among your fellow slaves.\n\nSECTION 37\n\nIn a great household, some slaves consider themselves more refined—though slaves they remain—such as the hall stewards; while those who handle these objects, who polish, oil, sweep, and sprinkle, do not occupy the most honorable station in slavery. So, in the state, those who have surrendered themselves to a craving for such things occupy almost the lowest station of slavery itself. “I have waged great wars,” he says, “and held great commands and governed great provinces.” Then show a spirit worthy of praise. A painting by Aetion holds you spellbound, or some statue by Polyclitus. I pass over where you took it from and how it came into your possession. When I see you gazing, marveling, and crying out in admiration, I judge you a slave to every sort of foolishness.\n\nSECTION 38\n\n“Are those things not delightful, then?” They are; we too have educated eyes. But I beg you, let their charm be regarded not as a chain for grown men, but as an amusement for children. What do you suppose? If Lucius Mummius, who himself had scorned all Corinth, saw one of these men fondling a Corinthian chamber pot with the utmost longing, would he think him an outstanding citizen or an attentive hall steward? Let Manius Curius come back to life, or any of those men whose country houses and homes contained nothing splendid, nothing adorned, except themselves. Suppose he saw someone who had received the highest honors the people could bestow, scooping little bearded mullets from a fishpond and handling them, and boasting of his abundance of moray eels. Would he not judge this man so thoroughly a slave that he would think him unworthy of any substantial responsibility even within a household of slaves?\n\nSECTION 39\n\nCan there be any doubt about the slavery of those who, in their desire for money of their own, refuse none of the terms of the harshest servitude? What indignity of service will the hope of an inheritance not accept? What nod of a rich, childless old man does it fail to watch? It speaks to please him, does whatever is ordered, follows at his heels, sits at his side, gives him presents. Which of these actions belongs to a free man?\n\nSECTION 40\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nWhich, indeed, is the mark even of a slave who is not worthless? And what of that desire which seems more suited to a free man—the desire for public office, military commands, and provinces? What a harsh mistress it is, how imperious, how violent! It forced men who considered themselves the most distinguished to serve Cethegus, a man of no great virtue: to send him gifts, to visit his house at night, to entreat him, and finally to beg. What is slavery, if this can be considered freedom? And when the reign of desire has passed and another master has arisen from the consciousness of wrongdoing—fear—how wretched, how harsh that slavery is! Some rather talkative young men must be served; everyone who appears to know anything is feared as a master. And the judge—what mastery he exercises, what terror he strikes into the guilty! Is not every fear a form of slavery?\n\nSECTION 41\n\nWhat force, then, is there in that speech of Lucius Crassus, a man of supreme eloquence—a speech more fluent than wise: “Rescue us from slavery”? What is this slavery that besets so illustrious and noble a man? Every timidity of a weakened, abject, and broken spirit is slavery. “Do not allow us to serve anyone.” Does he wish to be set free? Not at all. For what does he add? “Except all of you together.” He wishes to change masters, not to be free. “Whom we both can and ought to serve.” But we, if indeed our spirit is lofty and exalted and richly endowed with virtues, neither ought nor can. Say that you can, since indeed you can; do not say that you ought, since no one owes anything except what it would be dishonorable not to render. But enough of this. Let that man consider how he can be a commander, when reason and truth themselves prove that he is not even free.\n\n### Paradox 6\n\nParadox VI\n\nThat only the wise man is rich\n\n[That only the wise man is rich.]\n\nSECTION 42\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nWhat is this outrageous display you make whenever you mention your money? Are you alone rich? Immortal gods! Should I not rejoice that I have listened and learned something? Are you alone rich? What if you are not even rich? What if you are actually poor? For whom do we understand to be rich? To what sort of man do we apply this word? To someone, I imagine, whose possessions are sufficient for him to live well and be readily content, who seeks nothing, pursues nothing, wishes for nothing more.\n\nSECTION 43\n\nYour own mind must judge itself rich—not other people’s talk, nor your possessions. It thinks it lacks nothing, cares for nothing more, has its fill of money or is at least content with it: I grant that such a man is rich. But if your hunger for money makes you think no profit shameful, although for a man of your rank even honorable profit is out of bounds; if every day you cheat, deceive, demand, bargain, take away, seize; if you plunder our allies and pillage the treasury; if you do not even wait for your friends’ wills but forge them yourself—are these signs of abundance or of need?\n\nSECTION 44\n\nIt is a man’s mind, not his strongbox, that we ordinarily call rich. However full that box may be, as long as I see you empty, I shall not consider you rich. For people measure wealth by how much is enough for each person. A man has one daughter: he needs money. Two daughters: more money. More daughters: still more. If he has fifty daughters, as Danaus is said to have had, so many dowries require a great fortune. For, as I said before, the measure of wealth is adjusted to the amount each person needs. How, then, am I to call a man rich who has not many daughters but innumerable desires, capable of draining the greatest resources in a short time, when he himself feels that he is in need?\n\nSECTION 45\n\nMany have heard you say that no one is rich unless he can maintain an army from his own income—something the Roman people, with all their revenues, have long been scarcely able to do. With that as your standard, then, you will never be rich until your estates yield enough to maintain six legions and large auxiliary forces of cavalry and infantry. You therefore admit already that you are not rich, since you lack so much of what would fulfill your wishes. And you have never made any secret of that poverty of yours—or rather, that destitution and beggary.\n\nSECTION 46\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nFor just as we understand that people who earn money honorably through trade, labor, or public contracts need an income, so consider anyone who sees the bands of accusers and informers joined together in your house; who sees wealthy, guilty defendants plotting to corrupt a trial, with you again directing the affair; who sees your bargains over fees for legal advocacy, † your cuts of the money in alliances between candidates, your dispatching of freedmen to drain the provinces through moneylending and plunder; anyone who recalls the expulsion of neighbors, the robberies in the countryside, your partnerships with slaves, freedmen, and clients, the ownerless estates, the proscription of the wealthy, the devastation of towns, that harvest in Sulla’s day, the forged wills, the many men put out of the way; anyone who recalls, finally, that everything was for sale—an edict, a decree, another man’s verdict or your own, the Forum, your house, your voice, your silence. Who would not think that such a man admits his need for income? And who has ever truly called a man rich when he still needs to acquire more?\n\nSECTION 47\n\nFor the benefit of wealth lies in plenty, and plenty is shown by having enough and more than enough. Since you will never attain that, you will never be rich at all. But since you despise my means—and rightly, for in common estimation they are modest, in yours nonexistent, and in mine sufficient—I shall say nothing about myself and speak instead about the question.\n\nSECTION 48\n\nIf we must assess and appraise the matter, which should we value more highly: the money Pyrrhus offered Fabricius, or the self-restraint with which Fabricius refused it? The gold of the Samnites, or the answer of Manius Curius? The inheritance of Lucius Paullus, or the generosity of Africanus, who yielded his own share of that inheritance to his brother Quintus Maximus? Surely these examples of the highest virtues must be valued above those things that consist in money. If a man must be considered richest according to his possession of what has the greatest worth, who could doubt that riches lie in virtue? For no estate, no quantity of gold and silver, should be valued more highly than virtue.\n\nSECTION 49\n\nImmortal gods! People do not understand how great an income thrift provides. For I turn now to the extravagant and leave that money-grubber behind. He receives six hundred thousand sesterces from his estates, I one hundred thousand from mine. He installs gilded ceilings and marble floors in his villas and covets statues, paintings, furnishings, and clothing without limit: that income is too little not only for his expenses but even for the interest he owes. From my modest revenue, after the expenses of my desires have been deducted, there will still be something left over. Which of us, then, is richer: the man who has too little, or the man who has something to spare? The man in need, or the man with abundance? The man whose estate requires more for its maintenance the larger it becomes, or the man whose estate supports itself from its own resources?\n\nSECTION 50\n\nBut why speak of myself? Through the faults of our habits and our times, perhaps I too share to some extent in the delusion of this age. To avoid always speaking of men like Curius and Luscinus, was Manius Manilius, within our fathers’ memory, really poor? He had a little house in the Carinae and a farm in the Labican territory. Are we therefore richer because we have more? If only we were! But the measure of wealth is determined not by a property assessment, but by one’s manner of living and standard of comfort.\n\nSECTION 51\n\nTo be free of greed is money; to be free of the urge to buy is income. But to be content with what one has is the greatest and surest wealth. Indeed, if those shrewd appraisers value meadows and certain building lots highly because property of that kind is, so to speak, almost immune to harm, how highly should we value virtue? It can neither be seized nor stolen, neither lost in shipwreck nor destroyed by fire; neither the turbulence of storms nor the upheavals of the times can alter it!\n\nSECTION 52\n\nOnly those endowed with virtue are rich. They alone possess things both fruitful and everlasting; they alone have what is distinctive of wealth: they are content with their possessions. They think what they have is enough; they pursue nothing, need nothing, feel that nothing is missing, ask for nothing more. But the wicked and the greedy, since their possessions are uncertain and subject to chance, since they always pursue more, and since not one of them has yet been found for whom what he had was enough, must be considered not merely lacking in abundance and riches, but destitute and poor.","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/cicero-paradoxa/translations/trn_cicero_paradoxa_mouseia.txt"},{"id":"trn_cicero_paradoxa_plain","translator":"Mouseia","kind":"plain","note":"Complete machine-assisted Plain English translation, independently made directly from the Latin, with Latin-source model review. Baiter (1864); Perseus digital text, CC BY-SA 4.0.","text":"### Preface\n\nSECTION 1\n\nBrutus, I've often watched your uncle Cato give his opinion in the Senate. He takes up serious points of philosophy that have little to do with our usual courtroom arguments or public business. Yet he speaks so well that even ordinary people find those points reasonable.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nThat's harder for him than it is for you or me. The philosophy we mostly follow has given rise to a full, expressive style of speaking. Its positions aren't very different from what people generally believe. Cato, on the other hand, is a thorough Stoic, as I see it. He believes things that don't appeal much to the public. His school doesn't aim at elegant language or spell out its arguments at length. It establishes a point with tiny questions, rather like needle pricks.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nStill, an argument can make the most unbelievable claim seem reasonable. Language can polish and brighten even the roughest, least cultivated material. That was my thinking when I went further than Cato himself. He usually speaks as a Stoic, adding the resources of public speaking, only about courage of spirit, restraint, death, all the merits of virtue, the immortal gods, and devotion to one's country. For your amusement, I've taken the very claims the Stoics struggle to establish even in their classrooms and leisure hours and made them subjects for general arguments.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nThese claims surprise people and contradict what everyone believes [the Stoics themselves even call them “paradoxes”]. I wanted to see whether I could bring them out into public view [in other words, into the Forum] and argue for them convincingly. Or is addressing educated people quite different from addressing the public? I was particularly glad to write these arguments because I find these so-called paradoxes very much in Socrates' spirit, and truer by far than other views.\n\nSECTION 5\n\nSo here's a small piece of work for you, done by lamplight in these nights that have already grown shorter. The gift that took much longer nights of work has already appeared with your name on it. This will give you a taste of my usual exercises: I take what the schools discuss as general questions and put it into the kind of language we use in public speaking. But I'm not asking you to enter this on the credit side of my account. It's no Minerva by Phidias to be set up on the citadel. You should, however, be able to tell that it came out of the same workshop.\n\n### Paradox 1\n\nParadox I\n\nNothing is good except what is morally right.\n\nSECTION 6\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nSome of you may think I'm borrowing this speech from the debates of Socrates' followers instead of expressing what I believe myself. I'm worried about that. All the same, I'll tell you my view, in fewer words than this great subject really needs. By Hercules, I've never thought we should count those people's cash, grand houses, resources, commands, or the pleasures that have such a grip on them as good things or things worth wanting. I could see that, even with all these things pouring in, they were still hungry for exactly what they had so much of. Greed's thirst can never be filled or put to rest. People who own these things suffer from two torments: wanting to add to them and being afraid they'll lose them.\n\nSECTION 7\n\nHere I often wonder how wise our ancestors were, despite their remarkable restraint. They decided to use the word “goods” for these weak, unstable things [the parts of a fortune]. Yet their actual behavior showed that they judged them very differently. Could something good harm a person? Could someone be surrounded by good things and not be good himself? We can see that every one of these possessions turns up in bad people's hands and is missing from good people's lives.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nLaugh if you want. I'll still give a sound argument more weight than what the crowd thinks. When a man loses his animals or his household belongings, I'll never say he has lost what is good. And I'll often speak well of that wise man, Bias, I think, one of the Seven. The enemy took his city, Priene. Everyone else ran away carrying plenty of their belongings, and someone told him to do the same. “I already am,” he answered. “I carry everything I own with me.”\n\nSECTION 9\n\nHe didn't even count those toys of fortune as his own, although we go so far as to call them good. Someone will ask, “Well, what is good?” If it's true that we call an action well done when it's done rightly, honorably, and with virtue, my view is that nothing but right, honorable, virtuous conduct is good.\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nArgue these points too slowly and they can become tiresome. The way the greatest men lived and acted has made the points clear [points that seem to be argued in language more subtle than it needs to be]. Let me put a question to you. The men who founded our republic so well and handed it down to us—do you think they were dreaming of silver to satisfy greed, beautiful surroundings to enjoy, household luxuries to indulge themselves, or feasts to give them pleasure? Bring each man [among the kings] to mind.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nShall we start with Romulus? Or, once the community was free, with the men who freed it? What were the steps that took Romulus up to heaven? Those things that these people label good? Or what he did and the virtues he showed? Consider Numa Pompilius too. Do we think the gods liked his sacrificial cups and little earthenware jars less than the fern-patterned bowls belonging to the Salian priests? I'll pass over the other kings. Apart from Tarquin the Proud, they all stand on the same level.\n\nSECTION 12\n\nAsk Brutus what he was doing when he freed his country. Ask the others who joined him what they had in view and what they were going after. Would you find even one who seemed to have pleasure, wealth, or anything else at all as his goal, rather than doing what a brave, great man ought to do? What made Gaius Mucius set out to kill Porsenna when he had no chance of coming back alive? What kept Cocles on the bridge by himself against every force the enemy had? What sent the elder Decius, and then his son, into the enemy's armed ranks after each had pledged his own life to death? What was the aim of Gaius Fabricius's restraint or Manius Curius's plain diet? Think of Gnaeus and Publius Scipio, the two defenders in the Punic War. They believed they had to put their own bodies in the way of the Carthaginians' advance. Think of the older Africanus and the younger one, and of Cato, whose life came between theirs. Think of countless more—we have plenty of examples at home. Did they imagine they should want anything from life apart from what seemed worthy of praise and distinction?\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nThen let the people who mock this argument and its conclusion come forward and decide for themselves. Would they rather be like one of those men with marble houses shining with ivory and gold, with statues and paintings everywhere, decorated gold and silver, and Corinthian works? Or like Gaius Fabricius, who didn't have any of those things and didn't want them?\n\nSECTION 14\n\nIt's usually easy enough to get people to admit that these possessions, which keep changing hands, aren't good things. But there's one position they defend stubbornly and carefully: pleasure is the greatest good. That sounds to me like an animal speaking, not a person. God, or nature—what you might call the mother of everything—gave you a mind, and nothing is more valuable or divine. Will you drag yourself down so far that you see no difference between yourself and a four-legged creature? How can a thing be good if having it doesn't improve you?\n\nSECTION 15\n\nThe more goodness someone has, the more praise he deserves. Anything genuinely good allows the person who has it to take honorable pride in it. Does pleasure meet either test? Does it improve a man or earn him more praise? Does anyone make much of himself by boasting and proclaiming how much pleasure he's had? Pleasure has a huge number of advocates. But if even that doesn't belong among good things—and the more intense it is, the further it knocks the mind off balance—then living a good, happy life can only mean living rightly and honorably.\n\n### Paradox 2\n\nParadox II\n\nVirtue by itself provides happiness.\n\n[Having virtue means having everything needed to live happily.]\n\nSECTION 16\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nI've never regarded Marcus Regulus as a wretched, unlucky, or unhappy man. When the Carthaginians tortured him, they weren't torturing his great spirit, his dignity, his loyalty, his firmness, or any of his virtues. They weren't torturing his very soul. With all those virtues guarding it and attending it, his soul couldn't possibly be taken prisoner along with his body. We also saw Gaius Marius. In good times I thought him one of the lucky ones; in bad times, one of the greatest men. There's no greater happiness available to a mortal.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nYou madman, you have no idea—no idea—what strength virtue has. You use its name without knowing what it can do. A person who draws all his support from himself and keeps everything that is his within himself cannot help being utterly happy. But if chance determines all a person's hopes, calculations, and thoughts, he has nothing secure. He can't be sure anything will stay his for a day. Find a man like that and try frightening him with death or banishment. Whatever happens to me in this ungrateful community, I won't even protest, let alone fight against it. Otherwise what was all my work for? What have I achieved? What did my worries and thoughts keep me awake for, if I haven't gained anything that puts me in a position where neither reckless fortune nor attacks from my enemies can shake me? Are you threatening to make me die,\n\nSECTION 18\n\nso I have to leave human company altogether? Or to banish me, so I have to leave bad people's company? Death scares people whose lives end with nothing left, not people whose achievements will always be praised. Banishment scares people who think their home has set boundaries, not people who take the entire world for one city. You think you're happy and doing wonderfully. Yet every kind of misery and trouble weighs you down. Your cravings torment you; you suffer through the nights and days. Your present possessions aren't enough, and you're afraid even those won't last. The knowledge of your crimes keeps pricking at you. Fear of trials and laws leaves you terrified. Turn where you like: your own injustices come at you like avenging Furies, never letting you draw an easy breath.\n\nSECTION 19\n\nA bad, foolish, spineless person cannot have a good life. In the same way, a good person who has wisdom and courage cannot be miserable. If a man's virtue and character merit praise, so must his life. A life worth praising isn't a life to run away from. If it were miserable, though, we ought to run away from it. So whatever merits praise should also count as happy, thriving, and desirable.\n\n### Paradox 3\n\nParadox III\n\nAll wrong deeds are equal; all right deeds are equal too.\n\nSECTION 20\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nSomeone says, “It's only a little thing.” But there's a serious fault. Don't measure wrongdoing by how things turn out. Measure it by the faults in the people doing it. The thing they do wrong over can be larger in one case and smaller in another. The act of doing wrong is the same whichever way you look at it. If a pilot capsizes a ship, it matters to the property owners whether the cargo is gold or straw. It makes no difference to how incompetent the pilot is. A man's sexual desire goes astray with an unknown woman. Fewer people suffer than if he had behaved outrageously toward a girl from a distinguished, noble family. But he has done just as much wrong. Doing wrong is like stepping over a line: once you've crossed, you've committed the fault. Walking further after crossing doesn't add to the fault of crossing. No one, surely, has permission to do wrong. When something isn't allowed, establishing that it isn't allowed is enough to condemn it. That fact can't ever be larger or smaller. The wrongdoing lies in acting without the right to do so, which is always the same thing. The wrong deeds that come from it must therefore be equal.\n\nSECTION 21\n\nIf the virtues match one another, the vices have to match too. It's easy to see that the virtues match. A good man can't be made better than good, a restrained man more restrained, a brave man braver, or a wise man wiser. Would you call a man good because he returned ten pounds of gold that someone had left in his keeping, with no witness there, even though he could have made off with it safely—if he wouldn't do the same with ten thousand pounds? Would you call him restrained if he held back one desire but let another run wild?\n\nSECTION 22\n\nVirtue is one steady consistency, maintained without a break and agreeing with reason. You can't add something that makes it more virtuous. You can't take something away and still leave it entitled to be called virtue. If a good deed is a right deed, and nothing can be more right than right, then nothing can be better than good either. So the vices must also be equal, if we are right to call them distortions of the mind. Since the virtues are equal, the right deeds that arise from them must match. And since wrong deeds come from vices, they have to be equal as well.\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n“You've got that from philosophers,” someone says. I was afraid you'd say from pimps. “Socrates argued like that.” By Hercules, that's good to hear! The accounts handed down to us describe him as learned and wise. But let me ask you a question. We're competing with words rather than fists: should we investigate the views of porters and laborers, or those of the most learned men? Especially since we couldn't find a position more true than this, or even more useful for human life. What could keep people away from all wrongdoing more effectively than realizing that offenses aren't different in kind? That an attack on an ordinary citizen is just as wrong as an attack on a magistrate? That bringing sexual disgrace into any home leaves the same stain of lust?\n\nSECTION 24\n\nSomeone is bound to say, “Then are you saying it makes no difference whether you kill your father or a slave?” State the acts without any circumstances and I can't easily decide what they amount to. If ending a father's life is criminal in itself, the people of Saguntum murdered their parents: they chose to let them die free rather than go on living in slavery. So it is sometimes possible to take a parent's life without a crime, and often impossible to take a slave's life without doing an injustice. The reason for the act makes the distinction, not its nature. Add that reason to one side and it weighs more. Attach it to both, and the two must balance.\n\nSECTION 25\n\nThere is one difference. Killing a slave unjustly involves one wrong. Attacking your father's life involves many. You injure the person who gave you life, who fed you, who taught you, and who gave you your place in a home, a household, and the republic. More wrongs have been done, so the punishment deserved is greater. But we should judge our conduct by how far we have a right to act, not by the penalty attached to each offense. We should treat everything we ought not to do as criminal, and every forbidden act as a violation of what is sacred. Even the tiniest matters? Yes. We may not be able to set limits to the things involved, but we can set limits to our minds.\n\nSECTION 26\n\nLet an actor's movement fall slightly out of time, or a line come out one syllable too long or short, and he's hissed and booed away. Your life should be more carefully measured than any stage movement and better fitted together than any verse. Will you claim your error in life was only a syllable? I won't hear a poet make that excuse over trifles. Should I hear it from a citizen, counting out his offenses on his fingers in the life we share? Call them shorter if you want. How can that make them any lighter? Every wrong involves throwing reason and order into confusion. Once that has happened, nothing extra can be added that would make the wrongdoing more wrong.\n\n### Paradox 4\n\nParadox IV\n\nEvery foolish person is out of his mind.\n\n[All foolish people are insane.]\n\nSECTION 27\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nI'm not calling you foolish this time, as I often do, or dishonest, as I always do. I'm calling you mad […]\n\n[…] can stay unbeaten over the necessities of life […]. Can anyone defeat a wise man's mind or take it by storm? Sound judgment, the endurance of human troubles, a disregard for fortune—in short, every virtue—stand round it like walls. Why, he can't even be expelled from his civic community! What makes such a community? Does any collection of people qualify, even savage, brutal ones? What about a lot of runaway slaves and robbers gathered together? You'll certainly say it doesn't. Well, there was no civic community here then. Laws counted for nothing. Courts weren't operating. Our ancestors' way of life had died out. Magistrates had been forced out at sword point, and the Senate's name itself had vanished from public life. That mass of looters, that gang of robbers you set up in the Forum, those leftovers of the conspiracy who turned from Catiline's frenzy to your criminal madness—they weren't a civic community.\n\nSECTION 28\n\nSo I wasn't expelled from a community: no such community existed. I was invited back into one when the republic once again had a consul, after having none; when a Senate existed again, after its destruction; when the people could agree freely; when law and fairness, which bind a community together, were remembered again. Look how little I cared about the weapons of your gang. I've always thought you aimed and hurled a terrible injustice at me. I've never thought it hit me. Unless, when you pulled down walls or wickedly set fire to roofs, you imagined that something of mine was falling or going up in flames.\n\nSECTION 29\n\nWhatever can be carried away, grabbed, or lost doesn't belong to me—or to anyone. You could have injured me by taking away my mind's godlike certainty that my work, my wakeful nights, and my decisions were keeping the republic standing against your bitter wishes. You could have wiped out the lasting memory of that permanent service. Above all, you could have taken away the mind that produced those decisions. Then I'd admit I'd suffered an injury. But you didn't and couldn't do any of that. Your wrongdoing gave me an honorable return, not a ruinous departure. I've always remained a citizen, especially when the Senate put my safety in the care of foreign peoples ⟨as⟩ a citizen of the very best kind. You aren't a citizen even now—unless a man can be both a citizen and an enemy. Do you really use someone's birth and whereabouts to tell citizen from enemy, rather than his intentions and deeds?\n\nSECTION 30\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nYou killed people in the Forum. Your armed thugs took over temples. You burned people's houses and holy buildings. If you count as a citizen, why does Spartacus count as an enemy? Can you be a citizen when you once made the civic community itself disappear? You use your own proper title for me, although everyone thinks the republic itself went into exile when I went away. Will you never take a look at yourself, you complete madman? Will you never think about your actions or your words? Don't you know exile is a penalty for crimes? That journey of mine happened because of the outstanding things I'd done.\n\nSECTION 31\n\nYou claim to lead all the criminals and people who defy the gods. The laws mean them to be exiles. They are exiles even if they haven't moved. All the laws order you to be an exile; ⟨won't you be one? Shouldn't we⟩ call a man an exile if he's been carrying a weapon? Your dagger was found before the Senate. If he's killed a person? You've killed a great many. If he's started a fire? You burned down the Nymphs' temple yourself. If he's occupied temples? You made the Forum your camp.\n\nSECTION 32\n\nWhy go through the laws that apply to everyone? Every one of them makes you an exile. Your closest friend passed a law aimed specifically at you: if you had entered the Good Goddess's secret sanctuary, you had to go into exile. And you're forever boasting that you did exactly that. With so many laws banishing you, how can you hear the word “exile” without shuddering? He says, “I'm in Rome.” Yes, and you were in the secret sanctuary too. Simply being somewhere doesn't give you the right to be there when the law says you shouldn't be.\n\n### Paradox 5\n\nParadox V\n\nThe wise alone are free; every foolish person is enslaved.\n\n[All wise people have freedom, and all foolish people are slaves.]\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nGo on, praise this man as a commander! Call him one, or decide he deserves the name! How can he command anyone who's free when he can't control his own cravings? First he should put a bridle on his sexual urges, reject pleasures, hold his temper, check his greed, and get rid of his other mental faults. Then he can start giving orders, once he himself has stopped taking orders from those worst of masters, disgrace and moral ugliness. While he's obeying them, he shouldn't be regarded as a commander—or even as free at all. The most learned men have made this point very well. I wouldn't rely on their authority if I had to speak to an uncultivated audience. But I'm speaking to people with excellent judgment who have heard these ideas. Why pretend any work I've put into these studies was wasted? As those highly educated men have said, wisdom is the only way anyone can be free.\n\nSECTION 34\n\nWhat does freedom mean? Being able to live the way you want. Who can do that except someone who lives rightly? He likes doing his duty and has thought ahead about the course his life should take. He doesn't follow even the laws because he's scared of them. He respects and follows them because he judges that course best for his well-being. Everything he says, does, and even thinks is freely and willingly chosen. His decisions and actions all start with himself and come back to himself. Nothing counts for more with him than what he himself chooses and judges. Even Fortune, supposedly the most powerful force there is, gives way before him. As the wise poet said, “Each person's character shapes her for him.” So the wise person alone has this advantage: he never acts against his wishes, in distress, or under pressure.\n\nSECTION 35\n\nIt takes a longer argument to establish that this is true. But here's a short point you have to admit: unless someone is like that, he isn't free. So all bad people are slaves. The claim sounds stranger and more surprising than the reality behind it. Those thinkers aren't saying bad people are slaves in the legal sense, like human property that has passed to owners through debt bondage or another rule of civil law. But what is slavery? It is obedience by a crushed, degraded mind that has lost its own power of choice. Who can deny, then, that every unstable person, everyone driven by desire—in fact every bad person—is a slave?\n\nSECTION 36\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nShould I count him free when a woman gives him orders? She sets rules, lays down instructions, commands and forbids whatever she likes. He can't say no to anything she orders and doesn't dare refuse. If she asks for something, he has to hand it over. If she calls, he has to arrive. If she throws him out, he has to go. If she threatens him, he has to shake with fear. I'd call him not merely a slave but a worthless one, even if he comes from the most distinguished family. People who get far too much enjoyment from statues, pictures, decorated silver, Corinthian pieces, and magnificent buildings are every bit as foolish. Someone says, “But we're the community's leading men.” You don't even lead your fellow slaves.\n\nSECTION 37\n\nIn a big household, some slaves fancy themselves better turned out, though they're still slaves. Hall stewards, for instance. The ones who handle those objects, wipe and oil them, sweep and sprinkle, don't occupy a particularly honored place among the slaves. In just the same way, people who give themselves over to a craving for these things rank almost at the bottom of slavery in our community. Someone says, “I've fought major wars. I've held great military commands and governed great provinces.” Then display a mind worth praising. Aetion's painting leaves you staring blankly, or a statue by Polyclitus does. Never mind where you took it from or how you got hold of it. When I see you stare, marvel, and shout with delight, I judge you enslaved to every kind of nonsense.\n\nSECTION 38\n\n“So aren't those things charming?” Yes, they are. Our eyes have been educated too. But please, let their charm make them children's amusements, not shackles on adult men. What do you think Lucius Mummius would have made of one of these men handling a little Corinthian chamber pot with desperate longing? He himself had thought nothing of all Corinth. Would he have seen an outstanding citizen or a hall steward looking after things carefully? Bring Manius Curius back to life, or any of those men whose farms and houses contained nothing splendid or decorated except themselves. Let him see a man who has enjoyed the highest honors the people can give, fishing small bearded mullets out of a pond, stroking them, and bragging about all his moray eels. Wouldn't he think the fellow such a slave that he couldn't be trusted with any larger responsibility even in a slave household?\n\nSECTION 39\n\nCan we doubt the slavery of people who want a private purse so badly that they'll accept every condition of the harshest slavery? What unfair treatment won't the hope of inheriting money put up with? What sign from a rich old man without children won't it watch for? It says what he wants to hear, does anything it's told, tags along, sits by him, and brings gifts. Does any of that mark a free man?\n\nSECTION 40\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nDoes it mark even a slave who isn't worthless? Then consider the supposedly more respectable craving: wanting public honors, military commands, and provinces. What a cruel, overbearing, forceful mistress! It made people who considered themselves the grandest of men serve Cethegus, a man with a far from spotless reputation. They had to send gifts, come to his house at night, appeal to him, and finally beg. If you can call that freedom, what would slavery be? And suppose desire's rule ends and another master takes over: fear, produced by knowing you've done wrong. What a miserable, cruel enslavement that is! You have to serve rather talkative young men. Anyone who seems to know something frightens you like a master. Think of a judge's power and the terror he causes the guilty! Doesn't every fear amount to slavery?\n\nSECTION 41\n\nThen what does that speech by the wonderfully eloquent Lucius Crassus amount to? It has more words than wisdom: “Pull us out of slavery.” What slavery threatens a man with such standing and such noble birth? Every fearful impulse in a weak, low, broken mind is slavery. “Don't let us be anyone's slaves.” Does he want his freedom? Not at all. Look at what he adds: “Except all of you as a body.” He wants a different master, not freedom. “You, whom we're both able and obliged to serve.” But if our minds are great and high and heaped with virtues, we are neither obliged nor able to be slaves. Say you're able, since clearly you are. Don't say you're obliged. Nobody owes anything unless it would be disgraceful not to give it. That's enough about this. Let him work out how he can be a commander when reason and truth themselves establish that he isn't even free.\n\n### Paradox 6\n\nParadox VI\n\nThe wise alone have wealth.\n\n[Wisdom is the only way to be rich.]\n\nSECTION 42\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nWhy this arrogant showing off every time you talk about your money? You're the only rich man, are you? Immortal gods! Shouldn't I be glad I've heard a few things and learned something? The only rich man? What if you don't count as rich at all? What if you even count as poor? What do we understand by a rich man, anyway? Who gets that title? I'd say a man who owns enough to feel easily satisfied with a generous way of life, who isn't looking for, reaching for, or wishing for anything beyond it.\n\nSECTION 43\n\nIt's your mind that has to find itself rich, not other people's chatter or the property you own. If your mind sees nothing missing, has no further concerns, and has had its fill of money—or is even just satisfied with it—then I'll agree it's rich. But what if your appetite for cash makes every kind of profit seem acceptable, even though your social rank rules out even respectable money-making? What if, day after day, you swindle, trick, demand, strike deals, take things, and snatch them? If you strip our allies and rob the public treasury? If you can't even wait for friends to leave wills, but forge the wills yourself? Do those actions indicate plenty or a shortage?\n\nSECTION 44\n\nWhen we call someone rich, we usually mean his mind, not his money chest. Fill that chest as much as you like: if I still see emptiness in you, I won't call you rich. People judge how much wealth a person has by how much will satisfy him. Suppose a man has a daughter. He needs money. With two, he needs more; with more daughters, more still. Give him fifty, as Danaus supposedly had: all those marriage portions need a great deal of money. As I said earlier, the standard for wealth adjusts to each person's needs. So how can I describe someone as rich if, instead of many daughters, he has endless desires that could empty the largest fortune quickly? He feels short of money himself.\n\nSECTION 45\n\nMany people have heard your claim that you can't count as rich unless the returns on your own property can feed an army. Even the Roman people, drawing enormous tax revenues, have long struggled to do that. Set that goal and you'll never be rich until your property produces enough to keep six legions, plus substantial additional cavalry and infantry forces. You're already admitting you're not rich: so much is still missing before your wish can come true. You've never concealed this poverty—or rather, this state of destitution and begging.\n\nSECTION 46\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nWe recognize that someone who makes money honestly through trading, working, or taking public contracts needs to earn. Now look at the teams of accusers and informers linked together in your house. Look at the wealthy, guilty defendants trying to buy a corrupt trial, with you running the affair again. Look at your deals over payment for defending cases, † the money you cut for yourself in candidates' alliances, the freedmen you send to the provinces to strip them through lending and robbery. Think back over the neighbors you've driven out, the banditry in the countryside, the partnerships with slaves, freedmen, and clients, the properties without owners, the wealthy people outlawed, the towns ruined, the harvest you gathered under Sulla, the fake wills, all the people removed. Finally, think of everything on sale: an edict or decree, another person's decision or your own, the Forum, your home, speaking, keeping quiet. Wouldn't anyone take this as your admission that you need earnings? And if a person still needs to acquire more, who has ever truthfully described him as rich?\n\nSECTION 47\n\nWealth benefits us by giving us plenty. To show you have plenty, you have to have enough to satisfy you and something beyond that. You'll never reach that point, so you'll never become rich at all. You think little of my money, and rightly. To the public it looks middling; to you, nonexistent; to me, an adequate amount. But I'll stop talking about myself and discuss the issue instead.\n\nSECTION 48\n\nIf we have to assess and price these things, which deserves the higher value: the payment Pyrrhus offered Fabricius, or Fabricius's self-control in turning it down? The Samnites' gold, or Manius Curius's reply? The property Lucius Paullus left, or Africanus's generosity in handing his share to his brother Quintus Maximus? Surely those acts of the greatest virtue are worth more than those amounts of money. If we must count a man richest when he owns what's most valuable, how can anyone doubt that virtue is where wealth lies? We shouldn't put any property, any mass of silver or gold, above virtue in value.\n\nSECTION 49\n\nImmortal gods! People don't grasp how much income comes from thrift. I'm leaving that profit-hunter now and turning to big spenders. His estates bring in six hundred thousand sesterces; mine bring in a hundred thousand. He puts gold on his country-house ceilings and marble on the floors. His appetite for statues, paintings, furnishings, and clothes has no limit. His revenue isn't enough for his spending, or even for the interest he has to pay. Take the cost of my wants out of my small return, and I'll still have a surplus. So which man is richer? The one with a shortfall or the one with a surplus? The one who needs more or the one who has plenty? The man whose larger holdings demand still more money to keep them up, or the one whose property can support itself?\n\nSECTION 50\n\nBut why use myself? Perhaps I too have some share in the mistaken attitude of this age, thanks to our habits and our times. Let's stop always citing men like Curius and Luscinus. Was Manius Manilius, who lived in our fathers' time, really poor? He had a little house in the Carinae district and a farm in the Labican territory. Does having more make us richer than him? I wish it did! But how much money is enough depends on our living habits and upkeep, not on the assessed value of our possessions.\n\nSECTION 51\n\nBeing without greed is a fortune. Not wanting to buy is a revenue stream. Being satisfied with your own possessions, though, is wealth of the greatest, most dependable kind. Clever property valuers set a high price on meadows and certain plots because that sort of holding can, so to speak, suffer very little damage. What price, then, should we put on virtue? Nobody can rob you of it by force or steal it secretly. A wreck at sea or a fire won't lose it for you. Neither storms nor disturbances in human affairs can alter it.\n\nSECTION 52\n\nOnly people who have virtue are rich. They're the only ones who hold assets that are both productive and permanent. They're also the only ones with the defining mark of wealth: satisfaction with their own possessions. They find their present resources sufficient. They don't reach for more, don't need anything, don't feel anything is missing, and don't look for anything else. Dishonest, greedy people are different. Their holdings are insecure and left to chance. They're always reaching for more. Not one has yet turned up who found his possessions sufficient. We must consider them not simply short of wealth and plenty, but actually needy and poor.","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/cicero-paradoxa/translations/trn_cicero_paradoxa_plain.txt"}],"retex_markdown_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/cicero-paradoxa/retex.md"}}