{"schema_version":1,"access":"public","rights":"Public-domain or compatibly licensed source editions; provenance is retained per record.","work":{"slug":"cicero-republic","title":"On the Republic","author":"Marcus Tullius Cicero","tradition":"roman","language":"la","genre":"political philosophy","period":"54–51 BCE","source_url":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/8b536bdf3ed1f43494055efe112433b4a58eab67/data/phi0474/phi043/phi0474.phi043.perseus-lat2.xml","original":{"text":"### Book 1\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n[…] *im*petu liberavissent, nec C. Duelius, A. Atilius, L. Metellus terrore Karthaginis, non duo Scipiones oriens incendium belli Punici secundi sanguine suo restinxissent, nec id excitatum maioribus copiis aut Q. Maximus enervavisset aut M. Marcellus contudisset aut a portis huius urbis avolsum P. Africanus compulisset intra hostium moenia. M. vero Catoni, homini ignoto et novo, quo omnes, qui isdem rebus studemus, quasi exemplari ad industriam virtutemque ducimur, certe licuit Tusculi se in otio delectare salubri et propinquo loco. Sed homo demens, ut isti putant, cum cogeret eum necessitas nulla, in his undis et tempestatibus ad summam senectutem maluit iactari quam in illa tranquillitate atque otio iucundissime vivere. Omitto innumerabilis viros, quorum singuli saluti huic civitati fuerunt, et quia sunt *haud* procul ab aetatis huius memoria, commemorare eos desino, ne quis se aut suorum aliquem praetermissum queratur. Unum hoc definio, tantam esse necessitatem virtutis generi hominum a natura tantumque amorem ad communem salutem defendendam datum, ut ea vis omnia blandimenta voluptatis otiique vicerit.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nNec vero habere virtutem satis est quasi artem aliquam, nisi utare; etsi ars quidem, cum ea non utare, scientia tamen ipsa teneri potest, virtus in usu sui tota posita est; usus autem eius est maximus civitatis gubernatio et earum ipsarum rerum, quas isti in angulis personant, reapse, non oratione perfectio. Nihil enim dicitur a philosophis, quod quidem recte honesteque dicatur, quod *non* ab iis partum confirmatumque sit, a quibus civitatibus iura discripta sunt. Unde enim pietas aut a quibus religio? unde ius aut gentium aut hoc ipsum civile quod dicitur? unde iustitia, fides, aequitas? unde pudor, continentia, fuga turpitudinis, adpetentia laudis et honestatis? unde in laboribus et periculis fortitudo? Nempe ab iis, qui haec disciplinis informata alia moribus confirmarunt, sanxerunt autem alia legibus.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nQuin etiam Xenocraten ferunt, nobilem in primis philosophum, cum quaereretur ex eo, quid adsequerentur eius discipuli, respondisse, ut id sua sponte facerent, quod cogerentur facere legibus. Ergo ille civis, qui id cogit omnis imperio legumque poena, quod vix paucis persuadere oratione philosophi possunt, etiam iis, qui illa disputant, ipsis est praeferendus doctoribus. Quae est enim istorum oratio tam exquisita, quae sit anteponenda bene constitutae civitati publico iure et moribus? Equidem quem ad modum “urbes magnas atque imperiosas”, ut appellat Ennius, viculis et castellis praeferendas puto, sic eos, qui his urbibus consilio atque auctoritate praesunt, iis, qui omnis negotii publici expertes sint, longe duco sapientia ipsa esse anteponendos. Et quoniam maxime rapimur ad opes augendas generis humani studemusque nostris consiliis et laboribus tutiorem et opulentiorem vitam hominum reddere et ad hanc voluptatem ipsius naturae stimulis incitamur, teneamus eum cursum, qui semper fuit optimi cuiusque, neque ea signa audiamus, quae receptui canunt, ut eos etiam revocent, qui iam processerint.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nHis rationibus tam certis tamque inlustribus opponuntur ab iis, qui contra disputant, primum labores, qui sint re publica defendenda sustinendi, leve sane inpedimentum vigilanti et industrio, neque solum in tantis rebus, sed etiam in mediocribus vel studiis vel officiis vel vero etiam negotiis contemnendum. Adiunguntur pericula vitae, turpisque ab his formido mortis fortibus viris opponitur, quibus magis id miserum videri solet, natura se consumi et senectute, quam sibi dari tempus, ut possint eam vitam, quae tamen esset reddenda naturae, pro patria potissimum reddere. Illo vero se loco copiosos et disertos putant, cum calamitates clarissimorum virorum iniuriasque iis ab ingratis inpositas civibus colligunt.\n\nSECTION 5\n\nHinc enim illa et apud Graecos exempla, Miltiadem, victorem domitoremque Persarum, nondum sanatis volneribus iis, quae corpore adverso in clarissima victoria accepisset, vitam ex hostium telis servatam in civium vinclis profudisse, et Themistoclem patria, quam liberavisset, pulsum atque proterritum non in Graeciae portus per se servatos, sed in barbariae sinus confugisse, quam adflixerat; nec vero levitatis Atheniensium crudelitatisque in amplissimos civis exempla deficiunt; quae nata et frequentata apud illos etiam in gravissumam civitatem nostram dicuntur redundasse;\n\nSECTION 6\n\nnam vel exilium Camilli vel offensio commemoratur Ahalae vel invidia Nasicae vel expulsio Laenatis vel Opimii damnatio vel fuga Metelli vel acerbissima C. Marii clades principum*que* caedes vel eorum multorum pestes, quae paulo post secutae sunt. Nec vero iam meo nomine abstinent et, credo, quia nostro consilio ac periculo sese in illa vita atque otio conservatos putant, gravius etiam de nobis queruntur et amantius. Sed haud facile dixerim, cur, cum ipsi discendi aut visendi causa maria tramittant […]\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n[…] salvam esse consulatu abiens in contione populo Romano idem iurante iuravissem, facile iniuriarum omnium compensarem curam et molestiam. Quamquam nostri casus plus honoris habuerunt quam laboris neque tantum molestiae, quantum gloriae, maioremque laetitiam ex desiderio bonorum percepimus quam ex laetitia improborum dolorem. Sed si aliter, ut dixi, accidisset, qui possem queri? cum mihi nihil inproviso nec gravius, quam exspectavissem, pro tantis meis factis evenisset. Is enim fueram, cui cum liceret aut maiores ex otio fructus capere quam ceteris propter variam suavitatem studiorum, in quibus a pueritia vixeram, aut si quid accideret acerbius universis, non praecipuam, sed parem cum ceteris fortunae condicionem subire, non dubitaverim me gravissimis tempestatibus ac paene fulminibus ipsis obvium ferre conservandorum civium causa meisque propriis periculis parere commune reliquis otium.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nNeque enim hac nos patria lege genuit aut educavit, ut nulla quasi alimenta exspectaret a nobis ac tantum modo nostris ipsa commodis serviens tutum perfugium otio nostro suppeditaret et tranquillum ad quietem locum, sed ut plurimas et maximas nostri animi, ingenii, consilii partis ipsa sibi ad utilitatem suam pigneraretur tantumque nobis in nostrum privatum usum, quantum ipsi superesse posset, remitteret.\n\nSECTION 9\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\nIam illa perfugia, quae sumunt sibi ad excusationem, quo facilius otio perfruantur, certe minime sunt audienda, cum ita dicunt, accedere ad rem publicam plerumque homines nulla re bona dignos, cum quibus comparari sordidum, confligere autem multitudine praesertim incitata miserum et periculosum sit. Quam ob rem neque sapientis esse accipere habenas, cum insanos atque indomitos impetus volgi cohibere non possit, neque liberi cum inpuris atque inmanibus adversariis decertantem vel contumeliarum verbera subire vel expectare sapienti non ferendas iniurias; proinde quasi bonis et fortibus et magno animo praeditis ulla sit ad rem publicam adeundi causa iustior, quam ne pareant inprobis neve ab isdem lacerari rem publicam patiantur, cum ipsi auxilium ferre, si cupiant, non queant.\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\nIlla autem exceptio cui probari tandem potest, quod negant sapientem suscepturum ullam rei publicae partem, extra quam si eum tempus et necessitas coegerit? quasi vero maior cuiquam necessitas accidere possit, quam accidit nobis; in qua quid facere potuissem, nisi tum consul fuissem? Consul autem esse qui potui, nisi eum vitae cursum tenuissem a pueritia, per quem equestri loco natus pervenirem ad honorem amplissimum? Non igitur potestas est ex tempore, aut cum velis, opitulandi rei publicae, quamvis ea prematur periculis, nisi eo loco sis, ut tibi id facere liceat.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nMaximeque hoc in hominum doctorum oratione mihi mirum videri solet, quod, qui tranquillo mari gubernare se negent posse, quod nec didicerint nec umquam scire curaverint, iidem ad gubernacula se accessuros profiteantur excitatis maximis fluctibus. Isti enim palam dicere atque in eo multum etiam gloriari solent, se de rationibus rerum publicarum aut constituendarum aut tuendarum nihil nec didicisse umquam nec docere, earumque rerum scientiam non doctis hominibus ac sapientibus, sed in illo genere exercitatis concedendam putant. Quare qui convenit polliceri operam suam rei publicae tum denique, si necessitate cogantur? cum, quod est multo proclivius, nulla necessitate premente rem publicam regere nesciant. Equidem, ut verum esset sua voluntate sapientem descendere ad rationes civitatis non solere, sin autem temporibus cogeretur, tum id munus denique non recusare, tamen arbitrarer hanc rerum civilium minime neglegendam scientiam sapienti, propterea quod omnia essent ei praeparanda, quibus nesciret an aliquando uti necesse esset.\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\nHaec pluribus a me verbis dicta sunt ob eam causam, quod his libris erat instituta et suscepta mihi de re publica disputatio; quae ne frustra haberetur, dubitationem ad rem publicam adeundi in primis debui tollere. Ac tamen si qui sunt, qui philosophorum auctoritate moveantur, dent operam parumper atque audiant eos, quorum summa est auctoritas apud doctissimos homines et gloria; quos ego existimo, etiamsi qui ipsi rem publicam non gesserint, tamen, quoniam de re publica multa quaesierint et scripserint, functos esse aliquo rei publicae munere. Eos vero septem, quos Graeci sapientis nominaverunt, omnis paene video in media re publica esse versatos. Neque enim est ulla res, in qua propius ad deorum numen virtus accedat humana, quam civitatis aut condere novas aut conservare iam conditas.\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\nQuibus de rebus, quoniam nobis contigit, ut iidem et in gerenda re publica aliquid essemus memoria dignum consecuti et in explicandis rationibus rerum civilium quandam facultatem non modo usu, sed etiam studio discendi et docendi † essemus auctores, cum superiores alii fuissent in disputationibus perpoliti, quorum res gestae nullae invenirentur, alii in gerendo probabiles, in disserendo rudes. Nec vero nostra quaedam est instituenda nova et a nobis inventa ratio, sed unius aetatis clarissimorum ac sapientissimorum nostrae civitatis virorum disputatio repetenda memoria est, quae mihi tibique quondam adulescentulo est a P. Rutilio Rufo, Smyrnae cum simul essemus compluris dies, exposita, in qua nihil fere, quod magno opere ad rationes omnium rerum pertineret, *est* praetermissum.\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\nNam cum P. Africanus hic, Pauli filius, feriis Latinis Tuditano cons. et Aquilio constituisset in hortis esse familiarissimique eius ad eum frequenter per eos dies ventitaturos se esse dixissent, Latinis ipsis mane ad eum primus sororis filius venit Q. Tubero; quem cum comiter Scipio appellavisset libenterque vidisset, Quid tu, inquit, tam mane, Tubero? dabant enim hae feriae tibi oportunam sane facultatem ad explicandas tuas litteras. Tum ille: Mihi vero omne tempus est ad meos libros vacuum; numquam enim sunt illi occupati; te autem permagnum est nancisci otiosum, hoc praesertim motu rei publicae. Tum Scipio: Atqui nactus es, sed mehercule otiosiorem opera quam animo. Et ille: At vero animum quoque relaxes oportet; sumus enim multi, ut constituimus, parati, si tuo commodo fieri potest, abuti tecum hoc otio. SC. Libente me vero, ut aliquid aliquando de doctrinae studiis admoneamur.\n\nSECTION 15\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\nTum ille: Visne igitur, quoniam et me quodam modo invitas et tui spem das, hoc primum, Africane, videamus, ante quam veniunt alii, quidnam sit, de isto altero sole quod nuntiatum est in senatu? neque enim pauci neque leves sunt, qui se duo soles vidisse dicant, ut non tam fides non habenda quam ratio quaerenda sit. Hic Scipio: Quam vellem Panaetium nostrum nobiscum haberemus! qui cum cetera, tum haec caelestia vel studiosissime solet quaerere. Sed ego, Tubero, (nam tecum aperte, quod sentio, loquar) non nimis adsentior in omni isto genere nostro illi familiari, qui, quae vix coniectura qualia sint possumus suspicari, sic adfirmat, ut oculis ea cernere videatur aut tractare plane manu. Quo etiam sapientiorem Socratem soleo iudicare, qui omnem eius modi curam deposuerit eaque, quae de natura quaererentur, aut maiora, quam hominum ratio consequi posset, aut nihil omnino ad vitam hominum adtinere dixerit.\n\nSECTION 16\n\nDein Tubero: Nescio, Africane, cur ita memoriae proditum sit, Socratem omnem istam disputationem reiecisse et tantum de vita et de moribus solitum esse quaerere. Quem enim auctorem de illo locupletiorem Platone laudare possumus? cuius in libris multis locis ita loquitur Socrates, ut etiam, cum de moribus, de virtutibus, denique de re publica disputet, numeros tamen et geometriam et harmoniam studeat Pythagorae more coniungere. Tum Scipio: Sunt ista, ut dicis; sed audisse te credo, Tubero, Platonem Socrate mortuo primum in Aegyptum discendi causa, post in Italiam et in Siciliam contendisse, ut Pythagorae inventa perdisceret, eumque et cum Archyta Tarentino et cum Timaeo Locro multum fuisse et Philoleo commentarios esse nanctum, cumque eo tempore in iis locis Pythagorae nomen vigeret, illum se et hominibus Pythagoreis et studiis illis dedisse. Itaque cum Socratem unice dilexisset eique omnia tribuere voluisset, leporem Socraticum subtilitatemque sermonis cum obscuritate Pythagorae et cum illa plurimarum artium gravitate contexuit.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\nHaec Scipio cum dixisset, L. Furium repente venientem aspexit, eumque ut salutavit, amicissime adprehendit et in lecto suo conlocavit. Et cum simul P. Rutilius venisset, qui est nobis huius sermonis auctor, eum quoque ut salutavit, propter Tuberonem iussit adsidere. Tum Furius: Quid vos agitis? num sermonem vestrum aliquem diremit noster interventus? Minime vero, Africanus; soles enim tu haec studiose investigare, quae sunt in hoc genere, de quo instituerat paulo ante Tubero quaerere; Rutilius quidem noster etiam sub ipsis Numantiae moenibus solebat mecum interdum eius modi aliquid conquirere. Quae res tandem inciderat? inquit Philus. Tum ille: De solibus istis duobus; de quo studeo, Phile, ex te audire quid sentias.\n\nSECTION 18\n\nCHAPTER 12\n\nDixerat hoc ille, cum puer nuntiavit venire ad eum Laelium domoque iam exisse. Tum Scipio calceis et vestimentis sumptis e cubiculo est egressus, et cum paululum inambulavisset in porticu, Laelium advenientem salutavit et eos, qui una venerant, Spurium Mummium, quem in primis diligebat, et C. Fannium et Quintum Scaevolam, generos Laelii, doctos adulescentes, iam aetate quaestorios; quos cum omnis salutavisset, convertit se in porticu et coniecit in medium Laelium; fuit enim hoc in amicitia quasi quoddam ius inter illos, ut militiae propter eximiam belli gloriam Africanum ut deum coleret Laelius, domi vicissim Laelium, quod aetate antecedebat, observaret in parentis loco Scipio. Dein cum essent perpauca inter se uno aut altero spatio conlocuti Scipionique eorum adventus periucundus et pergratus fuisset, placitum est, ut in aprico maxime pratuli loco, quod erat hibernum tempus anni, considerent; quod cum facere vellent, intervenit vir prudens omnibusque illis et iucundus et carus, M’. Manilius, qui a Scipione ceterisque amicissime consalutatus adsedit proximus Laelio.\n\nSECTION 19\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\nTum Philus: Non mihi videtur, inquit, quod hi venerunt, alius nobis sermo esse quaerendus, sed agendum accuratius et dicendum dignum aliquid horum auribus. Hic Laelius: Quid tandem agebatis, aut cui sermoni nos intervenimus? PH. Quaesierat ex me Scipio, quidnam sentirem de hoc, quod duo soles visos esse constaret. L. Ain vero? Phile, iam explorata nobis sunt ea, quae ad domos nostras quaeque ad rem publicam pertineant? siquidem, quid agatur in caelo, quaerimus. Et ille: An tu ad domos nostras non censes pertinere scire, quid agatur et quid fiat domi? quae non ea est, quam parietes nostri cingunt, sed mundus hic totus, quod domicilium quamque patriam di nobis communem secum dederunt, cum praesertim, si haec ignoremus, multa nobis et magna ignoranda sint. Ac me quidem, ut hercule etiam te ipsum, Laeli, omnisque avidos sapientiae cognitio ipsa rerum consideratioque delectat.\n\nSECTION 20\n\nTum Laelius: Non inpedio, praesertim quoniam feriati sumus; sed possumus audire aliquid an serius venimus? PH. Nihil est adhuc disputatum, et, quoniam est integrum, libenter tibi, Laeli, ut de eo disseras, equidem concessero. L. Immo vero te audiamus, nisi forte Manilius interdictum aliquod inter duos soles putat esse componendum, ut ita caelum possideant, ut uterque possederit. Tum Manilius: Pergisne eam, Laeli, artem inludere, in qua primum excellis ipse, deinde sine qua scire nemo potest, quid sit suum, quid alienum? Sed ista mox; nunc audiamus Philum, quem video maioribus iam de rebus quam me aut quam P. Mucium consuli.\n\nSECTION 21\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\nTum Philus: Nihil novi vobis adferam, neque quod a me sit cogitatum aut inventum; nam memoria teneo C. Sulpicium Gallum, doctissimum, ut scitis, hominem, cum idem hoc visum diceretur et esset casu apud M. Marcellum, qui cum eo consul fuerat, sphaeram, quam M. Marcelli avus captis Syracusis ex urbe locupletissima atque ornatissima sustulisset, cum aliud nihil ex tanta praeda domum suam deportavisset, iussisse proferri; cuius ego sphaerae cum persaepe propter Archimedi gloriam nomen audissem, speciem ipsam non sum tanto opere admiratus; erat enim illa venustior et nobilior in volgus, quam ab eodem Archimede factam posuerat in templo Virtutis Marcellus idem.\n\nSECTION 22\n\nSed posteaquam coepit rationem huius operis scientissime Gallus exponere, plus in illo Siculo ingenii, quam videretur natura humana ferre potuisse, iudicavi fuisse. Dicebat enim Gallus sphaerae illius alterius solidae atque plenae vetus esse inventum, et eam a Thalete Milesio primum esse tornatam, post autem ab Eudoxo Cnidio, discipulo, ut ferebat, Platonis, eandem illam astris stellisque, quae caelo inhaererent, esse descriptam; cuius omnem ornatum et descriptionem sumptam ab Eudoxo multis annis post non astrologiae scientia, sed poetica quadam facultate versibus Aratum extulisse. Hoc autem sphaerae genus, in quo solis et lunae motus inessent et earum quinque stellarum, quae errantes et quasi vagae nominarentur, in illa sphaera solida non potuisse finiri, atque in eo admirandum esse inventum Archimedi, quod excogitasset, quem ad modum in dissimillimis motibus inaequabiles et varios cursus servaret una conversio. Hanc sphaeram Gallus cum moveret, fiebat, ut soli luna totidem conversionibus in aere illo, quot diebus in ipso caelo, succederet, ex quo et in {caelo} sphaera solis fieret eadem illa defectio et incideret luna tum in eam metam, quae esset umbra terrae, cum sol e regione […]\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\n[…] fuit, quod et ipse hominem diligebam et in primis patri meo Paulo probatum et carum fuisse cognoveram. Memini me admodum adulescentulo, cum pater in Macedonia consul esset et essemus in castris, perturbari exercitum nostrum religione et metu, quod serena nocte subito candens et plena luna defecisset. Tum ille, cum legatus noster esset anno fere ante, quam consul est declaratus, haud dubitavit postridie palam in castris docere nullum esse prodigium, idque et tum factum esse et certis temporibus esse semper futurum, cum sol ita locatus fuisset, ut lunam suo lumine non posset attingere. Ain tandem? inquit Tubero; docere hoc poterat ille homines paene agrestes et apud imperitos audebat haec dicere? S. Ille vero et magna quidem cum […] […]\n\nSECTION 24\n\n*neque in*solens ostentatio neque oratio abhorrens a persona hominis gravissimi; rem enim magnam adsecutus *est*, quod hominibus perturbatis inanem religionem timoremque deiecerat.\n\nSECTION 25\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\nAtque eius modi quiddam etiam bello illo maximo, quod Athenienses et Lacedaemonii summa inter se contentione gesserunt, Pericles ille, et auctoritate et eloquentia et consilio princeps civitatis suae, cum obscurato sole tenebrae factae essent repente Atheniensiumque animos summus timor occupavisset, docuisse civis suos dicitur, id quod ipse ab Anaxagora, cuius auditor fuerat, acceperat, certo illud tempore fieri et necessario, cum tota se luna sub orbem solis subiecisset; itaque, etsi non omni intermenstruo, tamen id fieri non posse nisi certo intermenstruo tempore. Quod cum disputando rationibusque docuisset, populum liberavit metu; erat enim tum haec nova et ignota ratio, solem lunae oppositu solere deficere, quod Thaletem Milesium primum vidisse dicunt. Id autem postea ne nostrum quidem Ennium fugit; qui ut scribit, anno trecentesimo quinquagesimo fere post Romam conditam\nNonis Iunis soli luna obstitit et nox.\nAtque hac in re tanta inest ratio atque sollertia, ut ex hoc die, quem apud Ennium et in maximis annalibus consignatum videmus, superiores solis defectiones reputatae sint usque ad illam, quae Nonis Quinctilibus fuit regnante Romulo; quibus quidem Romulum tenebris etiamsi natura ad humanum exitum abripuit, virtus tamen in caelum dicitur sustulisse.\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\nTum Tubero: Videsne, Africane, quod paulo ante secus tibi videbatur, doc […] […] lis, quae videant ceteri. Quid porro aut praeclarum putet in rebus humanis, qui haec deorum regna perspexerit, aut diuturnum, qui cognoverit, quid sit aeternum, aut gloriosum, qui viderit, quam parva sit terra, primum universa, deinde ea pars eius, quam homines incolant, quamque nos in exigua eius parte adfixi plurimis ignotissimi gentibus speremus tamen nostrum nomen volitare et vagari latissime?\n\nSECTION 27\n\nAgros vero et aedificia et pecudes et inmensum argenti pondus atque auri qui bona nec putare nec appellare soleat, quod earum rerum videatur ei levis fructus, exiguus usus, incertus dominatus, saepe etiam deterrimorum hominum inmensa possessio, quam est hic fortunatus putandus! cui soli vere liceat omnia non Quiritium, sed sapientium iure pro suis vindicare, nec civili nexo, sed communi lege naturae, quae vetat ullam rem esse cuiusquam nisi eius, qui tractare et uti sciat; qui inperia consulatusque nostros in necessariis, non in expetendis rebus, muneris fungendi gratia subeundos, non praemiorum aut gloriae causa adpetendos putet; qui denique, ut Africanum avum meum scribit Cato solitum esse dicere, possit idem de se praedicare, numquam se plus agere, quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse, quam cum solus esset.\n\nSECTION 28\n\nQuis enim putare vere potest plus egisse Dionysium tum, cum omnia moliendo eripuerit civibus suis libertatem, quam eius civem Archimedem, cum istam ipsam sphaeram, nihil cum agere videretur, {de qua modo dicebatur} effecerit? quis autem non magis solos esse, qui in foro turbaque, quicum conloqui libeat, non habeant, quam qui nullo arbitro vel secum ipsi loquantur vel quasi doctissimorum hominum in concilio adsint, cum eorum inventis scriptisque se oblectent? Quis vero divitiorem quemquam putet quam eum, cui nihil desit, quod quidem natura desideret, aut potentiorem quam illum, qui omnia, quae expetat, consequatur, aut beatiorem, quam qui sit omni perturbatione animi liberatus, aut firmiore fortuna, quam qui ea possideat, quae secum, ut aiunt, vel e naufragio possit ecferre? Quod autem imperium, qui magistratus, quod regnum potest esse praestantius quam despicientem omnia humana et inferiora sapientia ducentem nihil umquam nisi sempiternum et divinum animo volutare? cui persuasum sit appellari ceteros homines, esse solos eos, qui essent politi propriis humanitatis artibus;\n\nSECTION 29\n\nut mihi Platonis illud, seu quis dixit alius, perelegans esse videatur; quem cum ex alto ignotas ad terras tempestas et in desertum litus detulisset, timentibus ceteris propter ignorationem locorum animadvertisse dicunt in arena geometricas formas quasdam esse descriptas; quas ut vidisset, exclamavisse, ut bono essent animo; videre enim se hominum vestigia; quae videlicet ille non ex agri consitura, quam cernebat, sed ex doctrinae indiciis interpretabatur. Quam ob rem, Tubero, semper mihi et doctrina et eruditi homines et tua ista studia placuerunt.\n\nSECTION 30\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\nTum Laelius: Non audeo quidem, inquit, ad ista, Scipio, dicere, neque tam te aut Philum aut Manilium. […]\n\n[…] in ipsius paterno genere fuit noster ille amicus, dignus huic ad imitandum,\nEgregie cordatus homo, catus Aelius Sextus,\nqui “egregie cordatus” et “catus” fuit et ab Ennio dictus est, non quod ea quaerebat, quae numquam inveniret, sed quod ea respondebat, quae eos, qui quaesissent, et cura et negotio solverent, cuique contra Galli studia disputanti in ore semper erat ille de Iphigenia Achilles:\nÁstrologorum sígna in caelo quíd fit observátionis,\n\nCúm capra aut nepa aút exoritur nómen aliquod béluarum!\n\nQuód est ante pedes némo spectat, caéli scrutanúr plagas.\nAtque idem (multum enim illum audiebam et libenter) Zethum illum Pacuvii nimis inimicum doctrinae esse dicebat; magis eum delectabat Neoptolemus Ennii, qui se ait “philosophari velle, sed paucis; nam omnino haud placere”. Quodsi studia Graecorum vos tanto opere delectant, sunt alia liberiora et transfusa latius, quae vel ad usum vitae vel etiam ad ipsam rem publicam conferre possumus. Istae quidem artes, si modo aliquid valent, *id valent*, ut paulum acuant et tamquam inritent ingenia puerorum, quo facilius possint maiora discere.\n\nSECTION 31\n\nCHAPTER 19\n\nTum Tubero: Non dissentio a te, Laeli, sed quaero, quae tu esse maiora intellegas. L. Dicam mehercule et contemnar a te fortasse, cum tu ista caelestia de Scipione quaesieris, ego autem haec, quae videntur ante oculos esse, magis putem quaerenda. Quid enim mihi L. Pauli nepos, hoc avunculo, nobilissima in familia atque in hac tam clara re publica natus, quaerit, quo modo duo soles visi sint, non quaerit, cur in una re publica duo senatus et duo paene iam populi sint? Nam, ut videtis, mors Tiberii Gracchi et iam ante tota illius ratio tribunatus divisit populum unum in duas partis; obtrectatores autem et invidi Scipionis initiis factis a P. Crasso et Appio Claudio tenent nihilo minus illis mortuis senatus alteram partem dissidentem a vobis auctore Metello et P. Mucio neque hunc, qui unus potest, concitatis sociis et nomine Latino, foederibus violatis, triumviris seditiosissimis aliquid cotidie novi molientibus, bonis viris {locupletibus} perturbatis his tam periculosis rebus subvenire patiuntur.\n\nSECTION 32\n\nQuam ob rem, si me audietis, adulescentes, solem alterum ne metueritis; aut enim nullus esse potest, aut sit sane, ut visus est, modo ne sit molestus, aut scire istarum rerum nihil aut, etiamsi maxime sciemus, nec meliores ob eam scientiam nec beatiores esse possumus; senatum vero et populum ut unum habeamus, et fieri potest, et permolestum est, nisi fit, et secus esse scimus et videmus, si id effectum sit, et melius nos esse victuros et beatius.\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 20\n\nTum Mucius: Quid esse igitur censes, Laeli, discendum nobis, ut istud efficere possimus ipsum, quod postulas? L. Eas artis, quae efficiant, ut usui civitati simus; id enim esse praeclarissimum sapientiae munus maximumque virtutis vel documentum vel officium puto. Quam ob rem, ut hae feriae nobis ad utilissimos rei publicae sermones potissimum conferantur, Scipionem rogemus, ut explicet, quem existimet esse optimum statum civitatis. Deinde alia quaeremus; quibus cognitis spero nos ad haec ipsa via perventuros earumque rerum rationem, quae nunc instant, explicaturos.\n\nSECTION 34\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\nCum id et Philus et Manilius et Mummius admodum adproba*vissent* […]\n\nSECTION 34(fr1)\n\n(Diom. GL I, p. 365 Keil) Nullum est exemplum, cui malimus adsimulare rem publicam.\n\n(Non. p. 85M, p. 289M) Quare, si placet, deduc orationem tuam de caelo ad haec citeriora.\n\n[…] non solum ob eam causam fieri volui, quod erat aequum de re publica potissimum principem rei publicae dicere, sed etiam quod memineram persaepe te cum Panaetio disserere solitum coram Polybio, duobus Graecis vel peritissimis rerum civilium, multaque colligere ac docere, optimum longe statum civitatis esse eum, quem maiores nostri nobis reliquissent. Qua in disputatione quoniam tu paratior es, feceris, ut etiam pro his dicam, si, de re publica quid sentias, explicaris, nobis gratum omnibus.\n\nSECTION 35\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\nTum ille: Non possum equidem dicere me ulla in cogitatione acrius aut diligentius solere versari quam in ista ipsa, quae mihi, Laeli, a te proponitur. Etenim cum in suo quemque opere artificem, qui quidem excellat, nihil aliud cogitare, meditari, curare videam, nisi quo sit in illo genere melior, ego, cum mihi sit unum opus hoc a parentibus maioribusque meis relictum, procuratio atque administratio rei publicae, non me inertiorem esse confitear quam opificem quemquam, si minus in maxima arte, quam illi in minimis, operae consumpserim?\n\nSECTION 36\n\nSed neque his contentus sum, quae de ista consultatione scripta nobis summi ex Graecia sapientissimique homines reliquerunt, neque ea, quae mihi videntur, anteferre illis audeo. Quam ob rem peto a vobis, ut me sic audiatis, neque ut omnino expertem Graecarum rerum neque ut eas nostris in hoc praesertim genere anteponentem, sed ut unum e togatis patris diligentia non inliberaliter institutum studioque discendi a pueritia incensum, usu tamen et domesticis praeceptis multo magis eruditum quam litteris.\n\nSECTION 37\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\nHic Philus: Non hercule, inquit, Scipio, dubito, quin tibi ingenio praestiterit nemo, usu quidem in re publica rerum maximarum facile omnis viceris; quibus autem studiis semper fueris, tenemus. Quam ob rem, si, ut dicis, animum quoque contulisti in istam rationem et quasi artem, habeo maximam gratiam Laelio; spero enim multo uberiora fore, quae a te dicentur, quam illa, quae a Graecis hominibus scripta sunt, omnia. Tum ille: Permagnam tu quidem expectationem, quod onus est ei, qui magnis de rebus dicturus est, gravissimum, inponis orationi meae. Et Philus: Quamvis sit magna, tamen eam vinces, ut soles; neque enim est periculum, ne te de re publica disserentem deficiat oratio.\n\nSECTION 38\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\nHic Scipio: Faciam, quod vultis, ut potero, et ingrediar in disputationem ea lege, qua credo omnibus in rebus disserendis utendum esse, si errorem velis tollere, ut eius rei, de qua quaeretur, si, nomen quod sit, conveniat, explicetur, quid declaretur eo nomine; quod si convenerit, tum demum decebit ingredi in sermonem; numquam enim, quale sit illud, de quo disputabitur, intellegi poterit, nisi, quid sit, fuerit intellectum prius. Quare, quoniam de re publica quaerimus, hoc primum videamus, quid sit id ipsum, quod quaerimus. Cum adprobavisset Laelius, Nec vero, inquit Africanus, ita disseram de re tam inlustri tamque nota, ut ad illa elementa revolvar, quibus uti docti homines his in rebus solent, ut a prima congressione maris et feminae, deinde a progenie et cognatione ordiar verbisque, quid sit et quot modis quidque dicatur, definiam saepius; apud prudentes enim homines et in maxima re publica summa cum gloria belli domique versatos cum loquar, non committam, ut *non* sit inlustrior illa ipsa res, de qua disputem, quam oratio mea; nec enim hoc suscepi, ut tamquam magister persequerer omnia, neque hoc polliceor me effecturum, ut ne qua particula in hoc sermone praetermissa sit. Tum Laelius: Ego vero istud ipsum genus orationis, quod polliceris, expecto.\n\nSECTION 39\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\nEst igitur, inquit Africanus, res publica res populi, populus autem non omnis hominum coetus quoquo modo congregatus, sed coetus multitudinis iuris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatus. Eius autem prima causa coeundi est non tam inbecillitas quam naturalis quaedam hominum quasi congregatio; non est enim singulare nec solivagum genus hoc, sed ita generatum, ut ne in omnium quidem rerum affluen*tia* […]\n\nSECTION 40fr\n\n(August. epist. 138.10) Brevi multitudo dispersa atque vaga concordia civitas facta erat.\n\nSECTION 41\n\nCHAPTER 26\n\n[…] *quae*dam quasi semina, neque reliquarum virtutum nec ipsius rei publicae reperiatur ulla institutio. Hi coetus igitur hac, de qua exposui, causa instituti sedem primum certo loco domiciliorum causa constituerunt; quam cum locis manuque saepsissent, eius modi coniunctionem tectorum oppidum vel urbem appellaverunt delubris distinctam spatiisque communibus. Omnis ergo populus, qui est talis coetus multitudinis, qualem exposui, omnis civitas, quae est constitutio populi, omnis res publica, quae, ut dixi, populi res est, consilio quodam regenda est, ut diuturna sit. Id autem consilium primum semper ad eam causam referendum est, quae causa genuit civitatem.\n\nSECTION 42\n\nDeinde aut uni tribuendum est aut delectis quibusdam aut suscipiendum est multitudini atque omnibus. Quare cum penes unum est omnium summa rerum, regem illum unum vocamus et regnum eius rei publicae statum. Cum autem est penes delectos, tum illa civitas optimatium arbitrio regi dicitur. Illa autem est civitas popularis (sic enim appellant), in qua in populo sunt omnia. Atque horum trium generum quodvis, si teneat illud vinclum, quod primum homines inter se rei publicae societate devinxit, non perfectum illud quidem neque mea sententia optimum *est*, sed tolerabile tamen, ut aliud alio possit esse praestantius. Nam vel rex aequus ac sapiens vel delecti ac principes cives vel ipse populus, quamquam id est minime probandum, tamen nullis interiectis iniquitatibus aut cupiditatibus posse videtur aliquo esse non incerto statu.\n\nSECTION 43\n\nCHAPTER 27\n\nSed et in regnis nimis expertes sunt ceteri communis iuris et consilii, et in optimatium dominatu vix particeps libertatis potest esse multitudo, cum omni consilio communi ac potestate careat, et cum omnia per populum geruntur quamvis iustum atque moderatum, tamen ipsa aequabilitas est iniqua, cum habet nullos gradus dignitatis. Itaque si Cyrus ille Perses iustissimus fuit sapientissimusque rex, tamen mihi populi res (ea enim est, ut dixi antea, publica) non maxime expetenda fuisse illa videtur, cum regeretur unius nutu ac modo; si Massilienses, nostri clientes, per delectos et principes cives summa iustitia reguntur, inest tamen in ea condicione populi similitudo quaedam servitutis; si Athenienses quibusdam temporibus sublato Areopago nihil nisi populi scitis ac decretis agebant, quoniam distinctos dignitatis gradus non habebant, non tenebat ornatum suum civitas.\n\nSECTION 44\n\nCHAPTER 28\n\nAtque hoc loquor de tribus his generibus rerum publicarum non turbatis atque permixtis, sed suum statum tenentibus. Quae genera primum sunt in iis singula vitiis, quae ante dixi, deinde habent perniciosa alia vitia; nullum est enim genus illarum rerum publicarum, quod non habeat iter ad finitimum quoddam malum praeceps ac lubricum. Nam illi regi, ut eum potissimum nominem, tolerabili aut, si voltis, etiam amabili, Cyro, subest ad inmutandi animi licentiam crudelissimus ille Phalaris, cuius in similitudinem dominatus unius proclivi cursu et facile delabitur. Illi autem Massiliensium paucorum et principum administrationi civitatis finitimus est, qui fuit quodam tempore apud Athenienses triginta *virorum* consensus et factio. Iam Atheniensium populi potestatem omnium rerum ipsi, ne alios requiramus, ad furorem multitudinis licentiamque conversam pesti […]\n\nSECTION 45\n\nCHAPTER 29\n\n[…] deterrimus et ex hac vel optimatium vel factiosa tyrannica illa vel regia vel etiam persaepe popularis, itemque ex ea genus aliquod ecflorescere ex illis, quae ante dixi, solet, mirique sunt orbes et quasi circumitus in rebus publicis commutationum et vicissitudinum; quos cum cognosse sapientis est, tum vero prospicere inpendentis in gubernanda re publica moderantem cursum atque in sua potestate retinentem magni cuiusdam civis et divini paene est viri. Itaque quartum quoddam genus rei publicae maxime probandum esse sentio, quod est ex his, quae prima dixi, moderatum et permixtum tribus.\n\nSECTION 46\n\nCHAPTER 30\n\nHic Laelius: Scio tibi ita placere, Africane; saepe enim ex te audivi; sed tamen, nisi molestum est, ex tribus istis modis rerum publicarum velim scire quod optimum iudices. Nam vel profuerit aliquod ad cog […]\n\nSECTION 47\n\nCHAPTER 31\n\n[…] et talis est quaeque res publica, qualis eius aut natura aut voluntas, qui illam regit. Itaque nulla alia in civitate, nisi in qua populi potestas summa est, ullum domicilium libertas habet; qua quidem certe nihil potest esse dulcius, et quae, si aequa non est, ne libertas quidem est. Qui autem aequa potest esse, omitto dicere in regno, ubi ne obscura quidem est aut dubia servitus, sed in istis civitatibus, in quibus verbo sunt liberi omnes? ferunt enim suffragia, mandant inperia, magistratus, ambiuntur, rogantur, sed ea dant, quae, etiamsi nolint, danda sint, et quae ipsi non habent, unde alii petunt; sunt enim expertes imperii, consilii publici, iudicii delectorum iudicum, quae familiarum vetustatibus aut pecuniis ponderantur. In libero autem populo, ut Rhodi, ut Athenis, nemo est civium, qui […]\n\nSECTION 48\n\nCHAPTER 32\n\n[…] *po*pulo aliquis unus pluresve divitiores opulentioresque extitissent, tum ex eorum fastidio et superbia nata esse commemorant cedentibus ignavis et inbecillis et adrogantiae divitum succumbentibus. Si vero ius suum populi teneant, negant quicquam esse praestantius, liberius, beatius, quippe qui domini sint legum, iudiciorum, belli, pacis, foederum, capitis unius cuiusque, pecuniae. Hanc unam rite rem publicam, id est rem populi, appellari putant. Itaque et a regum et a patrum dominatione solere in libertatem rem populi vindicari, non ex liberis populis reges requiri aut potestatem atque opes optimatium.\n\nSECTION 49\n\nEt vero negant oportere indomiti populi vitio genus hoc totum liberi populi repudiari, concordi populo et omnia referente ad incolumitatem et ad libertatem suam nihil esse inmutabilius, nihil firmius; facillimam autem in ea re publica esse concordiam, in qua idem conducat omnibus; ex utilitatis varietatibus, cum aliis aliud expediat, nasci discordias; itaque, cum patres rerum potirentur, numquam constitisse civitatis statum; multo iam id in regnis minus, quorum, ut ait Ennius, “nulla {regni} sancta societas nec fides est.” Quare cum lex sit civilis societatis vinculum, ius autem legis aequale, quo iure societas civium teneri potest, cum par non sit condicio civium? Si enim pecunias aequari non placet, si ingenia omnium paria esse non possunt, iura certe paria debent esse eorum inter se, qui sunt cives in eadem re publica. Quid est enim civitas nisi iuris societas? […] […]\n\nSECTION 50\n\nCHAPTER 33\n\n[…] Ceteras vero res publicas ne appellandas quidem putant iis nominibus, quibus illae sese appellari velint. Cur enim regem appellem Iovis optimi nomine hominem dominandi cupidum aut imperii singularis, populo oppresso dominantem, non tyrannum potius? tam enim esse clemens tyrannus quam {rex} inportunus potest; ut hoc populorum intersit, utrum comi domino an aspero serviant; quin serviant quidem, fieri non potest. Quo autem modo adsequi poterat Lacedaemo illa tum, cum praestare putabatur disciplina rei publicae, ut bonis uteretur iustisque regibus, cum esset habendus rex, quicumque genere regio natus esset? Nam optimatis quidem quis ferat, qui non populi concessu, sed suis comitiis hoc sibi nomen adrogaverunt? Qui enim iudicatur iste optimus? doctrina, artibus, studiis […] […]\n\nSECTION 51\n\nCHAPTER 34\n\n[…] si fortuito id faciet, tam cito evertetur quam navis, si e vectoribus sorte ductus ad gubernacula accesserit. Quodsi liber populus deliget, quibus se committat, deligetque, si modo salvus esse vult, optimum quemque, certe in optimorum consiliis posita est civitatium salus, praesertim cum hoc natura tulerit, non solum ut summi virtute et animo praeessent inbecillioribus, sed ut hi etiam parere summis velint. Verum hunc optimum statum pravis hominum opinionibus eversum esse dicunt, qui ignoratione virtutis, quae cum in paucis est, tum a paucis iudicatur et cernitur, opulentos homines et copiosos, tum genere nobili natos esse optimos putant. Hoc errore vulgi cum rem publicam opes paucorum, non virtutes tenere coeperunt, nomen illi principes optimatium mordicus tenent, re autem carent {eo nomine}. Nam divitiae, nomen, opes vacuae consilio et vivendi atque aliis imperandi modo dedecoris plenae sunt et insolentis superbiae, nec ulla deformior species est civitatis quam illa, in qua opulentissimi optimi putantur.\n\nSECTION 52\n\nVirtute vero gubernante rem publicam quid potest esse praeclarius? cum is, qui inperat aliis, servit ipse nulli cupiditati, cum, quas ad res civis instituit et vocat, eas omnis conplexus est ipse nec leges inponit populo, quibus ipse non pareat, sed suam vitam ut legem praefert suis civibus. Qui si unus satis omnia consequi posset, nihil opus esset pluribus; si universi videre optimum et in eo consentire possent, nemo delectos principes quaereret. Difficultas ineundi consilii rem a rege ad plures, error et temeritas populorum a multitudine ad paucos transtulit. Sic inter infirmitatem unius temeritatemque multorum medium optimates possederunt locum, quo nihil potest esse moderatius; quibus rem publicam tuentibus beatissimos esse populos necesse est vacuos omni cura et cogitatione aliis permisso otio suo, quibus id tuendum est neque committendum, ut sua commoda populus neglegi a principibus putet.\n\nSECTION 53\n\nNam aequabilitas quidem iuris, quam amplexantur liberi populi, neque servari potest (ipsi enim populi, quamvis soluti ecfrenatique sint, praecipue multis multa tribuunt, et est in ipsis magnus dilectus hominum et dignitatum), eaque, quae appellatur aequabilitas, iniquissima est. Cum enim par habetur honos summis et infimis, qui sint in omni populo necesse est, ipsa aequitas iniquissima est; quod in iis civitatibus, quae ab optimis reguntur, accidere non potest. Haec fere, Laeli, et quaedam eiusdem generis ab iis, qui eam formam rei publicae maxime laudant, disputari solent.\n\nSECTION 54\n\nCHAPTER 35\n\nTum Laelius: Quid tu, inquit, Scipio? e tribus istis quod maxime probas? S. Recte quaeris, quod maxime e tribus, quoniam eorum nullum ipsum per se separatim probo anteponoque singulis illud, quod conflatum fuerit ex omnibus. Sed si unum ac simplex *pro*bandum *sit*, regium *pro*bem […] pri […] in […] hoc loco appellatur, occurrit nomen quasi patrium regis, ut ex se natis, ita consulentis suis civibus et eos conservantis stu*dios*ius quam […] entis […] tem […] is […] tibus […] uos sustentari unius optimi et summi viri diligentia.\n\nSECTION 55\n\nAdsunt optimates, qui se melius hoc idem facere profiteantur plusque fore dicant in pluribus consilii quam in uno et eandem tamen aequitatem et fidem. Ecce autem maxima voce clamat populus neque se uni neque paucis velle parere; libertate ne feris quidem quicquam esse dulcius; hac omnes carere, sive regi sive optimatibus serviant. Ita caritate nos capiunt reges, consilio optimates, libertate populi, ut in comparando difficile ad eligendum sit, quid maxime velis. L. Credo, inquit, sed expediri, quae restant, vix poterunt, si hoc incohatum reliqueris.\n\nSECTION 56\n\nCHAPTER 36\n\nS. Imitemur ergo Aratum, qui magnis de rebus dicere exordiens a Iove incipiendum putat. L. Quo Iove? aut quid habet illius carminis simile haec oratio? S. Tantum, inquit, ut rite ab eo dicendi principia capiamus, quem unum omnium deorum et hominum regem esse omnes docti indoctique † expoliri consentiunt. Quid? inquit Laelius. Et ille: Quid censes, nisi quod est ante oculos? Sive haec ad utilitatem vitae constituta sunt a principibus rerum publicarum, ut rex putaretur unus esse in caelo, qui nutu, ut ait Homerus, totum Olympum converteret idemque et rex et pater haberetur omnium, magna auctoritas est multique testes, siquidem omnis multos appellari placet, ita consensisse gentes decretis videlicet principum, nihil esse rege melius, quoniam deos omnis censent unius regi numine; sive haec in errore inperitorum posita esse et fabularum similia didicimus, audiamus communis quasi doctores eruditorum hominum, qui tamquam oculis illa viderunt, quae nos vix audiendo cognoscimus. Quinam, inquit Laelius, isti sunt? Et ille: Qui natura omnium rerum pervestiganda senserunt omnem hunc mundum mente […] […]\n\nSECTION 58\n\nCHAPTER 37\n\n[…] Sed, si vis, Laeli, dabo tibi testes nec nimis antiquos nec ullo modo barbaros. L. Istos, inquit, volo. S. Videsne igitur minus quadringentorum annorum esse hanc urbem, ut sine regibus sit? L. Vero minus. S. Quid ergo? haec quadringentorum annorum aetas ut urbis et civitatis num valde longa est? L. Ista vero, inquit, adulta vix. S. Ergo his annis quadringentis Romae rex erat? L. Et superbus quidem. S. Quid supra? L. Iustissimus, et deinceps retro usque ad Romulum, qui ab hoc tempore anno sescentesimo rex erat. S. Ergo ne iste quidem pervetus? L. Minime ac prope senescente iam Graecia. S. Cedo, num, Scipio, barbarorum Romulus rex fuit? L. Si, ut Graeci dicunt omnis aut Graios esse aut barbaros, vereor, ne barbarorum rex fuerit; sin id nomen moribus dandum est, non linguis, non Graecos minus barbaros quam Romanos puto. Et Scipio: Atqui ad hoc, de quo agitur, non quaerimus gentem, ingenia quaerimus. Si enim et prudentes homines et non veteres reges habere voluerunt, utor neque perantiquis neque inhumanis ac feris testibus.\n\nSECTION 59\n\nCHAPTER 38\n\nTum Laelius: Video te, Scipio, testimoniis satis instructum, sed apud me, ut apud bonum iudicem, argumenta plus quam testes valent. Tum Scipio: Utere igitur argumento, Laeli, tute ipse sensus tui. Cuius, inquit ille, sensus? S. Si quando, si forte, tibi visus es irasci alicui. L. Ego vero saepius, quam vellem. S. Quid? tum, cum tu es iratus, permittis illi iracundiae dominatum animi tui? L. Non mehercule, inquit, sed imitor Archytam illum Tarentinum, qui cum ad villam venisset et omnia aliter offendisset ac iusserat, “A te infelicem”, inquit vilico, “quem necassem iam verberibus, nisi iratus essem.” Optime, inquit Scipio.\n\nSECTION 60\n\nErgo Archytas iracundiam videlicet dissidentem a ratione seditionem quandam animi vere ducebat eam*que* consilio sedari volebat; adde avaritiam, adde imperii, adde gloriae cupiditatem, adde libidines; et illud vides, si in animis hominum regale imperium sit, unius fore dominatum, consilii scilicet (ea est enim animi pars optima), consilio autem dominante nullum esse libidinibus, nullum irae, nullum temeritati locum. L. Sic, inquit, est. S. Probas igitur animum ita adfectum? L. Nihil vero, inquit, magis. S. Ergo non probares, si consilio pulso libidines, quae sunt innumerabiles, iracundiaeve tenerent omnia? L. Ego vero nihil isto animo, nihil ita animato homine miserius ducerem. S. Sub regno igitur tibi esse placet omnis animi partes, et eas regi consilio? L. Mihi vero sic placet. S. Cur igitur dubitas, quid de re publica sentias? in qua, si in plures translata res sit, intellegi iam licet nullum fore, quod praesit, inperium, quod quidem, nisi unum sit, esse nullum potest.\n\nSECTION 61\n\nCHAPTER 39\n\nTum Laelius: Quid, quaeso, interest inter unum et plures, si iustitia est in pluribus? Et Scipio: Quoniam testibus meis intellexi, Laeli, te non valde moveri, non desinam te uti teste, ut hoc, quod dico, probem. Me, inquit ille, quonam modo? S. Quia animum adverti nuper, cum essemus in Formiano, te familiae valde interdicere, ut uni dicto audiens esset. L. Quippe vilico. S. Quid? domi pluresne praesunt negotiis tuis? L. Immo vero unus, inquit. S. Quid? totam domum num quis alter praeter te regit? L. Minime vero. S. Quin tu igitur concedis idem in re publica, singulorum dominatus, si modo iusti sint, esse optimos? L. Adducor, inquit, ut prope modum adsentiar.\n\nSECTION 62\n\nCHAPTER 40\n\nEt Scipio: Tum magis adsentiare, Laeli, si, ut omittam similitudines, uni gubernatori, uni medico, si digni modo sint iis artibus, rectius esse alteri navem committere, aegrum alteri quam multis, ad maiora pervenero. L. Quaenam ista sunt? S. Quid? tu non vides unius inportunitate et superbia Tarquinii nomen huic populo in odium venisse regium? L. Video vero, inquit. S. Ergo etiam illud vides, de quo progrediente oratione plura me dicturum puto, Tarquinio exacto mira quadam exultasse populum insolentia libertatis; tum exacti in exilium innocentes, tum bona direpta multorum, tum annui consules, tum demissi populo fasces, tum provocationes omnium rerum, tum secessiones plebei, tum prorsus ita acta pleraque, ut in populo essent omnia. L. Est, inquit, ut dicis.\n\nSECTION 63\n\nEst vero, inquit Scipio, in pace et otio; licet enim lascivire, dum nihil metuas, ut in navi ac saepe etiam in morbo levi. Sed ut ille, qui navigat, cum subito mare coepit horrescere, et ille aeger ingravescente morbo unius opem inplorat, sic noster populus in pace et domi imperat et ipsis magistratibus minatur, recusat, appellat, provocat, in bello sic paret ut regi; valet enim salus plus quam libido. Gravioribus vero bellis etiam sine collega omne imperium nostri penes singulos esse voluerunt, quorum ipsum nomen vim suae potestatis indicat. Nam dictator quidem ab eo appellatur, quia dicitur, sed in nostris libris vides eum, Laeli, magistrum populi appellari. L. Video, inquit. Et Scipio: Sapienter igitur illi vete*res* […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 64\n\nCHAPTER 41\n\n[…] iusto quidem rege cum est populus orbatus, “pectora diu tenet desiderium”, sicut ait Ennius, “post optimi regis obitum”;\nsimul inter\n\nSese sic memorant: “o Romule, Romule die,”\n\n“Qualem te patriae custodem di genuerunt!”\n\n“O pater, o genitor, o sanguen dis oriundum!”\nNon eros nec dominos appellabant eos, quibus iuste paruerunt, denique ne reges quidem, sed patriae custodes, sed patres, sed deos; nec sine causa; quid enim adiungunt?\nTu produxisti nos intra luminis oras.\nVitam, honorem, decus sibi datum esse iustitia regis existimabant. Mansisset eadem voluntas in eorum posteris, si regum similitudo permansisset, sed vides unius iniustitia concidisse genus illud totum rei publicae. L. Video vero, inquit, et studeo cursus istos mutationum non magis in nostra quam in omni re publica noscere.\n\nSECTION 65\n\nCHAPTER 42\n\nEt Scipio: Est omnino, cum de illo genere rei publicae, quod maxime probo, quae sentio, dixero, accuratius mihi dicendum de commutationibus rerum publicarum, etsi minime facile eas in ea re publica futuras puto. Sed huius regiae prima et certissima est illa mutatio: Cum rex iniustus esse coepit, perit illud ilico genus, et est idem ille tyrannus, deterrimum genus et finitimum optimo; quem si optimates oppresserunt, quod ferme evenit, habet statum res publica de tribus secundarium; est enim quasi regium, id est patrium consilium populo bene consulentium principum. Sin per se populus interfecit aut eiecit tyrannum, est moderatior, quoad sentit et sapit, et sua re gesta laetatur tuerique vult per se constitutam rem publicam. Si quando aut regi iusto vim populus attulit regnove eum spoliavit aut etiam, id quod evenit saepius, optimatium sanguinem gustavit ac totam rem publicam substravit libidini suae (cave putes autem mare ullum aut flammam esse tantam, quam non facilius sit sedare quam effrenatam insolentia multitudinem), tum fit illud, quod apud Platonem est luculente dictum, si modo id exprimere Latine potuero; difficile factu est, sed conabor tamen.\n\nSECTION 66\n\nCHAPTER 43\n\n“Cum” enim inquit “inexplebiles populi fauces exaruerunt libertatis siti malisque usus ille ministris non modice temperatam, sed nimis meracam libertatem sitiens hausit, tum magistratus et principes, nisi valde lenes et remissi sint et large sibi libertatem ministrent, insequitur, insimulat, arguit, praepotentes, reges, tyrannos vocat.” Puto enim tibi haec esse nota. L. Vero mihi, inquit ille, notissima.\n\nSECTION 67\n\nS. Ergo illa sequuntur: “eos, qui pareant principibus, agitari ab eo populo et servos voluntarios appellari; eos autem, qui in magistratu privatorum similes esse velint, eosque privatos, qui efficiant, ne quid inter privatum et magistratum differat, ferunt laudibus et mactant honoribus, ut necesse sit in eius modi re publica plena libertatis esse omnia, ut et privata domus omnis vacet dominatione et hoc malum usque ad bestias perveniat, denique ut pater filium metuat, filius patrem neglegat, absit omnis pudor, ut plane liberi sint, nihil intersit, civis sit an peregrinus, magister ut discipulos metuat et iis blandiatur spernantque discipuli magistros, adulescentes ut senum sibi pondus adsumant, senes autem ad ludum adulescentium descendant, ne sint iis odiosi et graves; ex quo fit, ut etiam servi se liberius gerant, uxores eodem iure sint, quo viri, inque tanta libertate canes etiam et equi, aselli denique liberi sic incurrant, ut iis de via decedendum sit. Ergo ex hac infinita,” inquit, “licentia haec summa cogitur, ut ita fastidiosae mollesque mentes evadant civium, ut, si minima vis adhibeatur imperii, irascantur et perferre nequeant; ex quo leges quoque incipiunt neglegere, ut plane sine ullo domino sint.”\n\nSECTION 68\n\nCHAPTER 44\n\nTum Laelius: Prorsus, inquit, expressa sunt a te, quae dicta sunt ab illo. S. Atque, ut iam ad sermonis mei auctorem revertar, ex hac nimia licentia, quam illi solam libertatem putant, ait ille ut ex stirpe quadam existere et quasi nasci tyrannum. Nam ut ex nimia potentia principum oritur interitus principum, sic hunc nimis liberum populum libertas ipsa servitute adficit. Sic omnia nimia, cum vel in tempestate vel in agris vel in corporibus laetiora fuerunt, in contraria fere convertuntur, maximeque *id* in rebus publicis evenit, nimiaque illa libertas et populis et privatis in nimiam servitutem cadit. Itaque ex hac maxima libertate tyrannus gignitur et illa iniustissima et durissima servitus. Ex hoc enim populo indomito vel potius immani deligitur aliqui plerumque dux contra illos principes adflictos iam et depulsos loco audax, inpurus, consectans proterve bene saepe de re publica meritos, populo gratificans et aliena et sua; cui quia privato sunt oppositi timores, dantur imperia et ea continuantur, praesidiis etiam, ut Athenis Pisistratus, saepiuntur, postremo, a quibus producti sunt, existunt eorum ipsorum tyranni; quos si boni oppresserunt, ut saepe fit, recreatur civitas; sin audaces, fit illa factio, genus aliud tyrannorum, eademque oritur etiam ex illo saepe optimatium praeclaro statu, cum ipsos principes aliqua pravitas de via deflexit. Sic tamquam pilam rapiunt inter se rei publicae statum tyranni ab regibus, ab iis autem principes aut populi, a quibus aut factiones aut tyranni, nec diutius umquam tenetur idem rei publicae modus.\n\nSECTION 69\n\nCHAPTER 45\n\nQuod ita cum sit, *ex* tribus primis generibus longe praestat mea sententia regium, regio autem ipsi praestabit id, quod erit aequatum et temperatum ex tribus optimis rerum publicarum modis. Placet enim esse quiddam in re publica praestans et regale, esse aliud auctoritati principum inpartitum ac tributum, esse quasdam res servatas iudicio voluntatique multitudinis. Haec constitutio primum habet aequabilitatem quandam magnam, qua carere diutius vix possunt liberi, deinde firmitudinem, quod et illa prima facile in contraria vitia convertuntur, ut existat ex rege dominus, ex optimatibus factio, ex populo turba et confusio, quodque ipsa genera generibus saepe conmutantur novis, hoc in hac iuncta moderateque permixta conformatione rei publicae non ferme sine magnis principum vitiis evenit. Non est enim causa conversionis, ubi in suo quisque est gradu firmiter collocatus et non subest, quo praecipitet ac decidat.\n\nSECTION 70\n\nCHAPTER 46\n\nSed vereor, Laeli vosque homines amicissimi ac prudentissimi, ne, si diutius in hoc genere verser, quasi praecipientis cuiusdam et docentis et non vobiscum simul considerantis esse videatur oratio mea. Quam ob rem ingrediar in ea, quae nota sunt omnibus, quaesita autem a nobis iam diu. Sic enim decerno, sic sentio, sic adfirmo, nullam omnium rerum publicarum aut constitutione aut discriptione aut disciplina conferendam esse cum ea, quam patres nostri nobis acceptam iam inde a maioribus reliquerunt. Quam, si placet, quoniam ea, quae tenebatis ipsi, etiam ex me audire voluistis, simul et qualis sit et optimam esse ostendam expositaque ad exemplum nostra re publica accommodabo ad eam, si potero, omnem illam orationem, quae est mihi habenda de optimo civitatis statu. Quod si tenere et consequi potuero, cumulate munus hoc, cui me Laelius praeposuit, ut opinio mea fert, effecero.\n\nSECTION 71\n\nCHAPTER 47\n\nTum Laelius: Tuum vero, inquit, Scipio, ac tuum quidem unius. Quis enim te potius aut de maiorum dixerit institutis, cum sis clarissimis ipse maioribus? aut de optimo statu civitatis? quem si habemus, etsi ne nunc quidem, tum vero quis te possit esse florentior? aut de consiliis in posterum providendis, cum tu duobus huius urbis terroribus depulsis in omne tempus prospexeris?\n\n### Book 1 — Fragments of Uncertain Position\n\nSECTION 1\n\n(Plin. Nat. praef. 7)\nnec doctíssimis.\n\n†Manium Persium haec légere nolo, Iúnium Congúm volo.\n\nSECTION 2\n\n(Non. p. 426M) Sic, quoniam plura beneficia continet patria et est antiquior parens quam is, qui creavit, maior ei profecto quam parenti debetur gratia.\n\nSECTION 3\n\n(Non. p. 526M) Nec tantum Karthago habuisset opum sescentos fere annos sine consiliis et disciplina.\n\nSECTION 4\n\n(Non. p. 276M) Cognoscere mehercule, inquit, consuetudinem istam et studium sermonis.\n\nSECTION 5\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 3.16.5) Profecto omnis istorum disputatio, quamquam uberrimos fontes virtutis et scientiae continet, tamen collata cum eorum actis perfectisque rebus vereor ne non tantum videatur attulisse negotii hominibus, quantam oblectationem.\n\nSECTION 6\n\n(Arusianus Messius GL 7.457K) A qua isti avocabant.\n\n### Book 2\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n*Cum omnes flagrarent cupi*ditate audiendi, ingressus est sic loqui Scipio: Catonis hoc senis est, quem, ut scitis, unice dilexi maximeque sum admiratus cuique vel patris utriusque iudicio vel etiam meo studio me totum ab adulescentia dedidi; cuius me numquam satiare potuit oratio; tantus erat in homine usus rei publicae, quam et domi et militiae cum optime, tum etiam diutissime gesserat, et modus in dicendo et gravitate mixtus lepos et summum vel discendi studium vel docendi et orationi vita admodum congruens.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nIs dicere solebat ob hanc causam praestare nostrae civitatis statum ceteris civitatibus, quod in illis singuli fuissent fere, qui suam quisque rem publicam constituissent legibus atque institutis suis, ut Cretum Minos, Lacedaemoniorum Lycurgus, Atheniensium, quae persaepe commutata esset, tum Theseus, tum Draco, tum Solo, tum Clisthenes, tum multi alii, postremo exsanguem iam et iacentem doctus vir Phalereus sustentasset Demetrius, nostra autem res publica non unius esset ingenio, sed multorum, nec una hominis vita, sed aliquot constituta saeculis et aetatibus. Nam neque ullum ingenium tantum extitisse dicebat, ut, quem res nulla fugeret, quisquam aliquando fuisset, neque cuncta ingenia conlata in unum tantum posse uno tempore providere, ut omnia complecterentur sine rerum usu ac vetustate.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nQuam ob rem, ut ille solebat, ita nunc mea repetet oratio populi originem; libenter enim etiam verbo utor Catonis. Facilius autem, quod est propositum, consequar, si nostram rem publicam vobis et nascentem et crescentem et adultam et iam firmam atque robustam ostendero, quam si mihi aliquam, ut apud Platonem Socrates, ipse finxero.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nHoc cum omnes adprobavissent, Quod habemus, inquit, institutae rei publicae tam clarum ac tam omnibus notum exordium quam huius urbis condendae principium profectum a Romulo? qui patre Marte natus (concedamus enim famae hominum, praesertim non inveteratae solum, sed etiam sapienter a maioribus proditae, bene meriti de rebus communibus ut genere etiam putarentur, non solum ingenio esse divino)—is igitur, ut natus sit, cum Remo fratre dicitur ab Amulio, rege Albano, ob labefactandi regni timorem ad Tiberim exponi iussus esse; quo in loco cum esset silvestris beluae sustentatus uberibus pastoresque eum sustulissent et in agresti cultu laboreque aluissent, perhibetur, ut adoleverit, et corporis viribus et animi ferocitate tantum ceteris praestitisse, ut omnes, qui tum eos agros, ubi hodie est haec urbs, incolebant, aequo animo illi libenterque parerent. Quorum copiis cum se ducem praebuisset, ut iam a fabulis ad facta veniamus, oppressisse Longam Albam, validam urbem et potentem temporibus illis, Amuliumque regem interemisse fertur.\n\nSECTION 5\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nQua gloria parta urbem auspicato condere et firmare dicitur primum cogitavisse rem publicam. Urbi autem locum, quod est ei, qui diuturnam rem publicam serere conatur, diligentissime providendum, incredibili oportunitate delegit. Neque enim ad mare admovit, quod ei fuit illa manu copiisque facillimum, ut in agrum Rutulorum Aboriginumque procederet, aut in ostio Tiberino, quem in locum multis post annis rex Ancus coloniam deduxit, urbem ipse conderet, sed hoc vir excellenti providentia sensit ac vidit, non esse oportunissimos situs maritimos urbibus eis, quae ad spem diuturnitatis conderentur atque imperii, primum quod essent urbes maritimae non solum multis periculis oppositae, sed etiam caecis.\n\nSECTION 6\n\nNam terra continens adventus hostium non modo expectatos, sed etiam repentinos multis indiciis et quasi fragore quodam et sonitu ipso ante denuntiat; neque vero quisquam potest hostis advolare terra, quin eum non modo esse, sed etiam quis et unde sit, scire possimus. Maritimus vero ille et navalis hostis ante adesse potest, quam quisquam venturum esse suspicari queat, nec vero, cum venit, prae se fert, aut qui sit aut unde veniat aut etiam quid velit, denique ne nota quidem ulla, pacatus an hostis sit, discerni ac iudicari potest.\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\nEst autem maritimis urbibus etiam quaedam corruptela ac demutatio morum; admiscentur enim novis sermonibus ac disciplinis et inportantur non merces solum adventiciae, sed etiam mores, ut nihil possit in patriis institutis manere integrum. Iam qui incolunt eas urbes, non haerent in suis sedibus, sed volucri semper spe et cogitatione rapiuntur a domo longius, atque etiam cum manent corpore, animo tamen exulant et vagantur. Nec vero ulla res magis labefactatam diu et Carthaginem et Corinthum pervertit aliquando quam hic error ac dissipatio civium, quod mercandi cupiditate et navigandi et agrorum et armorum cultum reliquerant.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nMulta etiam ad luxuriam invitamenta perniciosa civitatibus subpeditantur mari, quae vel capiuntur vel inportantur; atque habet etiam amoenitas ipsa vel sumptuosas vel desidiosas inlecebras multas cupiditatum. Et, quod de Corintho dixi, id haud scio an liceat de cuncta Graecia verissime dicere; nam et ipsa Peloponnesus fere tota in mari est, nec praeter Phliuntios ulli sunt, quorum agri non contingant mare, et extra Peloponnesum Aenianes et Doris et Dolopes soli absunt a mari. Quid dicam insulas Graeciae? quae fluctibus cinctae natant paene ipsae simul cum civitatum institutis et moribus.\n\nSECTION 9\n\nAtque haec quidem, ut supra dixi, veteris sunt Graeciae. Coloniarum vero quae est deducta a Graiis in Asiam, Thracam, Italiam, Siciliam, Africam praeter unam Magnesiam, quam unda non adluat? Ita barbarorum agris quasi adtexta quaedam videtur ora esse Graeciae; nam e barbaris quidem ipsis nulli erant antea maritumi praeter Etruscos et Poenos, alteri mercandi causa, latrocinandi alteri. Quae causa perspicua est malorum commutationumque Graeciae propter ea vitia maritimarum urbium, quae ante paulo perbreviter adtigi. Sed tamen in his vitiis inest illa magna commoditas, et, quod ubique genitum est, ut ad eam urbem, quam incolas, possit adnare, et rursus ut id, quod agri efferant sui, quascumque velint in terras, portare possint ac mittere.\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\nQui potuit igitur divinius et utilitates conplecti maritimas Romulus et vitia vitare, quam quod urbem perennis amnis et aequabilis et in mare late influentis posuit in ripa? quo posset urbs et accipere a mari, quo egeret, et reddere, quo redundaret, eodemque ut flumine res ad victum cultumque maxime necessarias non solum mari †absorberet, sed etiam invectas acciperet ex terra, ut mihi iam tum divinasse ille videatur hanc urbem sedem aliquando et domum summo esse imperio praebituram; nam hanc rerum tantam potentiam non ferme facilius ulla in parte Italiae posita urbs tenere potuisset.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\nUrbis autem ipsius nativa praesidia quis est tam neglegens qui non habeat animo notata *ac* plane cognita? cuius is est tractus ductusque muri cum Romuli, tum etiam reliquorum regum sapientia definitus ex omni parte arduis praeruptisque montibus, *ut* unus aditus, qui esset inter Esquilinum Quirinalemque montem, maximo aggere obiecto fossa cingeretur vastissima, atque ut ita munita arx circumiectu arduo et quasi circumciso saxo niteretur, ut etiam in illa tempestate horribili Gallici adventus incolumis atque intacta permanserit. Locumque delegit et fontibus abundantem et in regione pestilenti salubrem; colles enim sunt, qui cum perflantur ipsi, tum adferunt umbram vallibus.\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\nAtque haec quidem perceleriter confecit; nam et urbem constituit, quam e suo nomine Romam iussit nominari, et ad firmandam novam civitatem novum quoddam et subagreste consilium, sed ad muniendas opes regni ac populi sui magni hominis et iam tum longe providentis secutus est, cum Sabinas honesto ortas loco virgines, quae Romam ludorum gratia venissent, quos tum primum anniversarios in circo facere instituisset, Consualibus rapi iussit easque in familiarum amplissimarum matrimoniis collocavit.\n\nSECTION 13\n\nQua ex causa cum bellum Romanis Sabini intulissent proeliique certamen varium atque anceps fuisset, cum T. Tatio, rege Sabinorum, foedus icit matronis ipsis, quae raptae erant, orantibus; quo foedere et Sabinos in civitatem adscivit sacris conmunicatis et regnum suum cum illorum rege sociavit.\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\nPost interitum autem Tatii cum ad eum dominatus omnis reccidisset, quamquam cum Tatio in regium consilium delegerat principes (qui appellati sunt propter caritatem patres) populumque et suo et Tatii nomine et Lucumonis, qui Romuli socius in Sabino proelio occiderat, in tribus tris curiasque triginta discripserat (quas curias earum nominibus nuncupavit, quae ex Sabinis virgines raptae postea fuerant oratrices pacis et foederis)—sed quamquam ea Tatio sic erant discripta vivo, tamen eo interfecto multo etiam magis Romulus patrum auctoritate consilioque regnavit.\n\nSECTION 15\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\nQuo facto primum vidit iudicavitque idem, quod Spartae Lycurgus paulo ante viderat, singulari imperio et potestate regia tum melius gubernari et regi civitates, si esset optimi cuiusque ad illam vim dominationis adiuncta auctoritas. Itaque hoc consilio et quasi senatu fultus et munitus et bella cum finitimis felicissime multa gessit et, cum ipse nihil ex praeda domum suam reportaret, locupletare civis non destitit.\n\nSECTION 16\n\nTum, id quo retinemus hodie magna cum salute rei publicae, auspiciis plurimum obsecutus est Romulus. Nam et ipse, quod principium rei publicae fuit, urbem condidit auspicato et omnibus publicis rebus instituendis, qui sibi essent in auspiciis, ex singulis tribubus singulos cooptavit augures et habuit plebem in clientelas principum discriptam (quod quantae fuerit utilitati, post videro) multaeque dictione ovium et bovum (quod tum erat res in pecore et locorum possessionibus, ex quo pecuniosi et locupletes vocabantur), non vi et suppliciis coercebat.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\nAc Romulus cum septem et triginta regnavisset annos et haec egregia duo firmamenta rei publicae peperisset, auspicia et senatum, tantum est consecutus, ut, cum subito sole obscurato non conparuisset, deorum in numero conlocatus putaretur; quam opinionem nemo umquam mortalis adsequi potuit sine eximia virtutis gloria.\n\nSECTION 18\n\nAtque hoc eo magis est in Romulo admirandum, quod ceteri, qui dii ex hominibus facti esse dicuntur, minus eruditis hominum saeculis fuerunt, ut fingendi proclivis esset ratio, cum imperiti facile ad credendum inpellerentur, Romuli autem aetatem minus his sescentis annis iam inveteratis litteris atque doctrinis omnique illo antiquo ex inculta hominum vita errore sublato fuisse cernimus. Nam si, id quod Graecorum investigatur annalibus, Roma condita est secundo anno Olympiadis septumae, in id saeculum Romuli cecidit aetas, cum iam plena Graecia poetarum et musicorum esset minorque fabulis nisi de veteribus rebus haberetur fides. Nam centum et octo annis postquam Lycurgus leges scribere instituit, prima posita est Olympias, quam quidam nominis errore ab eodem Lycurgo constitutam putant; Homerum autem, qui minimum dicunt, Lycurgi aetati triginta annis anteponunt fere.\n\nSECTION 19\n\nEx quo intellegi potest permultis annis ante Homerum fuisse quam Romulum, ut iam doctis hominibus ac temporibus ipsis eruditis ad fingendum vix quicquam esset loci. Antiquitas enim recepit fabulas fictas etiam non numquam\n\nSECTION 19(fr)\n\n(August. C.D. 22.6) incondite, haec aetas autem iam exculta praesertim eludens omne, quod fieri non potest, respuit.\n\nSECTION 20\n\n[…] us ne*pos ei*us, ut di*xeru*nt quidam, ⟨e⟩x filia. Quo *autem* ille mor*tuus*, ⟨e⟩odem *est an*no na*tus* *Si*moni*des Ol*ympia*de se*xta et quin*qua*gesima, *ut f*acilius *intel*legi pos*sit tu*m de Ro*mu*li inmortalitate creditum, cum iam inveterata vita hominum ac tractata esset et cognita. Sed profecto tanta fuit in eo vis ingenii atque virtutis, ut id de Romulo Proculo Iulio, homini agresti, crederetur, quod multis iam ante saeculis nullo alio de mortali homines credidissent; qui inpulsu patrum, quo illi a se invidiam interitus Romuli pellerent, in contione dixisse fertur a se visum esse in eo colle Romulum, qui nunc Quirinalis vocatur; eum sibi mandasse, ut populum rogaret, ut sibi eo in colle delubrum fieret; se deum esse et Quirinum vocari.\n\nSECTION 21\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\nVidetisne igitur unius viri consilio non solum ortum novum populum neque ut in cunabulis vagientem relictum, sed adultum iam et paene puberem? Tum Laelius: Nos vero videmus, et te quidem ingressum ratione ad disputandum nova, quae nusquam est in Graecorum libris. Nam princeps ille, quo nemo in scribendo praestantior fuit, aream sibi sumsit, in qua civitatem extrueret arbitratu suo, praeclaram ille quidem fortasse, sed a vita hominum abhorrentem et moribus,\n\nSECTION 22\n\nreliqui disseruerunt sine ullo certo exemplari formaque rei publicae de generibus et de rationibus civitatum; tu mihi videris utrumque facturus; es enim ita ingressus, ut, quae ipse reperias, tribuere aliis malis quam, ut facit apud Platonem Socrates, ipse fingere et illa de urbis situ revoces ad rationem, quae a Romulo casu aut necessitate facta sunt, et disputes non vaganti oratione, sed defixa in una re publica. Quare perge, ut instituisti; prospicere enim iam videor te reliquos reges persequente quasi perfectam rem publicam.\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 12\n\nErgo, inquit Scipio, cum ille Romuli senatus, qui constabat ex optimatibus, quibus ipse rex tantum tribuisset, ut eos patres vellet nominari patriciosque eorum liberos, temptaret post Romuli excessum, ut ipse regeret sine rege rem publicam, populus id non tulit desiderioque Romuli postea regem flagitare non destitit; cum prudenter illi principes novam et inauditam ceteris gentibus interregni ineundi rationem excogitaverunt, ut, quoad certus rex declaratus esset, nec sine rege civitas nec diuturno rege esset uno nec committeretur, ut quisquam inveterata potestate aut ad deponendum imperium tardior esset aut ad optinendum munitior.\n\nSECTION 24\n\nQuo quidem tempore novus ille populus vidit tamen id, quod fugit Lacedaemonium Lycurgum, qui regem non deligendum duxit, si modo hoc in Lycurgi potestate potuit esse, sed habendum, qualiscumque is foret, qui modo esset Herculis stirpe generatus; nostri illi etiam tum agrestes viderunt virtutem et sapientiam regalem, non progeniem quaeri oportere.\n\nSECTION 25\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\nQuibus cum esse praestantem Numam Pompilium fama ferret, praetermissis suis civibus regem alienigenam patribus auctoribus sibi ipse populus adscivit eumque ad regnandum Sabinum hominem Romam Curibus accivit. Qui ut huc venit, quamquam populus curiatis eum comitiis regem esse iusserat, tamen ipse de suo imperio curiatam legem tulit, hominesque Romanos instituto Romuli bellicis studiis ut vidit incensos, existimavit eos paulum ab illa consuetudine esse revocandos.\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\nAc primum agros, quos bello Romulus ceperat, divisit viritim civibus docuitque sine depopulatione atque praeda posse eos colendis agris abundare commodis omnibus amoremque eis otii et pacis iniecit, quibus facillime iustitia et fides convalescit, et quorum patrocinio maxime cultus agrorum perceptioque frugum defenditur. Idemque Pompilius et auspiciis maioribus inventis ad pristinum numerum duo augures addidit et sacris e principum numero pontifices quinque praefecit et animos propositis legibus his, quas in monumentis habemus, ardentis consuetudine et cupiditate bellandi religionum caerimoniis mitigavit adiunxitque praeterea flamines, Salios virginesque Vestales omnisque partis religionis statuit sanctissime.\n\nSECTION 27\n\nSacrorum autem ipsorum diligentiam difficilem, apparatum perfacilem esse voluit; nam quae perdiscenda quaeque observanda essent, multa constituit, sed ea sine inpensa. Sic religionibus colendis operam addidit, sumtum removit, idemque mercatus, ludos omnesque conveniundi causas et celebritates invenit. Quibus rebus institutis ad humanitatem atque mansuetudinem revocavit animos hominum studiis bellandi iam immanis ac feros. Sic ille cum undequadraginta annos summa in pace concordiaque regnavisset (sequamur enim potissimum Polybium nostrum, quo nemo fuit in exquirendis temporibus diligentior), excessit e vita duabus praeclarissimis ad diuturnitatem rei publicae rebus confirmatis, religione atque clementia.\n\nSECTION 28\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\nQuae cum Scipio dixisset, Verene, inquit Manilius, hoc memoriae proditum est, Africane, regem istum Numam Pythagorae ipsius discipulum aut certe Pythagoreum fuisse? saepe enim hoc de maioribus natu audivimus et ita intellegimus vulgo existimari; neque vero satis id annalium publicorum auctoritate declaratum videmus. Tum Scipio: Falsum est enim, Manili, inquit, id totum, neque solum fictum, sed etiam imperite absurdeque fictum; ea sunt enim demum non ferenda in mendacio, quae non solum ficta esse, sed ne fieri quidem potuisse cernimus. Nam quartum iam annum regnante Lucio Tarquinio Superbo Sybarim et Crotonem et in eas Italiae partis Pythagoras venisse reperitur; Olympias enim secunda et sexagesima eadem Superbi regni initium et Pythagorae declarat adventum.\n\nSECTION 29\n\nEx quo intellegi regiis annis dinumeratis potest anno fere centesimo et quadragesimo post mortem Numae primum Italiam Pythagoram attigisse; neque hoc inter eos, qui diligentissime persecuti sunt temporum annales, ulla est umquam in dubitatione versatum. Di inmortales, inquit Manilius, quantus iste est hominum et quam inveteratus error! Ac tamen facile patior non esse nos transmarinis nec inportatis artibus eruditos, sed genuinis domesticisque virtutibus.\n\nSECTION 30\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\nAtqui multo id facilius cognosces, inquit Africanus, si progredientem rem publicam atque in optimum statum naturali quodam itinere et cursu venientem videris; quin hoc ipso sapientiam maiorum statues esse laudandam, quod multa intelleges etiam aliunde sumta meliora apud nos multo esse facta, quam ibi fuissent, unde huc translata essent atque ubi primum extitissent, intellegesque non fortuito populum Romanum, sed consilio et disciplina confirmatum esse nec tamen adversante fortuna.\n\nSECTION 31\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\nMortuo rege Pompilio Tullum Hostilium populus regem interrege rogante comitiis curiatis creavit, isque de imperio suo exemplo Pompilii populum consuluit curiatim. Cuius excellens in re militari gloria magnaeque extiterunt res bellicae, fecitque idem et saepsit de manubiis comitium et curiam constituitque ius, quo bella indicerentur, quod per se iustissime inventum sanxit fetiali religione, ut omne bellum, quod denuntiatum indictumque non esset, id iniustum esse atque inpium iudicaretur. Et ut advertatis animum, quam sapienter iam reges hoc nostri viderint, tribuenda quaedam esse populo (multa enim nobis de eo genere dicenda sunt), ne insignibus quidem regiis Tullus nisi iussu populi est ausus uti. Nam ut sibi duodecim lictores cum fascibus anteire liceret […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\n[…] *neque* enim serpit, sed volat in optimum statum instituto tuo sermone res publica. S. Post eum Numae Pompilii nepos ex filia rex a populo est Ancus Marcius constitutus, itemque de imperio suo legem curiatam tulit. Qui cum Latinos bello devicisset, adscivit eos in civitatem, atque idem Aventinum et Caelium montem adiunxit urbi, quosque agros ceperat, divisit et silvas maritimas omnis publicavit, quas ceperat, et ad ostium Tiberis urbem condidit colonisque firmavit. Atque ita cum tres et viginti regnavisset annos, est mortuus. Tum Laelius: Laudandus etiam iste rex; sed obscura est historia Romana, siquidem istius regis matrem habemus, ignoramus patrem. S. Ita est, inquit; sed temporum illorum tantum fere regum inlustrata sunt nomina.\n\nSECTION 34\n\nCHAPTER 19\n\nSed hoc loco primum videtur insitiva quadam disciplina doctior facta esse civitas. Influxit enim non tenuis quidam e Graecia rivulus in hanc urbem, sed abundantissimus amnis illarum disciplinarum et artium. Fuisse enim quendam ferunt Demaratum Corinthium et honore et auctoritate et fortunis facile civitatis suae principem; qui cum Corinthiorum tyrannum Cypselum ferre non potuisset, fugisse cum magna pecunia dicitur ac se contulisse Tarquinios, in urbem Etruriae florentissimam. Cumque audiret dominationem Cypseli confirmari, defugit patriam vir liber ac fortis et adscitus est civis a Tarquiniensibus atque in ea civitate domicilium et sedes collocavit. Ubi cum de matre familias Tarquiniensi duo filios procreavisset, omnibus eos artibus ad Graecorum disciplinam eru*diit* […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 35\n\nCHAPTER 20\n\n[…] facile in civitatem receptus esset, propter humanitatem atque doctrinam Anco regi familiaris est factus usque eo, ut consiliorum omnium particeps et socius paene regni putaretur. Erat in eo praeterea summa comitas, summa in omnis civis opis, auxilii, defensionis, largiendi etiam benignitas. Itaque mortuo Marcio cunctis populi suffragiis rex est creatus L. Tarquinius; sic enim suum nomen ex Graeco nomine inflexerat, ut in omni genere huius populi consuetudinem videretur imitatus. Isque ut de suo imperio legem tulit, principio duplicavit illum pristinum patrum numerum et antiquos patres maiorum gentium appellavit, quos priores sententiam rogabat, a se adscitos minorum.\n\nSECTION 36\n\nDeinde equitatum ad hunc morem constituit, qui usque adhuc est retentus, nec potuit Titiensium et Rhamnensium et Lucerum mutare, cum cuperet, nomina, quod auctor ei summa augur gloria Attus Navius non erat. Atque etiam Corinthios video publicis equis adsignandis et alendis orborum et viduarum tributis fuisse quondam diligentis. Sed tamen prioribus equitum partibus secundis additis ∞ ⅰↄ ⅽⅽⅽ fecit equites numerumque duplicavit. Postea bello subegit Aequorum magnam gentem et ferocem et rebus populi Romani imminentem, idemque Sabinos cum a moenibus urbis reppulisset, equitatu fudit belloque devicit. Atque eundem primum ludos maximos, qui Romani dicti sunt, fecisse accepimus aedemque in Capitolio Iovi optimo maximo bello Sabino in ipsa pugna vovisse faciendam mortuumque esse, cum duodequadraginta regnavisset annos.\n\nSECTION 37\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\nTum Laelius: Nunc fit illud Catonis certius, nec temporis unius nec hominis esse constitutionem rei publicae; perspicuum est enim, quanta in singulos reges rerum bonarum et utilium fiat accessio. Sed sequitur is, qui mihi videtur ex omnibus in re publica vidisse plurimum. Ita est, inquit Scipio. Nam post eum Servius Tullius primus iniussu populi regnavisse traditur, quem ferunt ex serva Tarquiniense natum, cum esset ex quodam regis cliente conceptus. Qui cum famulorum *in* numero educatus ad epulas regis adsisteret, non latuit scintilla ingenii, quae iam tum elucebat in puero; sic erat in omni vel officio vel sermone sollers. Itaque Tarquinius, qui admodum parvos tum haberet liberos, sic Servium diligebat, ut is eius vulgo haberetur filius, atque eum summo studio omnibus iis artibus, quas ipse didicerat, ad exquisitissimam consuetudinem Graecorum erudiit.\n\nSECTION 38\n\nSed cum Tarquinius insidiis Anci filiorum interisset Serviusque, ut ante dixi, regnare coepisset non iussu, sed voluntate atque concessu civium, quod, cum Tarquinius ex vulnere aeger fuisse et vivere falso diceretur, ille regio ornatu ius dixisset obaeratosque pecunia sua liberavisset multaque comitate usus iussu Tarquinii se ius dicere probavisset, non commisit se patribus, sed Tarquinio sepulto populum de se ipse consuluit iussusque regnare legem de imperio suo curiatam tulit. Et primum Etruscorum iniurias bello est ultus; ex quo cum ma […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 39\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\n[…] duodeviginti censu maximo. Deinde equitum magno numero ex omni populi summa separato relicuum populum distribuit in quinque classis senioresque a iunioribus divisit easque ita disparavit, ut suffragia non in multitudinis, sed in locupletium potestate essent, curavitque, quod semper in re publica tenendum est, ne plurimum valeant plurimi. Quae discriptio si esset ignota vobis, explicaretur a me; nunc rationem videtis esse talem, ut †equitum centuriae cum sex suffragiis et prima classis addita centuria, quae ad summum usum urbis fabris tignariis est data, lxxxviiii centurias habeat; quibus ex centum quattuor centuriis (tot enim reliquae sunt) octo solae si accesserunt, confecta est vis populi universa, relicuaque multo maior multitudo sex et nonaginta centuriarum neque excluderetur suffragiis, ne superbum esset, nec valeret nimis, ne esset periculosum.\n\nSECTION 40\n\nIn quo etiam verbis ac nominibus ipsis fuit diligens; qui cum locupletis assiduos appellasset ab asse dando, eos, qui aut non plus mille quingentos aeris aut omnino nihil in suum censum praeter caput attulissent, proletarios nominavit, ut ex iis quasi proles, id est quasi progenies civitatis, expectari videretur. Illarum autem sex et nonaginta centuriarum in una centuria tum quidem plures censebantur quam paene in prima classe tota. Ita nec prohibebatur quisquam iure suffragii, et is valebat in suffragio plurimum, cuius plurimum intererat esse in optimo statu civitatem. Quin etiam accensis velatis, liticinibus, cornicinibus, proletariis […] […]\n\nSECTION 41\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\n(Non. p. 342M) Statu esse optimo constitutam rem publicam, quae ex tribus generibus illis, regali et optumati et populari, confusa modice nec puniendo inritet animum inmanem ac ferum.\n\nSECTION 42\n\n[…] *quinque et* sexaginta annis antiquior, quod erat xxxviiii ante primam Olympiadem condita. Et antiquissimus ille Lycurgus eadem vidit fere. Itaque ista aequabilitas atque hoc triplex rerum publicarum genus videtur mihi commune nobis cum illis populis fuisse. Sed, quod proprium est in nostra re publica, quo nihil possit esse praeclarius, id persequar, si potero, subtilius; quod erit eius modi, nihil ut tale ulla in re publica reperiatur. Haec enim, quae adhuc exposui, ita mixta fuerunt et in hac civitate et in Lacedaemoniorum et in Karthaginiensium, ut temperata nullo fuerint modo.\n\nSECTION 43\n\nNam in qua re publica est unus aliquis perpetua potestate, praesertim regia, quamvis in ea sit et senatus, ut tum fuit Romae, cum erant reges, ut Spartae Lycurgi legibus, et ut sit aliquod etiam populi ius, ut fuit apud nostros reges, tamen illud excellit regium nomen, neque potest eius modi res publica non regnum et esse et vocari. Ea autem forma civitatis mutabilis maxime est hanc ob causam, quod unius vitio praecipitata in perniciosissimam partem facillime decidit. Nam ipsum regale genus civitatis non modo non est reprehendendum, sed haud scio an reliquis simplicibus longe anteponendum, si ullum probarem simplex rei publicae genus, sed ita, quoad statum suum retinet. Is est autem status, ut unius perpetua potestate et iustitia omnique sapientia regatur salus et aequabilitas et otium civium. Desunt omnino ei populo multa, *qui* sub rege est, in primisque libertas, quae non in eo est, ut iusto utamur domino, sed ut nul*lo* […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 44\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\n[…] ferebant. Etenim illi iniusto domino atque acerbo aliquam diu in rebus gerundis prospera fortuna comitata est. Nam et omne Latium bello devicit et Suessam Pometiam, urbem opulentam refertamque, cepit et maxima auri argentique praeda locupletatus votum patris Capitolii aedificatione persolvit et colonias deduxit et institutis eorum, a quibus ortus erat, dona magnifica quasi libamenta praedarum Delphos ad Apollinem misit.\n\nSECTION 45\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\nHic ille iam vertetur orbis, cuius naturalem motum atque circuitum a primo discite adgnoscere. Id enim est caput civilis prudentiae, in qua omnis haec nostra versatur oratio, videre itinera flexusque rerum publicarum, ut, cum sciatis, quo quaeque res inclinet, retinere aut ante possitis occurrere. Nam rex ille, de quo loquor, primum optimi regis caede maculatus integra mente non erat, et cum metueret ipse poenam sceleris sui summam, metui se volebat; deinde victoriis divitiisque subnixus exultabat insolentia neque suos mores regere poterat neque suorum libidines.\n\nSECTION 46\n\nItaque cum maior eius filius Lucretiae, Tricipitini filiae, Conlatini uxori, vim attulisset mulierque pudens et nobilis ob illam iniuriam sese ipsa morte multavisset, tum vir ingenio et virtute praestans, L. Brutus, depulit a civibus suis iniustum illud durae servitutis iugum. Qui cum privatus esset, totam rem publicam sustinuit primusque in hac civitate docuit in conservanda civium libertate esse privatum neminem. Quo auctore et principe concitata civitas et hac recenti querella Lucretiae patris ac propinquorum et recordatione superbiae Tarquinii multarumque iniuriarum et ipsius et filiorum exulem et regem ipsum et liberos eius et gentem Tarquiniorum esse iussit.\n\nSECTION 47\n\nCHAPTER 26\n\nVidetisne igitur, ut de rege dominus extiterit uniusque vitio genus rei publicae ex bono in deterrumum conversum sit? Hic est enim dominus populi, quem Graeci tyrannum vocant; nam regem illum volunt esse, qui consulit ut parens populo conservatque eos, quibus est praepositus, quam optima in condicione vivendi, sane bonum, ut dixi, rei publicae genus, sed tamen inclinatum et quasi pronum ad perniciosissimum statum.\n\nSECTION 48\n\nSimul atque enim se inflexit hic rex in dominatum iniustiorem, fit continuo tyrannus, quo neque taetrius neque foedius nec dis hominibusque invisius animal ullum cogitari potest; qui quamquam figura est hominis, morum tamen inmanitate vastissimas vincit beluas. Quis enim hunc hominem rite dixerit, qui sibi cum suis civibus, qui denique cum omni hominum genere nullam iuris communionem, nullam humanitatis societatem velit? Sed erit hoc de genere nobis alius aptior dicendi locus, cum res ipsa admonuerit, ut in eos dicamus, qui etiam liberata iam civitate dominationes adpetiverunt.\n\nSECTION 49\n\nCHAPTER 27\n\nHabetis igitur primum ortum tyranni; nam hoc nomen Graeci regis iniusti esse voluerunt; nostri quidem omnes reges vocitaverunt, qui soli in populos perpetuam potestatem haberent. Itaque et Spurius Cassius et M. Manlius et Spurius Maelius regnum occupare voluisse dicti sunt, et modo *Tib. Gracchus* […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 50\n\nCHAPTER 28\n\n[…] *Lycurgus* γέροντας *La*cedaemone appellavit, nimis is quidem paucos, xxviii, quos penes summam consilii voluit esse, cum imperii summam rex teneret; ex quo nostri idem illud secuti atque interpretati, quos senes ille appellavit, nominaverunt senatum, ut iam Romulum patribus lectis fecisse diximus; tamen excellit atque eminet vis, potestas nomenque regium. Inperti etiam populo potestatis aliquid, ut et Lycurgus et Romulus; non satiaris eum libertate, sed incenderis cupiditate libertatis, cum tantum modo potestatem gustandi feceris; ille quidem semper inpendebit timor, ne rex, quod plerumque evenit, exsistat iniustus. Est igitur fragilis ea fortuna populi, quae posita est in unius, ut dixi antea, *vel* voluntate vel moribus.\n\nSECTION 51\n\nCHAPTER 29\n\nQuare prima sit haec forma et species et origo tyranni inventa nobis in ea re publica, quam auspicato Romulus condiderit, non in illa, quam, ut perscripsit Plato, sibi ipse Socrates tripertito illo in sermone depinxerit, ut, quem ad modum Tarquinius, non novam potestatem nactus, sed, quam habebat, usus iniuste totum genus hoc regiae civitatis everterit; sit huic oppositus alter, bonus et sapiens et peritus utilitatis dignitatisque civilis quasi tutor et procurator rei publicae; sic enim appelletur, quicumque erit rector et gubernator civitatis. Quem virum facite ut agnoscatis; *is* est enim, qui consilio et opera civitatem tueri potest. Quod quoniam nomen minus est adhuc tritum sermone nostro saepiusque genus eius hominis erit in reliqua nobis oratione trac*tandum* […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 52\n\nCHAPTER 30\n\n[…] sas requisivit civitatemque optandam magis quam sperandam, quam minimam potuit, non quae posset esse, sed in qua ratio rerum civilium perspici posset, effecit. Ego autem, si {quo} modo consequi potuero, rationibus eisdem, quas ille vidit, non in umbra et imagine civitatis, sed in amplissima re publica enitar, ut cuiusque et boni publici et mali causam tamquam virgula videar attingere. Iis enim regiis quadraginta annis et ducentis paulo cum interregnis fere amplius praeteritis expulsoque Tarquinio tantum odium populum Romanum regalis nominis tenuit, quantum tenuerat post obitum vel potius excessum Romuli desiderium. Itaque ut tum carere rege, sic pulso Tarquinio nomen regis audire non poterat. Hic facultatem cum […] […]\n\nSECTION 53fr\n\nCHAPTER 31\n\n(Non. 526M) Itaque illa praeclara constitutio Romuli cum ducentos annos et viginti fere firma mansisset […]\n\nSECTION 53\n\n[…] lex illa tota sublata est. Hac mente tum nostri maiores et Conlatinum innocentem suspicione cognationis expulerunt et reliquos Tarquinios offensione nominis; eademque mente P. Valerius et fasces primus demitti iussit, cum dicere in contione coepisset, et aedis suas detulit sub Veliam, posteaquam, quod in excelsiore loco Veliae coepisset aedificare eo ipso, ubi rex Tullus habitaverat, suspicionem populi sensit moveri; idemque, in quo fuit Publicola maxime, legem ad populum tulit eam, quae centuriatis comitiis prima lata est, ne quis magistratus civem Romanum adversus provocationem necaret neve verberaret.\n\nSECTION 54\n\nProvocationem autem etiam a regibus fuisse declarant pontificii libri, significant nostri etiam augurales, itemque ab omni iudicio poenaque provocari licere indicant xii tabulae conpluribus legibus; et quod proditum memoriae est, xviros, qui leges scripserint, sine provocatione creatos, satis ostenderit reliquos sine provocatione magistratus non fuisse; Luciique Valerii Potiti et M. Horatii Barbati, hominum concordiae causa sapienter popularium, consularis lex sanxit, ne qui magistratus sine provocatione crearetur; neque vero leges Porciae, quae tres sunt trium Porciorum, ut scitis, quicquam praeter sanctionem attulerunt novi.\n\nSECTION 55\n\nItaque Publicola lege illa de provocatione perlata statim securis de fascibus demi iussit postridieque sibi collegam Sp. Lucretium subrogavit suosque ad eum, quod erat maior natu, lictores transire iussit instituitque primus, ut singulis consulibus alternis mensibus lictores praeirent, ne plura insignia essent inperii in libero populo quam in regno fuissent. Haud mediocris hic, ut ego quidem intellego, vir fuit, qui modica libertate populo data facilius tenuit auctoritatem principum. Neque ego haec nunc sine causa tam vetera vobis et tam obsoleta decanto, sed inlustribus in personis temporibusque exempla hominum rerumque definio, ad quae reliqua oratio derigatur mea.\n\nSECTION 56\n\nCHAPTER 32\n\nTenuit igitur hoc in statu senatus rem publicam temporibus illis, ut in populo libero pauca per populum, pleraque senatus auctoritate et instituto ac more gererentur, atque uti consules potestatem haberent tempore dumtaxat annuam, genere ipso ac iure regiam. Quodque erat ad optinendam potentiam nobilium vel maximum, vehementer id retinebatur, populi comitia ne essent rata, nisi ea patrum adprobavisset auctoritas. Atque his ipsis temporibus dictator etiam est institutus decem fere annis post primos consules, T. Larcius, novumque id genus imperii visum est et proximum similitudini regiae. Sed tamen omnia summa cum auctoritate a principibus cedente populo tenebantur, magnaeque res temporibus illis a fortissimis viris summo imperio praeditis, dictatoribus atque consulibus, belli gerebantur.\n\nSECTION 57\n\nCHAPTER 33\n\nSed id, quod fieri natura rerum ipsa cogebat, ut plusculum sibi iuris populus adscisceret liberatus a regibus, non longo intervallo, sexto decimo fere anno, Postumo Cominio Sp. Cassio consulibus consecutus est; in quo defuit fortasse ratio, sed tamen vincit ipsa rerum publicarum natura saepe rationem. Id enim tenetote, quod initio dixi, nisi aequabilis haec in civitate conpensatio sit et iuris et officii et muneris, ut et potestatis satis in magistratibus et auctoritatis in principum consilio et libertatis in populo sit, non posse hunc incommutabilem rei publicae conservari statum.\n\nSECTION 58\n\nNam cum esset ex aere alieno commota civitas, plebs montem sacrum prius, deinde Aventinum occupavit. Ac ne Lycurgi quidem disciplina tenuit illos in hominibus Graecis frenos; nam etiam Spartae regnante Theopompo sunt item quinque, quos illi ephoros appellant, in Creta autem decem, qui cosmoe vocantur, ut contra consulare imperium tribuni pl., sic illi contra vim regiam constituti.\n\nSECTION 59\n\nCHAPTER 34\n\n†Fuerat fortasse aliqua ratio maioribus nostris in illo aere alieno medendi, quae neque Solonem Atheniensem non longis temporibus ante fugerat neque post aliquanto nostrum senatum, cum sunt propter unius libidinem omnia nexa civium liberata nectierque postea desitum; semperque huic generi, cum plebes publica calamitate inpendiis debilitata deficeret, salutis omnium causa aliqua sublevatio et medicina quaesita est. Quo tum consilio praetermisso causa populo nata est, duobus tribunis plebis per seditionem creatis ut potentia senatus atque auctoritas minueretur; quae tamen gravis et magna remanebat sapientissimis et fortissimis et armis et consilio civitatem tuentibus, quorum auctoritas maxime florebat, quod, cum honore longe antecellerent ceteris, voluptatibus erant inferiores nec pecuniis ferme superiores; eoque erat cuiusque gratior in re publica virtus, quod in rebus privatis diligentissime singulos cives opera, consilio, re tuebantur.\n\nSECTION 60\n\nCHAPTER 35\n\nQuo in statu rei publicae Sp. Cassium de occupando regno molientem, summa apud populum gratia florentem, quaestor accusavit, eumque, ut audistis, cum pater in ea culpa esse conperisse se dixisset, cedente populo morte mactavit. Gratamque etiam illam legem quarto circiter et quinquagesimo anno post primos consules de multa et sacramento Sp. Tarpeius et A. Aternius consules comitiis centuriatis tulerunt. Annis postea xx ex eo, quod L. Papirius P. Pinarius censores multis dicendis vim armentorum a privatis in publicum averterant, levis aestumatio pecudum in multa lege C. Iulii P. Papirii consulum constituta est.\n\nSECTION 61\n\nCHAPTER 36\n\nSed aliquot ante annis, cum summa esset auctoritas in senatu populo patiente atque parente, inita ratio est, ut et consules et tribuni pl. magistratu se abdicarent, atque ut xviri maxima potestate sine provocatione crearentur, qui et summum imperium haberent et leges scriberent. Qui cum x tabulas summa legum aequitate prudentiaque conscripsissent, in annum posterum decemviros alios subrogaverunt, quorum non similiter fides nec iustitia laudata. Quo tamen e collegio laus est illa eximia C. Iulii, qui hominem nobilem, L. Sestium, cuius in cubiculo ecfossum esse se praesente mortuum diceret, cum ipse potestatem summam haberet, quod decemvirum sine provocatione esset, vades tamen poposcit, quod se legem illam praeclaram neglecturum negaret, quae de capite civis Romani nisi comitiis centuriatis statui vetaret.\n\nSECTION 62\n\nCHAPTER 37\n\nTertius est annus xviralis consecutus, cum iidem essent nec alios subrogare voluissent. In hoc statu rei publicae, quem dixi iam saepe non posse esse diuturnum, quod non esset in omnis ordines civitatis aequabilis, erat penes principes tota res publica praepositis xviris nobilissimis, non oppositis tribunis pl., nullis aliis adiunctis magistratibus, non provocatione ad populum contra necem et verbera relicta.\n\nSECTION 63\n\nErgo horum ex iniustitia subito exorta est maxima perturbatio et totius commutatio rei publicae; qui duabus tabulis iniquarum legum additis, quibus, etiam quae diiunctis populis tribui solent conubia, haec illi ut ne plebei cum patribus essent, inhumanissima lege sanxerunt, quae postea plebei scito Canuleio abrogata est, libidinoseque omni imperio et acerbe et avare populo praefuerunt. Nota scilicet illa res et celebrata monumentis plurimis litterarum, cum Decimus quidam Verginius virginem filiam propter unius ex illis xviris intemperiem in foro sua manu interemisset ac maerens ad exercitum, qui tum erat in Algido, confugisset, milites bellum illud, quod erat in manibus, reliquisse et primum montem sacrum, sicut erat in simili causa antea factum, deinde Aventinum ar*matos insedisse* […] […]\n\nSECTION 63fr\n\n(Philarg., Serv. G. 3.125) dictatore L. Quinctio dicto.\n\n[…] *maio*res nostros et probavisse maxime et retinuisse sapientissime iudico.\n\nSECTION 64\n\nCHAPTER 38\n\nCum ea Scipio dixisset silentioque omnium reliqua eius expectaretur oratio, tum Tubero: Quoniam nihil ex te, Africane, hi maiores natu requirunt, ex me audies, quid in oratione tua desiderem. Sane, inquit Scipio, et libenter quidem. Tum ille: Laudavisse mihi videris nostram rem publicam, cum ex te non de nostra, sed de omni re publica quaesisset Laelius. Nec tamen didici ex oratione tua, istam ipsam rem publicam, quam laudas, qua disciplina, quibus moribus aut legibus constituere vel conservare possimus.\n\nSECTION 65\n\nCHAPTER 39\n\nHic Africanus: Puto nobis mox de instituendis et conservandis civitatibus aptiorem, Tubero, fore disserundi locum; de optimo autem statu equidem arbitrabar me satis respondisse ad id, quod quaesierat Laelius. Primum enim numero definieram genera civitatum tria probabilia, perniciosa autem tribus illis totidem contraria, nullumque ex eis unum esse optimum, sed id praestare singulis, quod e tribus primis esset modice temperatum.\n\nSECTION 66\n\nQuod autem exemplo nostrae civitatis usus sum, non ad definiendum optimum statum valuit (nam id fieri potuit sine exemplo), sed ut civitate maxima reapse cerneretur quale esset id, quod ratio oratioque describeret. Sin autem sine ullius populi exemplo genus ipsum exquiris optimi status, naturae imagine utendum est nobis, quoniam tu hanc imaginem urbis et populi ni […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 67\n\nCHAPTER 40\n\n[…] *quem* iam dudum quaero et ad quem cupio pervenire. L. Prudentem fortasse quaeris? Tum ille: Istum ipsum. L. Est tibi ex eis ipsis, qui adsunt, bella copia, vel ut a te ipso ordiare. Tum Scipio: Atque utinam ex omni senatu pro rata parte esset! Sed tamen est ille prudens, qui, ut saepe in Africa vidimus, immani et vastae insidens beluae coercet et regit beluam, quocumque vult, levi admonitu †non actu inflectit illam feram. L. Novi et, tibi cum essem legatus, saepe vidi. S. Ergo ille Indus aut Poenus unam coercet beluam, et eam docilem et humanis moribus adsuetam; at vero ea, quae latet in animis hominum quaeque pars animi mens vocatur, non unam aut facilem ad subigendum frenat et domat, si quando id efficit, quod perraro potest. Namque et illa tenenda est ferox […] […]\n\nSECTION 68\n\nCHAPTER 41\n\n(Non. 300M) quae sanguine alitur, quae in omni crudelitate sic exultat, ut vix hominum acerbis funeribus satietur.\n\n(Non. 491M) cupido autem et expetenti et lubidinoso et volutabundo in voluptatibus.\n\n(Non. 72M) quartaque anxitudo prona ad luctum et maerens semperque ipsa se sollicitans.\n\n(Non. 228M) esse autem angore, esse miseria adflictas aut abiectas timiditate et ignavia.\n\n(Non. 292M) Ut auriga indoctus e curru trahitur, opteritur, laniatur, eliditur.\n\nSECTION 69\n\nCHAPTER 42\n\n[…] dici possit. Tum Laelius: Video iam, illum, quem expectabam, virum cui praeficias officio et muneri. Huic scilicet, Africanus, uni paene (nam in hoc fere uno sunt cetera), ut numquam a se ipso intuendo contemplandoque discedat, ut ad imitationem sui vocet alios, ut sese splendore animi et vitae suae sicut speculum praebeat civibus. Ut enim in fidibus aut tibiis atque ut in cantu ipso ac vocibus concentus est quidam tenendus ex distinctis sonis, quem inmutatum aut discrepantem aures eruditae ferre non possunt, isque concentus ex dissimillimarum vocum moderatione concors tamen efficitur et congruens, sic ex summis et infimis et mediis interiectis ordinibus ut sonis moderata ratione civitas consensu\n\n(August. C.D. 2.21) dissimillimorum concinit; et quae harmonia a musicis dicitur in cantu, ea est in civitate concordia, artissimum atque optimum omni in re publica vinculum incolumitatis, eaque sine iustitia nullo pacto esse potest.\n\nSECTION 70\n\nCHAPTER 44\n\n[…] plenam esse iustitiae. Tum Scipio: Adsentior vero renuntioque vobis nihil esse, quod adhuc de re publica dictum putemus aut quo possimus longius progredi, nisi erit confirmatum non modo falsum illud esse, sine iniuria non posse, sed hoc verissimum esse, sine summa iustitia rem publicam geri nullo modo posse. Sed, si placet, in hunc diem hactenus; reliqua (satis enim multa restant) differamus in crastinum. Cum ita placuisset, finis disputandi in eum diem factus est.\n\n### Book 3\n\nSECTION 1\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n[…] et vehiculis tarditati, eademque cum accepisset homines inconditis vocibus inchoatum quiddam et confusum sonantes, incidit has et distinxit in partis et ut signa quaedam sic verba rebus inpressit hominesque antea dissociatos iucundissimo inter se sermonis vinclo conligavit. A simili etiam mente vocis, qui videbantur infiniti, soni paucis notis inventis sunt omnes signati et expressi, quibus et conloquia cum absentibus et indicia voluntatum et monumenta rerum praeteritarum tenerentur. Accessit eo numerus, res cum ad vitam necessaria, tum una inmutabilis et aeterna; quae prima inpulit etiam, ut suspiceremus in caelum nec frustra siderum motus intueremur dinumerationibusque noctium ac die*rum* […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n[…] quorum animi altius se extulerunt et aliquid dignum dono, ut ante dixi, deorum aut efficere aut excogitare potuerunt. Quare sint nobis isti, qui de ratione vivendi disserunt, magni homines, ut sunt, sint eruditi, sint veritatis et virtutis magistri, dum modo sit haec quaedam, sive a viris in rerum publicarum varietate versatis inventa sive etiam in istorum otio ac litteris tractata res, sicut est, minime quidem contemnenda, ratio civilis et disciplina populorum, quae perficit in bonis ingeniis, id quod iam persaepe perfecit, ut incredibilis quaedam et divina virtus exsisteret.\n\nSECTION 5\n\nQuodsi quis ad ea instrumenta animi, quae natura quaeque civilibus institutis habuit, adiungendam sibi etiam doctrinam et uberiorem rerum cognitionem putavit, ut ii ipsi, qui in horum librorum disputatione versantur, nemo est, quin eos anteferre omnibus debeat. Quid enim potest esse praeclarius, quam cum rerum magnarum tractatio atque usus cum illarum artium studiis et cognitione coniungitur? aut quid P. Scipione, quid C. Laelio, quid L. Philo perfectius cogitari potest? qui, ne quid praetermitterent, quod ad summam laudem clarorum virorum pertineret, ad domesticum maiorumque morem etiam hanc a Socrate adventiciam doctrinam adhibuerunt.\n\nSECTION 6\n\nQuare qui utrumque voluit et potuit, id est ut cum maiorum institutis, tum doctrina se instrueret, ad laudem hunc omnia consecutum puto. Sin altera est utra via prudentiae deligenda, tamen, etiamsi cui videbitur illa in optimis studiis et artibus quieta vitae ratio beatior, haec civilis laudabilior est certe et inlustrior, ex qua vita sic summi viri ornantur, ut vel M’. Curius,\nQuem nemo ferro potuit superare nec auro,\nvel […]\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n[…] fuisse sapientiam, tamen hoc in ratione utriusque generis interfuit, quod illi verbis et artibus aluerunt naturae principia, hi autem institutis et legibus. Pluris vero haec tulit una civitas, si minus sapientis, quoniam id nomen illi tam restricte tenent, at certe summa laude dignos, quoniam sapientium praecepta et inventa coluerunt. Atque etiam, quot et sunt laudandae civitates et fuerunt, quoniam id est in rerum natura longe maximi consilii, constituere eam rem publicam, quae possit esse diuturna, si singulos numeremus in singulas, quanta iam reperiatur virorum excellentium multitudo! Quodsi aut Italiae Latium aut eiusdem Sabinam aut Volscam gentem, si Samnium, si Etruriam, si magnam illam Graeciam conlustrare animo voluerimus, si deinde Assyrios, si Persas, si Poenos, si haec […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\n[…] cati. Et Philus: Praeclaram vero causam ad me defertis, cum me improbitatis patrocinium suscipere voltis. Atqui id tibi, inquit Laelius, verendum est, si ea dixeris, quae contra iustitiam dici solent, ne sic etiam sentire videare, cum et ipse sis quasi unicum exemplum antiquae probitatis et fidei neque sit ignota consuetudo tua contrarias in partis disserendi, quod ita facillume verum inveniri putes. Et Philus: Heia vero, inquit, geram morem vobis et me oblinam sciens; quod quoniam, qui aurum quaerunt, non putant sibi recusandum, nos, cum iustitiam quaeramus, rem multo omni auro cariorem, nullam profecto molestiam fugere debemus. Atque utinam, quem ad modum oratione sum usurus aliena, sic mihi ore uti liceret alieno! Nunc ea dicenda sunt L. Furio Philo, quae Carneades, Graecus homo et consuetus, quod commodum esset, verbis […] […]\n\nSECTION 9\n\n(Non. 263M) ut Carneadi respondeatis, qui saepe optimas causas ingenii calumnia ludificari solet.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n(Non. 373M) Iustitia foras spectat et proiecta tota est atque eminet.\n\n(Non. 299M) Quae virtus praeter ceteras totam se ad alienas porrigit utilitatis atque explicat.\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n[…] et reperiret et tueretur, alter autem de ipsa iustitia quattuor implevit sane grandis libros. Nam ab Chrysippo nihil magnum nec magnificum desideravi, qui suo quodam more loquitur, ut omnia verborum momentis, non rerum ponderibus examinet. Illorum fuit heroum eam virtutem, quae est una, si modo est, maxime munifica et liberalis, et quae omnis magis quam sepse diligit, aliis nata potius quam sibi, excitare iacentem et in illo divino solio non longe a sapientia conlocare.\n\nSECTION 13\n\nNec vero illis aut voluntas defuit (quae enim iis scribendi alia causa aut quod omnino consilium fuit?) aut ingenium, quo omnibus praestiterunt; sed eorum et voluntatem et copiam causa vicit. Ius enim, de quo quaerimus, civile est aliquod, naturale nullum; nam si esset, ut calida et frigida, ut amara et dulcia, sic essent iusta et iniusta eadem omnibus.\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\nNunc autem, si quis illo Pacuviano “invehens alitum anguium curru” multas et varias gentis et urbes despicere et oculis conlustrare possit, videat primum in illa incorrupta maxime gente Aegyptiorum, quae plurimorum saeculorum et eventorum memoriam litteris continet, bovem quendam putari deum, quem Apim Aegyptii nominant, multaque alia portenta apud eosdem et cuiusque generis beluas numero consecratas deorum; deinde Graeciae, sicut apud nos, delubra magnifica humanis consecrata simulacris, quae Persae nefaria putaverunt; eamque unam ob causam Xerses inflammari Atheniensium fana iussisse dicitur, quod deos, quorum domus esset omnis hic mundus, inclusos parietibus contineri nefas esse duceret.\n\nSECTION 15\n\nPost autem cum Persis et Philippus, qui cogitavit, et Alexander, qui gessit, hanc bellandi causam inferebat, quod vellet Graeciae fana poenire; quae ne reficienda quidem Graii putaverunt, ut esset posteris ante os documentum Persarum sceleris sempiternum. Quam multi, ut Tauri in Axino, ut rex Aegypti Busiris, ut Galli, ut Poeni, homines immolare et pium et dis immortalibus gratissumum esse duxerunt! Vitae vero instituta sic distant, ut Cretes et Aetoli latrocinari honestum putent, Lacedaemonii suos omnes agros esse dictitarint, quos spiculo possent attingere. Athenienses iurare etiam publice solebant omnem suam esse terram, quae oleam frugesve ferret; Galli turpe esse ducunt frumentum manu quaerere, itaque armati alienos agros demetunt;\n\nSECTION 16\n\nnos vero iustissimi homines, qui Transalpinas gentis oleam et vitem serere non sinimus, quo pluris sint nostra oliveta nostraeque vineae; quod cum faciamus, prudenter facere dicimur, iuste non dicimur, ut intellegatis discrepare ab aequitate sapientiam. Lycurgus autem, ille legum optumarum et aequissumi iuris inventor, agros locupletium plebi ut servitio colendos dedit.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\nGenera vero si velim iuris, institutorum, morum consuetudinumque describere, non modo in tot gentibus varia, sed in una urbe, vel in hac ipsa, milliens mutata demonstrem, ut hic iuris noster interpres alia nunc Manilius iura dicat esse de mulierum legatis et hereditatibus, alia solitus sit adulescens dicere nondum Voconia lege lata; quae quidem ipsa lex utilitatis virorum gratia rogata in mulieres plena est iniuriae. Cur enim pecuniam non habeat mulier? cur virgini Vestali sit heres, non sit matri suae? cur autem, si pecuniae modus statuendus fuit feminis, P. Crassi filia posset habere, si unica patri esset, aeris milliens salva lege, mea triciens non posset […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 18\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\n[…] sanxisset iura nobis, et omnes isdem et iidem non alias aliis uterentur. Quaero autem, si iusti hominis et si boni est viri parere legibus, quibus? an quaecumque erunt? At nec inconstantiam virtus recipit, nec varietatem natura patitur, legesque poena, non iustitia nostra comprobantur; nihil habet igitur naturale ius; ex quo illud efficitur, ne iustos quidem esse natura. An vero in legibus varietatem esse dicunt, natura autem viros bonos eam iustitiam sequi, quae sit, non eam, quae putetur? esse enim hoc boni viri et iusti, tribuere id cuique, quod sit quoque dignum.\n\nSECTION 19\n\nEcquid ergo primum mutis tribuemus beluis? non enim mediocres viri, sed maxumi et docti, Pythagoras et Empedocles, unam omnium animantium condicionem iuris esse denuntiant clamantque inexpiabilis poenas impendere iis, a quibus violatum sit animal. Scelus est igitur nocere bestiae, quod scelus qui velit […] […]\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\n[…] Sunt enim omnes, qui in populum vitae necisque potestatem habent, tyranni, sed se Iovis optimi nomine malunt reges vocari. Cum autem certi propter divitias aut genus aut aliquas opes rem publicam tenent, est factio, sed vocantur illi optimates. Si vero populus plurimum potest omniaque eius arbitrio reguntur, dicitur illa libertas, est vero licentia. Sed cum alius alium timet, et homo hominem et ordo ordinem, tum quia sibi nemo confidit, quasi pactio fit inter populum et potentis; ex quo existit id, quod Scipio laudabat, coniunctum civitatis genus; etenim iustitiae non natura nec voluntas, sed inbecillitas mater est. Nam cum de tribus unum est optandum, aut facere iniuriam nec accipere aut et facere et accipere aut neutrum, optimum est facere, impune si possis, secundum nec facere nec pati, miserrimum digladiari semper tum faciendis, tum accipiendis iniuriis. Ita qui primum illud adsequi […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 24fr\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\n(Non. 125M,318M,534M) Nam cum quaereretur ex eo, quo scelere inpulsus mare haberet infestum uno myoparone, “Eodem”, inquit, “quo tu orbem terrae.”\n\nSECTION 24\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\n[…] omni […] tote. Sapientia iubet aug⟨e⟩r⟨e⟩ opes, amplificare divitias, proferre finis (unde enim esset illa la*us* in summo*ru*m imperatoru⟨m⟩ inci*sa* *moni*m⟨e⟩n*ti*s: finis imperii propagavit, nisi aliquid de alieno accessisset?), imperare quam plurimis, frui voluptatibus, pollere, regnare, dominari; iustitia autem praecipit parcere omnibus, consulere generi hominum, suum cuique reddere, s*ac*ra, publica, alie*na* non tangere. Quid igitur efficitur, si sapientiae pareas? divitiae, potestates, opes, honores, imperia, regna vel privatis vel populis. Sed quoniam de re publica loquimur, sunt inlustriora, quae publice fiunt, quoniamque eadem est ratio iuris in utroque, de populi sapientia dicendum puto. Ut iam omittam alios, noster hic populus, quem Africanus hesterno sermone a stirpe repetivit, cuius imperio iam orbis terrae tenetur, iustitia an sapientia est e minimo omnium *maximus factus?* […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 25\n\n[…] praeter Arcadas et Atheniensis, qui, credo, timentes hoc interdictum iustitiae ne quando existeret, commenti sunt se de terra tamquam hos ex arvis musculos extitisse.\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\nAd haec illa dici solent primum ab iis, qui minime sunt in disserendo mali, qui in ea causa eo plus auctoritatis habent, quia, cum de viro bono quaeritur, quem apertum et simplicem volumus esse, non sunt in disputando vafri, non veteratores, non malitiosi; negant enim sapientem idcirco virum bonum esse, quod eum sua sponte ac per se bonitas et iustitia delectet, sed quod vacua metu, cura, sollicitudine, periculo vita bonorum virorum sit, contra autem improbis semper aliqui scrupus in animis haereat, semper iis ante oculos iudicia et supplicia versentur; nullum autem emolumentum esse, nullum iniustitia partum praemium tantum, semper ut timeas, semper ut adesse, semper ut impendere aliquam poenam putes, damna […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 27fr\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 5.12.5) Quaero, si duo sint, quorum alter optimus vir, aequissimus, summa iustitia, singulari fide, alter insigni scelere et audacia, et si in eo sit errore civitas, ut bonum illum virum sceleratum, facinorosum, nefarium putet, contra autem, qui sit improbissimus, existimet esse summa probitate ac fide, proque hac opinione omnium civium bonus ille vir vexetur, rapiatur, manus ei denique adferantur, effodiantur oculi, damnetur, vinciatur, uratur, exterminetur egeat,\n\nSECTION 27\n\npostremo iure etiam optimo omnibus miserrimus esse videatur, contra autem ille improbus laudetur, colatur, ab omnibus diligatur, omnes ad eum honores, omnia imperia, omnes opes, omnes undique copiae conferantur, vir denique optimus omnium existimatione et dignissimus omni fortuna optima iudicetur, quis tandem erit tam demens, qui dubitet, utrum se esse malit?\n\nSECTION 28\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\nQuod in singulis, idem est in populis: nulla est tam stulta civitas, quae non iniuste imperare malit quam servire iuste. Nec vero longius abibo. Consul ego quaesivi, cum vos mihi essetis in consilio, de Numantino foedere. Quis ignorabat Q. Pompeium fecisse foedus, eadem in causa esse Mancinum? alter, vir optimus, etiam suasit rogationem me ex senatus consulto ferente, alter acerrime se defendit. Si pudor quaeritur, si probitas, si fides, Mancinus haec attulit, si ratio, consilium, prudentia, Pompeius antistat. Utrum […] […]\n\nSECTION 32\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\n(Gel. N.A. 1.22.8) Non gravarer, Laeli, nisi et hos velle putarem et ipse cuperem te quoque aliquam partem huius nostri sermonis attingere, praesertim cum heri ipse dixeris te nobis etiam superfuturum. Verum id quidem fieri non potest; ne desis, omnes te rogamus.\n\n(Non. 323M, 324M) sed iuventuti nostrae minime audiendus; quippe, si ita sensit, ut loquitur, est homo impurus; sin aliter, quod malo, oratio est tamen immanis.\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 6.8.6) Est quidem vera lex recta ratio naturae congruens, diffusa in omnes, constans, sempiterna, quae vocet ad officium iubendo, vetando a fraude deterreat; quae tamen neque probos frustra iubet aut vetat nec improbos iubendo aut vetando movet. Huic legi nec obrogari fas est neque derogari ex hac aliquid licet neque tota abrogari potest, nec vero aut per senatum aut per populum solvi hac lege possumus, neque est quaerendus explanator aut interpres eius alius, nec erit alia lex Romae, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac, sed et omnes gentes et omni tempore una lex et sempiterna et immutabilis continebit, unusque erit communis quasi magister et imperator omnium deus, ille legis huius inventor, disceptator, lator; cui qui non parebit, ipse se fugiet ac naturam hominis aspernatus hoc ipso luet maximas poenas, etiamsi cetera supplicia, quae putantur, effugerit.\n\nSECTION 34fr\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\n(August. C.D. 22.6) nullum bellum suscipi a civitate optima nisi aut pro fide aut pro salute.\n\nSECTION 34\n\nSed his poenis quas etiam stultissimi sentiunt, egestate, exilio, vinculis, verberibus, elabuntur saepe privati oblata mortis celeritate, civitatibus autem mors ipsa poena est, quae videtur a poena singulos vindicare; debet enim constituta sic esse civitas, ut aeterna sit. Itaque nullus interitus est rei publicae naturalis ut hominis, in quo mors non modo necessaria est, verum etiam optanda persaepe. Civitas autem cum tollitur, deletur, extinguitur, simile est quodam modo, ut parva magnis conferamus, ac si omnis hic mundus intereat et concidat.\n\nSECTION 35afr\n\n(Isid. Orig. 18.1.2sq.) Illa iniusta bella sunt, quae sunt sine causa suscepta. Nam extra ulciscendi aut propulsandorum hostium causam bellum geri iustum nullum potest.\n\n(Isid. Orig. 18.1.2sq.) Nullum bellum iustum habetur nisi denuntiatum, nisi indictum, nisi repetitis rebus.\n\nSECTION 35bfr\n\n(Non. 498M) Noster autem populus sociis defendendis terrarum iam omnium potitus est.\n\nSECTION 36\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\n(August. C.D. 19.21) Cur igitur deus homini, animus imperat corpori, ratio libidini ceterisque vitiosis animi partibus?\n\nSECTION 37\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\n(August. c. Iul. 4.12.61) An non cernimus optimo cuique dominatum ab ipsa natura cum summa utilitate infirmorum datum? Cur igitur deus homini, animus imperat corpori, ratio libidini iracundiaeque et ceteris vitiosis eiusdem animi partibus?\n\n(August. c. Iul. 4.12.61) Sed et imperandi et serviendi sunt dissimilitudines cognoscendae. Nam ut animus corpori dicitur imperare, dicitur etiam libidini, sed corpori ut rex civibus suis aut parens liberis, libidini autem ut servis dominus, quod eam coercet et frangit, sic regum, sic imperatorum, sic magistratuum, sic patrum, sic populorum imperia civibus sociisque praesunt ut corporibus animus, domini autem servos ita fatigant, ut optima pars animi, id est sapientia, eiusdem animi vitiosas imbecillasque partes, ut libidines, ut iracundias, ut perturbationes ceteras.\n\n(August. C.D. 14.23) ut filiis imperari corporis membris propter oboediendi facilitatem, vitiosas vero animi partes ut servos asperiore imperio coerceri?\n\n(Non. 109M) Est enim genus iniustae servitutis, cum ii sunt alterius, qui sui possunt esse; cum autem ii famulantur […]\n\nSECTION 39\n\nCHAPTER 27\n\n(Prisc. GL 2.399K) in quibus adsentior sollicitam et periculosam iustitiam non esse sapientis.\n\nSECTION 40\n\nCHAPTER 28\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 5.18.4) Vult plane virtus honorem, nec est virtutis ulla alia merces […]. Quam tamen illa accipit facile, exigit non acerbe […]. Huic tu viro quas divitias obicies? quae imperia? quae regna? qui ista putat humana, sua bona divina iudicat […]. Sed si aut ingrati universi aut invidi multi aut inimici potentes suis virtutem praemiis spoliant, ne illa se multis solaciis oblectat maximeque suo decore se ipsa sustentat.\n\n(August. C.D. 22.4) Quorum non corpora sunt in caelum elata; neque enim natura pateretur, ut id, quod esset e terra, nisi in terra maneret.\n\n(Non. 125M) Numquam viri fortissimi fortitudinis, inpigritatis, patientiae […]\n\n(Non. 132M) Pyrrhi videlicet largitas Fabricio aut Samnitium copiae Curio defuerunt.\n\n(Non. 522M,68M) Cuius etiam focum Cato ille noster, cum venerat ad se in Sabinos, ut ex ipso audiebamus, visere solebat, apud quem sedens ille Samnitium, quondam hostium, tum iam clientium suorum, dona repudiaverat.\n\nSECTION 41\n\nCHAPTER 29\n\n[…] Asia Ti. Gracchus, perseveravit in civibus, sociorum nominisque Latini iura neglexit ac foedera. Quae si consuetudo ac licentia manare coeperit latius imperiumque nostrum ad vim a iure traduxerit, ut, qui adhuc voluntate nobis oboediunt, terrore teneantur, etsi nobis, qui id aetatis sumus, evigilatum fere est, tamen de posteris nostris et de illa immortalitate rei publicae sollicitor, quae poterat esse perpetua, si patriis viveretur institutis et moribus.\n\nSECTION 42\n\nCHAPTER 30\n\nQuae cum dixisset Laelius, etsi omnes, qui aderant, significabant ab eo se esse admodum delectatos, tamen praeter ceteros Scipio quasi quodam gaudio elatus: Multas tu quidem, inquit, Laeli, saepe causas ita defendisti, ut ego non modo tecum Servium Galbam, collegam nostrum, quem tu, quoad vixit, omnibus anteponebas, verum ne Atticorum quidem oratorum quemquam aut sua*vitate* […].\n\n[…]\n\n(Non. 262M) duas sibi res, quo minus in vulgus et in foro diceret, confidentiam et vocem, defuisse […]\n\n(Sch. Iuvenal. Sat. 6.480) inclusorum hominum gemitu mugiebat taurus.\n\nSECTION 43\n\nCHAPTER 31\n\n[…] reportare. Ergo illam rem populi, id est rem publicam, quis diceret tum, cum crudelitate unius oppressi essent universi, neque esset unum vinculum iuris nec consensus ac societas coetus, quod est populus? Atque hoc idem Syracusis. Urbs illa praeclara, quam ait Timaeus Graecarum maxumam, omnium autem esse pulcherrimam, arx visenda, portus usque in sinus oppidi et ad urbis crepidines infusi, viae latae, porticus, templa, muri nihilo magis efficiebant, Dionysio tenente ut esset illa res publica; nihil enim populi et unius erat populus ipse. Ergo ubi tyrannus est, ibi non vitiosam, ut heri dicebam, sed, ut nunc ratio cogit, dicendum est plane nullam esse rem publicam.\n\nSECTION 44\n\nCHAPTER 32\n\nPraeclare quidem dicis, Laelius; etenim video iam, quo pergat oratio. S. Vides igitur ne illam quidem, quae tota sit in factionis potestate, posse vere dici rem publicam. L. Sic plane iudico. S. Et rectissime quidem iudicas; quae enim fuit tum Atheniensium res, cum post magnum illud Peloponnesiacum bellum triginta viri illi urbi iniustissime praefuerunt? num aut vetus gloria civitatis aut species praeclara oppidi aut theatrum, gymnasia, porticus aut propylaea nobilia aut arx aut admiranda opera Phidiae aut Piraeus ille magnificus rem publicam efficiebat? Minime vero, Laelius, quoniam quidem populi res non erat. S. Quid? cum decemviri Romae sine provocatione fuerunt tertio illo anno, cum vindicias amisisset ipsa libertas? L. Populi nulla res erat, immo vero id populus egit, ut rem suam recuperaret.\n\nSECTION 45\n\nCHAPTER 33\n\nS. Venio nunc ad tertium genus illud, in quo esse videbuntur fortasse angustiae. Cum per populum agi dicuntur et esse in populi potestate omnia, cum, de quocumque volt, supplicium sumit multitudo, cum agunt, rapiunt, tenent, dissipant, quae volunt, pot*esne* tum, Laeli, negare rem *esse* illam p*ub*licam? cum populi sint omnia, quoniam quidem populi esse rem volumus rem publicam. Tum Laelius: Ac nullam quidem citius negav⟨e⟩rim *esse* rem publicam, quam istam, quae tota […] p.pu......... ni.s.ls....... mo.....obis non placu*it* Syracusis fuisse rem publicam neq*ue* Agrigenti neq*ue* Athenis, cum es*se*nt tyranni, ne⟨c⟩ hic, cum decemviri; ne⟨c⟩ video, qui magis in multitudinis dominatu rei publicae nomen appareat, quia primum mihi populus non est, ut tu optime definisti, Scipio, nisi qui consensu iuris continet⟨u⟩r, sed est tam tyrannus iste conventus, quam si esset unus, hoc etiam taetrior, quia nihil ista, quae populi speciem et nomen imitatur, immanius belua est. Nec vero convenit, cum furiosorum bona legibus in adgnatorum potestate sint, quod eorum iam […]\n\nSECTION 46\n\nCHAPTER 34\n\n[…] dici possint, cur illa sit res publica resque populi, quae sunt dicta de regno. Et multo etiam magis, inquit Mummius; nam in regem potius cadit domini similitudo, quod est unus; plur*es* vero boni in qua re publica rerum potientur, nihil poterit esse illa beatius. Sed tamen vel regnum malo quam liberum populum; id enim tibi restat genus vitiosissumae rei publicae tertium.\n\nSECTION 47\n\nCHAPTER 35\n\nHic Scipio: Adgnosco, inquit, tuum morem istum, Spuri, aversum a ratione populi; et quamquam potest id lenius ferri, quam tu soles ferre, tamen adsentior nullum esse de tribus his generibus, quod sit probandum minus. Illud tamen non adsentior tibi, praestare regi optimates; si enim sapientia est, quae gubernet rem publicam, quid tandem interest, haec in unone sit an in pluribus? Sed errore quodam fallimur ita disputando; cum enim optumates appellantur, nihil potest videri praestabilius; quid enim optumo melius cogitari potest? cum autem regis est facta mentio, occurrit animis rex etiam iniustus. Nos autem de iniusto rege nihil loquimur nunc, cum de ipsa regali re publica quaerimus. Quare cogitato Romulum aut Pompilium aut Tullium regem, fortasse non tam illius te rei publicae paenitebit.\n\nSECTION 48\n\nM. Quam igitur relinquis populari rei publicae laudem? S. Tum ille: Quid? tibi tandem, Spuri, Rhodiorum, apud quos nuper fuimus una, nullane videtur esse res publica? M. Mihi vero videtur, et minime quidem vituperanda. S. Recte dicis; sed, si meministi, omnes erant iidem tum de plebe, tum senatores vicissitudinesque habebant, quibus mensibus populari munere fungerentur, quibus senatorio; utrobique autem conventicium accipiebant, et in theatro et in curia res capitalis et reliquas omnis iudicabant iidem; tantum poterat tantique erat, quanti multitudo, *senatus* […] […]\n\n### Book 3 — Fragments of Uncertain Position\n\nSECTION 1\n\n(Non. 301M) Est igitur quiddam turbulentum in hominibus singulis, quod vel exultat voluptate vel molestia frangitur.\n\nSECTION 2\n\n(Non. 364M) Sed ut ipsi †seu animum periclitentur sum vident, quid se putent esse facturos.\n\nSECTION 3\n\n(Non. 431M) Poeni primi mercaturis et mercibus suis avaritiam et magnificentiam et inexplebiles cupiditates omnium rerum inportaverunt in Graeciam.\n\nSECTION 4\n\n(Sch. Iuvenal. Sat. 10.362) Sardanapallus ille vitiis multo quam nomine ipso deformior.\n\nSECTION 5\n\n(Prisc. GL 2.255K) nisi si quis Athonem pro monumento vult funditus efficere. Quis enim est Athos aut Olympus tantus?\n\n### Book 4 — Surviving Fragments\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n(Non. 500M) Atque ipsa mens ea, quae futura videt, praeterita meminit.\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 5.11.2) Etenim, si nemo est quin emori malit quam converti in aliquam figuram bestiae, quamvis hominis mentem sit habiturus, quanto est miserius in hominis figura animo esse efferato! Mihi quidem tanto videtur, quanto praestabilior est animus corpore.\n\n(August. c. Iul. 5.12.59) se non putare idem esse arietis et P. Africani bonum.\n\n(Non. 234M) eademque obiectu suo umbram noctemque efficiat cum ad numerum dierum aptam, tum ad laborum quietem.\n\n(Non. 343M) Cumque autumno terra se ad concipiendas fruges patefecerit, hieme ad †concipiendas relaxarit, aestiva maturitate alia mitigaverit, alia torruerit.\n\n(Non. 159M) cum adhibent in pecuda pastores.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n[…] gratiam. Quam commode ordines discripti, aetates, classes, equitatus, in quo suffragia sunt etiam senatus, nimis multis iam stulte hanc utilitatem tolli cupientibus, qui novam largitionem quaerunt aliquo plebei scito reddendorum equorum.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nConsiderate nunc, cetera quam sint provisa sapienter ad illam civium beate et honeste vivendi societatem; ea est enim prima causa coeundi, et id hominibus effici ex re publica debet partim institutis, alia legibus. Principio disciplinam puerilem ingenuis, de qua Graeci multum frustra laborarunt, et in qua una Polybius noster hospes nostrorum institutorum neglegentiam accusat, nullam certam aut destinatam legibus aut publice expositam aut unam omnium esse voluerunt. Nam […]\n\nSECTION 3(fr1)\n\n(Serv. A. 5.546) ad militiam euntibus dari solitos esse custodes, a quibus primo anno regantur.\n\nSECTION 3(fr2)\n\n(Non. 20M) non modo ut Spartae, rapere ubi pueri et clepere discunt.\n\nSECTION 3(fr3)\n\n(Serv. A. 10.325) opprobrio fuisse adulescentibus, si amatores non haberent.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n[…] nudari puberem. Ita sunt alte repetita quasi fundamenta quaedam verecundiae. Iuventutis vero exercitatio quam absurda in gymnasiis! quam levis epheborum illa militia! quam contrectationes et amores soluti et liberi! mitto apud Eleos et Thebanos, apud quos in amore ingenuorum libido etiam permissam habet et solutam licentiam; Lacedaemonii ipsi, cum omnia concedunt in amore iuvenum praeter stuprum, tenui sane muro dissaepiunt id, quod excipiunt; conplexus enim concubitusque permittunt palliis interiectis. Hic Laelius: Praeclare intellego, Scipio, te in iis Graeciae disciplinis, quas reprendis, cum populis nobilissimis malle quam cum tuo Platone luctari, quem ne attingis quidem, praesertim cum […]\n\nSECTION 5\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\n(Non. 362M) et noster Plato magis etiam quam Lycurgus, omnia qui prorsus iubet esse communia, ne quis civis propriam aut suam rem ullam queat dicere.\n\n(Non. 308M) Ego vero eodem, quo ille Homerum redimitum coronis et delibutum unguentis emittit ex ea urbe, quam sibi ipse fingit.\n\nSECTION 6\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\n(Non. 24M) Censoris iudicium nihil fere damnato nisi ruborem offert. Itaque, ut omnis ea iudicatio versatur tantum modo in nomine, animadversio illa ignominia dicta est.\n\n(Non. 423M) Horum †in severitatem dicitur inhorruisse primum civitas.\n\n(Non. 499M) Nec vero mulieribus praefectus praeponatur, qui apud Graecos creari solet, sed sit censor, qui viros doceat moderari uxoribus.\n\n(Non. 5M) Ita magnam habet vim disciplina verecundiae; carent temeto omnes mulieres.\n\n(Non. 306M) Atque etiam si qua erat famosa, ei cognati osculum non ferebant.\n\n(Non. 23M) Itaque a petendo petulantia, a procando, id est poscendo, procacitas nominata est.\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n(Non. 24M) Nolo enim eundem populum imperatorem et portitorem esse terrarum. Optimum autem et in privatis familiis et in re publica vectigal duco esse parsimoniam. Fides enim nomen ipsum mihi videtur habere, cum fit, quod dicitur.\n\n(Non. 194M) In cive excelso atque homine nobili blanditiam, adsentationem, ambitionem †meam esse levitatis.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n(Non. 430Msq.) Admiror, nec rerum solum, sed verborum etiam elegantiam. Si iurgant, inquit. Benivolorum concertatio, non lis inimicorum, iurgium dicitur […]. Iurgare igitur lex putat inter se vicinos, non litigare.\n\n(Non. 174M) eosdem terminos hominum curae atque vitae, sic pontificio iure sanctitudo sepulturae.\n\n(Non. 293M) quod insepultos reliquissent eos, quos e mari propter vim tempestatis excipere non potuissent, innocentes necaverint.\n\n(Non. 519M) nec in hac dissensione suscepi populi causam, sed bonorum.\n\n(Prisc. GL 3.76K) Non enim facile valenti populo resistitur, si aut nihil iuris impertias aut parum.\n\n(Non. 469M) Cui quidem utinam vere fideliter †abundiente auguraverim.\n\nSECTION 9\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n(August. C.D. 2.14ext.) Ad quos cum accessit clamor et adprobatio populi quasi magni cuiusdam et sapientis magistri, quas illi obducunt tenebras, quos invehunt metus, quas inflammant cupiditates!\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\n(August. C.D. 2.13) Cum artem ludicram scaenamque totam in probro ducerent, genus id hominum non modo honore civium reliquorum carere, sed etiam tribu moveri notatione censoria voluerunt.\n\nSECTION 11\n\n(August. C.D. 2.9) Numquam comoediae, nisi consuetudo vitae pateretur, probare sua theatris flagitia potuissent. […] quem illa non adtigit vel potius quem non vexavit? cui pepercit? Esto, populares homines inprobos, in re publica seditiosos, Cleonem, Cleophontem, Hyperbolum laesit. Patiamur, etsi eius modi cives a censore melius est quam a poeta notari; sed Periclen, cum iam suae civitati maxima auctoritate plurimos annos domi et belli praefuisset, violari versibus, et eos agi in scaena non plus decuit, quam si Plautus noster voluisset aut Naevius Publio et Gnaeo Scipioni aut Caecilius Marco Catoni male dicere […]\n\nSECTION 12\n\n() Nostrae contra duo decim tabulae cum perpaucas res capite sanxissent, in his hanc quoque sanciendam putaverunt, si quis occentavisset sive carmen condidisset, quod infamiam faceret flagitiumve alteri. Praeclare; iudiciis enim magistratuum, disceptationibus legitimis propositam vitam, non poetarum ingeniis, habere debemus nec probrum audire nisi ea lege, ut respondere liceat et iudicio defendere. […] veteribus displicuisse Romanis vel laudari quemquam in scaena vivum hominem vel vituperari.\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\n(August. C.D. 2.11)\n\nAeschines Atheniensis, vir eloquentissimus, cum adulescens tragoedias actitavisset, rem publicam capessivit, et Aristodemum, tragicum item actorem, maximis de rebus pacis et belli legatum ad Philippum Athenienses saepe miserunt.\n\n### Book 5 — Surviving Fragments\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n(August. C.D. 2.21,Non. 417M)\n\n(Ennius)\nMoribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque,\n\nquem quidem ille versum vel brevitate vel veritate tamquam ex oraculo mihi quodam esse effatus videtur. Nam neque viri, nisi ita morata civitas fuisset, neque mores, nisi hi viri praefuissent, aut fundare aut tam diu tenere potuissent tantam et tam fuse lateque imperantem rem publicam. Itaque ante nostram memoriam et mos ipse patrius praestantes viros adhibebat, et veterem morem ac maiorum instituta retinebant excellentes viri.\n\nSECTION 2(fr)\n\nNostra vero aetas cum rem publicam sicut picturam accepisset egregiam, sed iam evanescentem vetustate, non modo eam coloribus eisdem, quibus fuerat, renovare neglexit, sed (August. C.D. 2.21, Non. 417M) ne id quidem curavit, ut formam saltem eius et extrema tamquam liniamenta servaret. Quid enim manet ex antiquis moribus, quibus ille dixit rem stare Romanam? quos ita oblivione obsoletos videmus, ut non modo non colantur, sed iam ignorentur. Nam de viris quid dicam? Mores enim ipsi interierunt virorum penuria, cuius tanti mali non modo reddenda ratio nobis, sed etiam tamquam reis capitis quodam modo dicenda causa est. Nostris enim vitiis, non casu aliquo, rem publicam verbo retinemus, re ipsa vero iam pridem amisimus.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n*nihil esse tam* regale quam explanationem aequitatis, in qua iuris erat interpretatio, quod ius privati petere solebant a regibus, ob easque causas agri arvi et arbusti et pascui lati atque uberes definiebantur, qui essent regii {qui} colerenturque sine regum opera et labore, ut eos nulla privati negotii cura a populorum rebus abduceret. Nec vero quisquam privatus erat disceptator aut arbiter litis, sed omnia conficiebantur iudiciis regiis. Et mihi quidem videtur Numa noster maxime tenuisse hunc morem veterem Graeciae regum. Nam ceteri, etsi hoc quoque munere fungebantur, magnam tamen partem bella gesserunt et eorum iura coluerunt; illa autem diuturna pax Numae mater huic urbi iuris et religionis fuit, qui legum etiam scriptor fuisset, quas scitis extare, quod quidem huius civis proprium, de quo agimus […]\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n(Non. 497M)\n\nsed tamen ut bono patri familias colendi, aedificandi, ratiocinandi quidam usus opus est.\n\nSECTION 5\n\n[…] *ra*dicum seminumque cognoscere num te offendet? M. Nihil, si modo opus extabit. S. Num id studium censes esse vilici? M. Minime; quippe cum agri culturam saepissime opera deficiat. S. Ergo, ut vilicus naturam agri novit, dispensator litteras scit, uterque autem se a scientiae delectatione ad efficiendi utilitatem refert, sic noster hic rector studuerit sane iuri et legibus cognoscendis, fontis quidem earum utique perspexerit, sed se responsitando et lectitando et scriptitando ne impediat, ut quasi dispensare rem publicam et in ea quodam modo vilicare possit, summi iuris peritissimus, sine quo iustus esse nemo potest, civilis non inperitus, sed ita, ut astrorum gubernator, physicorum medicus; uterque enim illis ad artem suam utitur, sed se a suo munere non inpedit. Illud autem videbit hic vir […]\n\nSECTION 6\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n[…] *civi*tatibus, in quibus expetunt laudem optumi et decus, ignominiam fugiunt ac dedecus. Nec vero tam metu poenaque terrentur, quae est constituta legibus, quam verecundia, quam natura homini dedit quasi quendam vituperationis non iniustae timorem. Hanc ille rector rerum publicarum auxit opinionibus perfecitque institutis et disciplinis, ut pudor civis non minus a delictis arceret quam metus. Atque haec quidem ad laudem pertinent, quae dici latius uberiusque potuerunt.\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\nAd vitam autem usumque vivendi ea discripta ratio est iustis nuptiis, legitimis liberis, sanctis penatium deorum Larumque familiarium sedibus, ut omnes et communibus commodis et suis uterentur, nec bene vivi sine bona re publica posset nec esse quicquam civitate bene constituta beatius. Quocirca permirum mihi videri solet, quae sit tanta doc […]\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\n(Cic. Att. 8.11.1) Ut enim gubernatori cursus secundus, medico salus, imperatori victoria, sic huic moderatori rei publicae beata civium vita proposita est, ut opibus firma, copiis locuples, gloria ampla, virtute honesta sit; huius enim operis maximi inter homines atque optimi illum esse perfectorem volo.\n\n(August. epist. 104.7) Et ubi est, quod et vestrae litterae illum laudant patriae rectorem, qui populi utilitati magis consulat quam voluntati?\n\nSECTION 9\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n(August. C.D. 5.13) alendum esse gloria […] maiores suos multa mira atque praeclara gloriae cupiditate fecisse.\n\n(P.Pictav. Bibl. Lugd. 22.824) principem civitatis gloria esse alendum, et tam diu stare rem publicam, quam diu ab omnibus honor principi exhiberetur.\n\n(Non. 233M) Tum virtute, labore, industria tueretur summi viri indolem, nisi nimis animose ferox natura illum nescio quo […]\n\n(Non. 201M) quae virtus fortitudo vocatur, in qua est magnitudo animi, mortis dolorisque magna contemptio.\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n(Non. 337M) Marcellus ut acer et pugnax, Maximus ut consideratus et lentus.\n\n(Char. GL 1.139K) orbi terrarum comprehensos […]\n\n(Non. 37M) quod molestiis senectutis suae vestras familias impertire posset.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n(Gel. N.A. 12.2.6sq.) ut Menelao Laconi quaedam fuit suaviloquens iucunditas […] breviloquentiam in dicendo colat.\n\n(Amm. Marc. 30.4.10) Cumque nihil tam incorruptum esse debeat in re publica quam suffragium, quam sententia, non intellego, cur, qui ea pecunia corruperit, poena dignus sit, qui eloquentia, laudem etiam ferat. Mihi quidem hoc plus mali facere videtur, qui oratione, quam qui pretio iudicem corrumpit, quod pecunia corrumpere pudentem nemo potest, dicendo potest.\n\n(Non. 521M) Quae cum Scipio dixisset, admodum probans Mummius; erat enim odio †quorum rhetorum inbutus […]\n\n(C. anon. Verg. G. I, 2.348 Bandin.) tum in optimam segetem praeclara essent sparsa semina.\n\n### Book 6 — Surviving Fragments\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n(Non. 42M) Totam igitur expectas prudentiam huius rectoris, quae ipsum nomen hoc nacta est ex providendo.\n\n(Non. 256M) Quam ob rem se comparet hic civis ita necesse est, ut sit contra haec, quae statum civitatis permovent, semper armatus.\n\n(Non. 25M, Serv. A. 1.149) Eaque dissensio civium, quod seorsum eunt alii ad alios, seditio dicitur.\n\n(Non. 519M) Et vero in dissensione civili, cum boni plus quam multi valent, expendendos civis, non numerandos puto.\n\n(Non. 424M) Graves enim dominae cogitationum lubidines infinita quaedam cogunt atque imperant, quae quia nec expleri nec satiari ullo modo possunt, ad omne facinus inpellunt eos, quos inlecebris suis incenderunt.\n\n(Non. 492M) qui contuderit eius vim et ecfrenatam illam ferociam.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n(Gel. N.A. 7.16.11,Non. 290M) Quod quidem eo fuit maius, quia, cum causa pari collegae essent, non modo invidia pari non erant, sed etiam Claudii invidiam Gracchi caritas deprecabatur.\n\n(Non. 409M) Qui †numero optumatum et principum optulit is vocibus et gravitatis suae liquit illum tristem et plenum dignitatis sonum.\n\n(Non. 501M) ut, quem ad modum scribit ille, cotidiano in forum mille hominum cum palliis conchylio tinctis descenderent.\n\n(Non. 517M) in his, ut meministis, concursu levissimae multitudinis et aere congesto funus desubito esset ornatum.\n\n(Non. 512M,Prisc. GL 3.70K) Firmiter enim maiores nostri stabilita matrimonia esse voluerunt.\n\n(Non. 398M) Oratio Laelii, quam omnes habemus in manibus, quam simpuvia pontificum dis immortalibus grata sint Samiaeque, ut is scribit, capudines.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n(Eulog. somn. Scip. 401Or.) […] qui rogo impositus revixisset multaque de inferis secreta narrasset […] haec, quae de animae immortalitate dicerentur caeloque, *non* somniantium philosophorum esse commenta nec fabulas incredibiles, quas Epicurei derident, sed prudentium coniecturas.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n(August. C.D. 22.28) ut eum lusisse potius quam †quod id verum esse adfirmet dicere voluisse.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n(Macr. Sat. 1.4.2sq.) Sed quamquam sapientibus conscientia ipsa factorum egregiorum amplissimum virtutis est praemium, tamen illa divina virtus non statuas plumbo inhaerentes nec triumphos arescentibus laureis, sed stabiliora quaedam et viridiora praemiorum genera desiderat. Quae tandem ista sunt, inquit Laelius? Tum Scipio: Patimini me, quoniam tertium diem iam feriati sumus […]\n\n### Book 6 — Dream of Scipio\n\nSECTION 9\n\n#### SOMNIUM\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nCum in Africam venissem M’. Manilio consuli ad quartam legionem tribunus, ut scitis, militum, nihil mihi fuit potius, quam ut Masinissam convenirem regem, familiae nostrae iustis de causis amicissimum. Ad quem ut veni, conplexus me senex conlacrimavit aliquantoque post suspexit ad caelum et: Grates, inquit, tibi ago, summe Sol, vobisque, reliqui Caelites, quod, ante quam ex hac vita migro, conspicio in meo regno et his tectis P. Cornelium Scipionem, cuius ego nomine ipso recreor; itaque numquam ex animo meo discedit illius optimi atque invictissimi viri memoria. Deinde ego illum de suo regno, ille me de nostra re publica percontatus est, multisque verbis ultro citroque habitis ille nobis consumptus est dies.\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\nPost autem apparatu regio accepti sermonem in multam noctem produximus, cum senex nihil nisi de Africano loqueretur omniaque eius non facta solum, sed etiam dicta meminisset. Deinde, ut cubitum discessimus, me et de via fessum, et qui ad multam noctem vigilassem, artior quam solebat somnus complexus est. Hic mihi (credo equidem ex hoc, quod eramus locuti; fit enim fere, ut cogitationes sermonesque nostri pariant aliquid in somno tale, quale de Homero scribit Ennius, de quo videlicet saepissime vigilans solebat cogitare et loqui) Africanus se ostendit ea forma, quae mihi ex imagine eius quam ex ipso erat notior; quem ubi agnovi, equidem cohorrui, sed ille: Ades, inquit, animo et omitte timorem, Scipio, et, quae dicam, trade memoriae.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\nVidesne illam urbem, quae parere populo Romano coacta per me renovat pristina bella nec potest quiescere? (ostendebat autem Karthaginem de excelso et pleno stellarum illustri et claro quodam loco) ad quam tu oppugnandam nunc venis paene miles. Hanc hoc biennio consul evertes, eritque cognomen id tibi per te partum, quod habes adhuc a nobis hereditarium. Cum autem Karthaginem deleveris, triumphum egeris censorque fueris et obieris legatus Aegyptum, Syriam, Asiam, Graeciam, deligere iterum consul absens bellumque maximum conficies, Numantiam excindes. Sed cum eris curru in Capitolium invectus, offendes rem publicam consiliis perturbatam nepotis mei.\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 12\n\nHic tu, Africane, ostendas oportebit patriae lumen animi, ingenii consiliique tui. Sed eius temporis ancipitem video quasi fatorum viam. Nam cum aetas tua septenos octiens solis anfractus reditusque converterit, duoque ii numeri, quorum uterque plenus alter altera de causa habetur, circuitu naturali summam tibi fatalem confecerint, in te unum atque in tuum nomen se tota convertet civitas, te senatus, te omnes boni, te socii, te Latini intuebuntur, tu eris unus, in quo nitatur civitatis salus, ac, ne multa, dictator rem publicam constituas oportet, si impias propinquorum manus effugeris. Hic cum exclamasset Laelius ingemuissentque vehementius ceteri, leniter arridens Scipio: St! quaeso, inquit, ne me e somno excitetis, et parumper audite cetera.\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nSed quo sis, Africane, alacrior ad tutandam rem publicam, sic habeto: omnibus, qui patriam conservaverint, adiuverint, auxerint, certum esse in caelo definitum locum, ubi beati aevo sempiterno fruantur; nihil est enim illi principi deo, qui omnem mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat, acceptius quam concilia coetusque hominum iure sociati, quae civitates appellantur; harum rectores et conservatores hinc profecti huc revertuntur.\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\nHic ego, etsi eram perterritus non tam mortis metu quam insidiarum a meis, quaesivi tamen, viveretne ipse et Paulus pater et alii, quos nos extinctos arbitraremur. Immo vero, inquit, hi vivunt, qui e corporum vinculis tamquam e carcere evolaverunt, vestra vero, quae dicitur, vita mors est. Quin tu aspicis ad te venientem Paulum patrem? Quem ut vidi, equidem vim lacrimarum profudi, ille autem me complexus atque osculans flere prohibebat.\n\nSECTION 15\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\nAtque ego ut primum fletu represso loqui posse coepi, Quaeso, inquam, pater sanctissime atque optime, quoniam haec est vita, ut Africanum audio dicere, quid moror in terris? quin huc ad vos venire propero? Non est ita, inquit ille. Nisi enim deus is, cuius hoc templum est omne, quod conspicis, istis te corporis custodiis liberaverit, huc tibi aditus patere non potest. Homines enim sunt hac lege generati, qui tuerentur illum globum, quem in hoc templo medium vides, quae terra dicitur, iisque animus datus est ex illis sempiternis ignibus, quae sidera et stellas vocatis, quae globosae et rotundae, divinis animatae mentibus, circulos suos orbesque conficiunt celeritate mirabili. Quare et tibi, Publi, et piis omnibus retinendus animus est in custodia corporis nec iniussu eius, a quo ille est vobis datus, ex hominum vita migrandum est, ne munus humanum adsignatum a deo defugisse videamini.\n\nSECTION 16\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\nSed sic, Scipio, ut avus hic tuus, ut ego, qui te genui, iustitiam cole et pietatem, quae cum magna in parentibus et propinquis, tum in patria maxima est; ea vita via est in caelum et in hunc coetum eorum, qui iam vixerunt et corpore laxati illum incolunt locum, quem vides, (erat autem is splendidissimo candore inter flammas circus elucens) quem vos, ut a Graiis accepistis, orbem lacteum nuncupatis; ex quo omnia mihi contemplanti praeclara cetera et mirabilia videbantur. Erant autem eae stellae, quas numquam ex hoc loco vidimus, et eae magnitudines omnium, quas esse numquam suspicati sumus, ex quibus erat ea minima, quae ultima a caelo, citima ⟨a⟩ terris luce lucebat aliena. Stellarum autem globi terrae magnitudinem facile vincebant. Iam ipsa terra ita mihi parva visa est, ut me imperii nostri, quo quasi punctum eius attingimus, paeniteret.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\nQuam cum magis intuerer, Quaeso, inquit Africanus, quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris? Novem tibi orbibus vel potius globis conexa sunt omnia, quorum unus est caelestis, extumus, qui reliquos omnes complectitur, summus ipse deus arcens et continens ceteros; in quo sunt infixi illi, qui volvuntur, stellarum cursus sempiterni; cui subiecti sunt septem, qui versantur retro contrario motu atque caelum; ex quibus unum globum possidet illa, quam in terris Saturniam nominant. Deinde est hominum generi prosperus et salutaris ille fulgor, qui dicitur Iovis; tum rutilus horribilisque terris, quem Martium dicitis; deinde subter mediam fere regionem sol obtinet, dux et princeps et moderator luminum reliquorum, mens mundi et temperatio, tanta magnitudine, ut cuncta sua luce lustret et compleat. Hunc ut comites consequuntur Veneris alter, alter Mercurii cursus, in infimoque orbe luna radiis solis accensa convertitur. Infra autem iam nihil est nisi mortale et caducum praeter animos munere deorum hominum generi datos, supra lunam sunt aeterna omnia. Nam ea, quae est media et nona, tellus, neque movetur et infima est, et in eam feruntur omnia nutu suo pondera.\n\nSECTION 18\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\nQuae cum intuerer stupens, ut me recepi, Quid? hic, inquam, quis est, qui conplet aures meas tantus et tam dulcis sonus? Hic est, inquit, ille, qui intervallis disiunctus inparibus, sed tamen pro rata parte ratione distinctis inpulsu et motu ipsorum orbium efficitur et acuta cum gravibus temperans varios aequabiliter concentus efficit; nec enim silentio tanti motus incitari possunt, et natura fert, ut extrema ex altera parte graviter, ex altera autem acute sonent. Quam ob causam summus ille caeli stellifer cursus, cuius conversio est concitatior, acuto et excitato movetur sono, gravissimo autem hic lunaris atque infimus; nam terra nona inmobilis manens una sede semper haeret complexa medium mundi locum. Illi autem octo cursus, in quibus eadem vis est duorum, septem efficiunt distinctos intervallis sonos, qui numerus rerum omnium fere nodus est; quod docti homines nervis imitati atque cantibus aperuerunt sibi reditum in hunc locum, sicut alii, qui praestantibus ingeniis in vita humana divina studia coluerunt.\n\nSECTION 19\n\nHoc sonitu oppletae aures hominum obsurduerunt; nec est ullus hebetior sensus in vobis, sicut, ubi Nilus ad illa, quae Catadupa nominantur, praecipitat ex altissimis montibus, ea gens, quae illum locum adcolit, propter magnitudinem sonitus sensu audiendi caret. Hic vero tantus est totius mundi incitatissima conversione sonitus, ut eum aures hominum capere non possint, sicut intueri solem adversum nequitis, eiusque radiis acies vestra sensusque vincitur. Haec ego admirans referebam tamen oculos ad terram identidem.\n\nSECTION 20\n\nCHAPTER 19\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\nTum Africanus: Sentio, inquit, te sedem etiam nunc hominum ac domum contemplari; quae si tibi parva, ut est, ita videtur, haec caelestia semper spectato, illa humana contemnito. Tu enim quam celebritatem sermonis hominum aut quam expetendam consequi gloriam potes? Vides habitari in terra raris et angustis in locis et in ipsis quasi maculis, ubi habitatur, vastas solitudines interiectas, eosque, qui incolunt terram, non modo interruptos ita esse, ut nihil inter ipsos ab aliis ad alios manare possit, sed partim obliquos, partim transversos, partim etiam adversos stare vobis; a quibus expectare gloriam certe nullam potestis.\n\nSECTION 21\n\nCHAPTER 20\n\nCernis autem eandem terram quasi quibusdam redimitam et circumdatam cingulis, e quibus duos maxime inter se diversos et caeli verticibus ipsis ex utraque parte subnixos obriguisse pruina vides, medium autem illum et maximum solis ardore torreri. Duo sunt habitabiles, quorum australis ille, in quo qui insistunt, adversa vobis urgent vestigia, nihil ad vestrum genus; hic autem alter subiectus aquiloni, quem incolitis, cerne quam tenui vos parte contingat. Omnis enim terra, quae colitur a vobis, angustata verticibus, lateribus latior, parva quaedam insula est circumfusa illo mari, quod Atlanticum, quod magnum, quem Oceanum appellatis in terris, qui tamen tanto nomine quam sit parvus, vides.\n\nSECTION 22\n\nEx his ipsis cultis notisque terris num aut tuum aut cuiusquam nostrum nomen vel Caucasum hunc, quem cernis, transcendere potuit vel illum Gangen tranatare? Quis in reliquis orientis aut obeuntis solis ultimis aut aquilonis austrive partibus tuum nomen audiet? quibus amputatis cernis profecto quantis in angustiis vestra se gloria dilatari velit. Ipsi autem, qui de nobis loquuntur, quam loquentur diu?\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\nQuin etiam si cupiat proles illa futurorum hominum deinceps laudes unius cuiusque nostrum a patribus acceptas posteris prodere, tamen propter eluviones exustionesque terrarum, quas accidere tempore certo necesse est, non modo {non} aeternam, sed ne diuturnam quidem gloriam adsequi possumus. Quid autem interest ab iis, qui postea nascentur, sermonem fore de te, cum ab iis nullus fuerit, qui ante nati sunt?\n\nSECTION 24\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\nqui nec pauciores et certe meliores fuerunt viri, praesertim cum apud eos ipsos, a quibus audiri nomen nostrum potest, nemo unius anni memoriam consequi possit. Homines enim populariter annum tantum modo solis, id est unius astri, reditu metiuntur; cum autem ad idem, unde semel profecta sunt, cuncta astra redierint eandemque totius caeli discriptionem longis intervallis rettulerint, tum ille vere vertens annus appellari potest; in quo vix dicere audeo quam multa hominum saecula teneantur. Namque ut olim deficere sol hominibus exstinguique visus est, cum Romuli animus haec ipsa in templa penetravit, quandoque ab eadem parte sol eodemque tempore iterum defecerit, tum signis omnibus ad principium stellisque revocatis expletum annum habeto; cuius quidem anni nondum vicesimam partem scito esse conversam.\n\nSECTION 25\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\nQuocirca si reditum in hunc locum desperaveris, in quo omnia sunt magnis et praestantibus viris, quanti tandem est ista hominum gloria, quae pertinere vix ad unius anni partem exiguam potest? Igitur alte spectare si voles atque hanc sedem et aeternam domum contueri, neque te sermonibus vulgi dedideris nec in praemiis humanis spem posueris rerum tuarum; suis te oportet inlecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus, quid de te alii loquantur, ipsi videant, sed loquentur tamen. Sermo autem omnis ille et angustiis cingitur iis regionum, quas vides, nec umquam de ullo perennis fuit et obruitur hominum interitu et oblivione posteritatis extinguitur.\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\nQuae cum dixisset, Ego vero, inquam, Africane, siquidem bene meritis de patria quasi limes ad caeli aditum patet, quamquam a pueritia vestigiis ingressus patris et tuis decori vestro non defui, nunc tamen tanto praemio exposito enitar multo vigilantius. Et ille: Tu vero enitere et sic habeto, non esse te mortalem, sed corpus hoc; nec enim tu is es, quem forma ista declarat, sed mens cuiusque is est quisque, non ea figura, quae digito demonstrari potest. Deum te igitur scito esse, siquidem est deus, qui viget, qui sentit, qui meminit, qui providet, qui tam regit et moderatur et movet id corpus, cui praepositus est, quam hunc mundum ille princeps deus; et ut mundum ex quadam parte mortalem ipse deus aeternus, sic fragile corpus animus sempiternus movet.\n\nSECTION 27\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\nNam quod semper movetur, aeternum est; quod autem motum adfert alicui, quodque ipsum agitatur aliunde, quando finem habet motus, vivendi finem habeat necesse est. Solum igitur, quod sese movet, quia numquam deseritur a se, numquam ne moveri quidem desinit; quin etiam ceteris, quae moventur, hic fons, hoc principium est movendi. Principii autem nulla est origo; nam ex principio oriuntur omnia, ipsum autem nulla ex re alia nasci potest; nec enim esset id principium, quod gigneretur aliunde; quodsi numquam oritur, ne occidit quidem umquam. Nam principium exstinctum nec ipsum ab alio renascetur nec ex se aliud creabit, siquidem necesse est a principio oriri omnia. Ita fit, ut motus principium ex eo sit, quod ipsum a se movetur; id autem nec nasci potest nec mori; vel concidat omne caelum omnisque natura et consistat necesse est nec vim ullam nanciscatur, qua a primo inpulsa moveatur.\n\nSECTION 28\n\nCHAPTER 26\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\nCum pateat igitur aeternum id esse, quod a se ipso moveatur, quis est, qui hanc naturam animis esse tributam neget? Inanimum est enim omne, quod pulsu agitatur externo; quod autem est animal, id motu cietur interiore et suo; nam haec est propria natura animi atque vis; quae si est una ex omnibus, quae sese moveat, neque nata certe est et aeterna est.\n\nSECTION 29\n\nHanc tu exerce optimis in rebus! sunt autem optimae curae de salute patriae, quibus agitatus et exercitatus animus velocius in hanc sedem et domum suam pervolabit; idque ocius faciet, si iam tum, cum erit inclusus in corpore, eminebit foras et ea, quae extra erunt, contemplans quam maxime se a corpore abstrahet. Namque eorum animi, qui se corporis voluptatibus dediderunt earumque se quasi ministros praebuerunt inpulsuque libidinum voluptatibus oboedientium deorum et hominum iura violaverunt, corporibus elapsi circum terram ipsam volutantur nec hunc in locum nisi multis exagitati saeculis revertuntur. Ille discessit; ego somno solutus sum.\n\n### Fragments of Uncertain Book\n\nSECTION 1\n\n(Non. 321M) idque ipsa natura non invitaret solum, sed etiam cogeret.\n\nSECTION 2\n\n(Diom. GL 1.339K) nitito\n\nSECTION 3\n\n(Diom. GL 1.374K) excellunt\n\nSECTION 5\n\n(Serv. A. 6.877) Fanni, causa difficilis laudare puerum; non enim res laudanda, sed spes est.\n\nSECTION 6\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 1.18.11)\nSi fas endo plagas caelestum ascendere cuiquam est,\n\nMi soli caeli maxima porta patet,\n[…] Est vero, Africane; nam et Herculi eadem ista porta patuit.\n\nSECTION 7\n\n(Sen. Ep. 108.32sq.) reapse […] sepse […] Quoniam sumus ab ipsa calce eius interpellatione revocati […].\ncui nemo civis neque hostis\n\nQuivit pro factis reddere par pretium.\n\nSECTION 8\n\n(Anon. Parad. Koronne,Bielowsk) Quicumque epulis et conviviis et sumptibus existimationem hominum sibi conciliant, palam ostendunt sibi verum decus, quod ex virtute ac dignitate nascitur, deficere.\n\nSECTION 9\n\n(Cod. ms. note 458 p. 82bib. Ossol.) leniter atque placide fides, non vi et impetu, concuti debere […]","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/cicero-republic/original.txt"},"translations":[{"id":"trn_cicero_republic_mouseia","translator":"Mouseia","kind":"curated","note":"All surviving text in Mueller’s 1889 edition, including the Dream of Scipio and fragments. Machine-assisted Musean translation directly from Latin, independently of Plain English, with Latin-source model review. […] marks loss; † marks a corrupt reading. In the Original, braces mark deleted words, which are not translated. Unidentified letter remnants remain in the Original.","text":"### Book 1\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n[…] had freed them from the assault; nor would Gaius Duilius, Aulus Atilius, and Lucius Metellus have freed them from the terror of Carthage; nor would the two Scipios have quenched with their own blood the rising blaze of the Second Punic War; nor, when it flared up with greater force, would Quintus Maximus have sapped its strength or Marcus Marcellus have crushed it, or Publius Africanus have torn it from this city’s gates and driven it within the enemy’s walls. Marcus Cato, an unknown man of no distinguished ancestry, whose example guides all of us with the same pursuits toward industry and virtue, certainly could have enjoyed his leisure at Tusculum, a healthy place close at hand. Yet this madman, as those thinkers consider him, though driven by no necessity, preferred to be tossed on these waves and storms to the very end of his old age rather than live most pleasantly in that peace and leisure. I pass over countless men, each of whom brought salvation to this state; and since they are not far beyond the memory of our own age, I refrain from naming them, lest anyone complain that he or one of his family has been overlooked. I assert only this: nature has given the human race so great a need for virtue, so great a love of defending the common safety, that its force has conquered every lure of pleasure and leisure.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nNor is it enough to possess virtue as though it were some art, unless you practice it. An art, even when you do not practice it, can still be retained through knowledge alone; virtue rests entirely in its practice. Its highest practice is the government of a state, and the accomplishment in deed, not in words, of the very things these men proclaim in their corners. For philosophers say nothing, at least nothing rightly and honorably said, that was not brought into being and established by those who laid down laws for states. From where, and from whom, came devotion to duty or religious observance? From where came the law of nations, or this very law we call civil? From where justice, good faith, fairness? From where a sense of shame, self-restraint, the avoidance of disgrace, the pursuit of praise and honor? From where courage amid hardship and danger? Surely from those who, having shaped these things through instruction, established some by custom and sanctioned others by law.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nIndeed, they say that Xenocrates, among the most distinguished of philosophers, when asked what his pupils gained, answered, “They do of their own accord what the laws would compel them to do.” Therefore the citizen who, by his authority and the penalties of law, compels everyone to do what philosophers can scarcely persuade a few to do by argument, deserves preference even over the teachers who discuss these subjects. What discourse of theirs is so exquisite that it should rank above a state well ordered by public law and custom? For my part, just as I think that “great and commanding cities,” as Ennius calls them, deserve preference over hamlets and forts, so I hold that those who preside over these cities by their wisdom and authority far surpass in wisdom itself those who take no part in public business. And since we are drawn above all to increase the resources of the human race, and strive by our judgment and labor to make human life safer and more prosperous, and nature’s own spur urges us toward this pleasure, let us hold to the course that has always belonged to the best of men. Let us not listen to the signals sounding the retreat, seeking to call back even those who have already advanced.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nAgainst these arguments, so certain and so clear, our opponents set first the hardships that must be endured in defending the commonwealth—a slight obstacle indeed for a vigilant and industrious man, and one to be disregarded not only in affairs of such importance but even in more modest pursuits or duties, or indeed in business. They add the dangers to life, confronting brave men with a shameful fear of death. Such men generally think it more wretched to waste away through nature and old age than to be granted an occasion to give back, above all for their country, the life that must in any case be given back to nature. But they think their argument rich and eloquent when they gather the disasters of illustrious men and the wrongs inflicted on them by ungrateful citizens.\n\nSECTION 5\n\nFrom this come those examples among the Greeks: Miltiades, the conqueror and subduer of the Persians, whose wounds, received facing the enemy in his glorious victory, were not yet healed when he poured out in his fellow citizens’ chains the life he had saved from enemy weapons; and Themistocles, driven and frightened from the country he had freed, who fled not to the harbors of Greece he himself had saved, but to the shelter of the foreign land he had laid low. Nor is there any shortage of examples of Athenian fickleness and cruelty toward their greatest citizens. These evils, born and often repeated among them, are said to have spilled over even into our own most steadfast state;\n\nSECTION 6\n\nfor they recall the exile of Camillus, the hostility toward Ahala, the resentment of Nasica, the expulsion of Laenas, the condemnation of Opimius, the flight of Metellus, or the bitter disaster of Gaius Marius and the slaughter of the leading citizens, or the destruction of the many others that followed soon afterward. Nor do they now spare my own name. Indeed, I believe that because they think my judgment and my peril preserved them in that life of leisure, they lament my fate still more gravely and affectionately. Yet I could not easily say why, when they themselves cross the seas to learn or to see the world […]\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n[…] when, on leaving the consulship, I had sworn before the assembled people that it was safe, and the Roman people had sworn the same, I could easily have offset the distress and vexation of every wrong. Yet my misfortunes brought more honor than hardship, less vexation than glory; and I felt greater joy in the longing of good men for me than grief at the rejoicing of the wicked. But if things had turned out otherwise, as I have said, how could I complain, when nothing had befallen me that was unforeseen or more grievous than I had expected in return for such great deeds? For I was a man who could either have reaped richer fruits from leisure than others, through the varied delights of the studies in which I had lived since childhood, or, if some bitter fate befell us all, have borne no exceptional lot but the same as everyone else. Yet I did not hesitate to face the fiercest storms, almost the thunderbolts themselves, to save my fellow citizens, and through dangers of my own to win peace shared by all the rest.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nFor our country did not bring us to birth or nurture us on the understanding that she should expect no sustenance, so to speak, from us in return, and merely serve our advantage, providing a safe refuge for our leisure and a tranquil place for our rest. Rather, she claimed as her pledge the largest and greatest part of our spirit, talent, and judgment for her own use, leaving us for our private use only as much as she herself could spare.\n\nSECTION 9\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\nAs for the refuges they take in excuses to enjoy their leisure more readily, these certainly deserve no hearing. They say that most who enter public life are men worthy of nothing good; to be ranked with them is degrading, while to contend with them, especially when the crowd has been stirred up, is wretched and dangerous. Therefore, they say, it is not for a wise man to take the reins when he cannot curb the wild and untamed impulses of the multitude, nor for a free man, struggling against foul and savage opponents, to endure the lash of insults or await wrongs that a wise man ought not to bear. As though good and brave men of great spirit could have any more just cause for entering public life than to avoid submission to the wicked, and to prevent those same men from tearing the commonwealth apart when they themselves would be powerless to bring help, however much they wished!\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\nAnd who, I ask, could approve their proviso, when they deny that the wise man will take any part in public affairs unless circumstances and necessity compel him? As though anyone could encounter a greater necessity than the one I encountered! What could I have done in it if I had not been consul at the time? And how could I have been consul unless from childhood I had held to the course of life that enabled me, born to equestrian rank, to reach the highest office? You do not, then, have the power to help the commonwealth on the spur of the moment, or whenever you please, however hard danger presses upon it, unless you are in a position that allows you to do so.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nWhat usually strikes me as most astonishing in the arguments of learned men is this: the same men who deny that they can steer on a calm sea, because they have neither learned how nor ever cared to know, declare that they will take the helm when the greatest waves have risen. For these men commonly say openly, and even take great pride in saying, that they have never learned and do not teach anything about the principles of founding or preserving states. They think knowledge of such matters should be conceded not to learned and wise men, but to those practiced in that field. How, then, is it consistent to promise their services to the commonwealth only when necessity compels them, when they do not know how to govern it under no pressure of necessity, a far easier task? For my part, even if it were true that the wise man does not ordinarily enter public affairs of his own accord, but refuses that duty no longer when circumstances compel him, I would still think that a wise man should by no means neglect this knowledge of civic life. He must prepare himself in everything he may, for all he knows, someday be obliged to use.\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\nI have spoken at some length about this because in these books I have undertaken and embarked upon a discussion of the commonwealth. If that discussion was not to be fruitless, I had above all to remove any hesitation about entering public life. Yet if there are any who are swayed by the authority of philosophers, let them attend for a moment and listen to those whose authority and renown stand highest among the most learned men. Even those of them who did not themselves administer the commonwealth I consider to have performed some public service, since they investigated and wrote much about it. As for the seven whom the Greeks named wise men, I find that almost all were immersed in public life. For there is nothing in which human virtue approaches closer to the power of the gods than founding new states or preserving those already founded.\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\nOn these matters, since it has been our good fortune both to achieve something worthy of remembrance in conducting public affairs and, in explaining the principles of civic life, a certain facility not only through experience but also through devotion to learning and teaching † we were authorities, whereas among our predecessors some had been highly polished in debate but had no deeds to show, while others were estimable in action but unskilled in discussion. Nor must we establish some new system invented by ourselves. Rather, we must recall a discussion among the most illustrious and wisest men of our state in a single generation. Publius Rutilius Rufus once recounted it to you and me, when you were a very young man and we were together at Smyrna for several days. In it almost nothing of great importance to the principles underlying the whole subject was passed over.\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\nFor when Publius Africanus, the son of Paulus, had decided to spend the Latin Festival in his gardens, in the consulship of Tuditanus and Aquilius, and his closest friends had said they would visit him often during those days, the first to come to him on the morning of the festival itself was his sister’s son, Quintus Tubero. Scipio greeted him warmly and was glad to see him. “What brings you here so early, Tubero?” he said. “These holidays offered you a fine opportunity to work through your books.” Then Tubero said, “All my time is free for my books; they are never busy. But to find you at leisure is a great thing, especially amid this turmoil in public affairs.” Then Scipio said, “Well, you have found me so, but, by Hercules, freer from work than from thought.” Tubero replied, “But you ought to relax your mind as well. Many of us, as we arranged, are ready to make full use of this leisure with you, if it suits your convenience.” SC. “Very willingly: let us at last be reminded of something to do with learned pursuits.”\n\nSECTION 15\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\nThen Tubero said, “Since you give me a kind of invitation and hold out the prospect of your company, shall we first consider, Africanus, before the others come, what there is to that report made in the Senate about a second sun? Those who say they have seen two suns are neither few nor frivolous; it is not so much their credibility we must question as the explanation we must seek.” Here Scipio said, “How I wish we had our friend Panaetius with us! Among his other interests, he is particularly devoted to investigating these celestial matters. But, Tubero—to tell you frankly what I think—I do not altogether agree with that friend of ours on this entire subject. He makes assertions about things whose nature we can scarcely guess at by conjecture as though he saw them with his own eyes or positively handled them. This is why I generally judge Socrates the wiser: he set aside all concern of this sort, and said that inquiries into nature were either beyond the reach of human reason or had no bearing at all on human life.”\n\nSECTION 16\n\nThen Tubero said, “I do not know, Africanus, why tradition has handed down that Socrates rejected all such discussion and habitually investigated only life and morals. For what more reliable authority on him can we cite than Plato? In many passages of his books, Socrates speaks in such a way that, even when discussing morals, virtues, and finally the commonwealth, he still tries to bring in numbers, geometry, and harmony in the manner of Pythagoras.” Then Scipio said, “It is as you say. But I believe you have heard, Tubero, that after Socrates’ death Plato went first to Egypt to learn, and afterward to Italy and Sicily to master the discoveries of Pythagoras; that he spent much time with Archytas of Tarentum and Timaeus of Locri, and obtained the writings of Philolaus; and that, since Pythagoras’ name flourished in those regions at that time, he devoted himself both to the Pythagoreans and to their studies. And so, since he had loved Socrates above all others and wished to credit him with everything, he wove Socrates’ charm and subtlety of conversation together with Pythagoras’ obscurity and his profound mastery of so many arts.”\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\nWhen Scipio had said this, he suddenly caught sight of Lucius Furius approaching. He greeted him, took him affectionately by the hand, and gave him a place on his own couch. Publius Rutilius, our source for this conversation, had arrived at the same time; after greeting him too, Scipio asked him to sit beside Tubero. Then Furius said, “What are you doing? Have we interrupted some conversation by coming in?” “Not at all,” Africanus replied, “for you are an eager investigator of matters in the very field Tubero began asking about a little while ago. Our friend Rutilius, indeed, used sometimes to inquire into something of the kind with me even beneath the very walls of Numantia.” “What subject had come up?” asked Philus. Scipio answered, “Those two suns. I am eager to hear what you think of them, Philus.”\n\nSECTION 18\n\nCHAPTER 12\n\nHe had said this when a slave boy announced that Laelius was coming to see him and had already left home. Then Scipio put on his shoes and outer clothing and left his bedroom. After walking a little in the portico, he greeted Laelius as he arrived, and those who came with him: Spurius Mummius, whom he loved especially, and Gaius Fannius and Quintus Scaevola, Laelius’ sons-in-law, learned young men already old enough for the quaestorship. Having greeted them all, he turned back along the portico and placed Laelius in the middle. For there was a kind of settled rule in their friendship: on campaign, because of his exceptional military glory, Laelius revered Africanus like a god; at home, in turn, Scipio honored Laelius, who was his elder, as a father. After they had exchanged a very few words in one or two turns of their walk, their arrival having given Scipio great pleasure and delight, they decided to sit in the sunniest spot of a little meadow, since it was winter. As they were about to do so, Manius Manilius arrived, a wise man, delightful and dear to them all. Warmly greeted by Scipio and the others, he sat down next to Laelius.\n\nSECTION 19\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\nThen Philus said, “I do not think their arrival requires us to find another subject. Instead, we should pursue this one more carefully and say something worthy of their hearing.” Here Laelius said, “What were you doing, then? What conversation have we interrupted?” PH. “Scipio had asked me what I thought about the fact that two suns had certainly been seen.” L. “Really, Philus? Have we already thoroughly explored what concerns our homes and our commonwealth, if we are now investigating what goes on in the sky?” Philus replied, “Do you not think it concerns our homes to know what is going on and what is happening at home? Our home is not what our walls enclose, but this whole universe, which the gods have given us as a dwelling and a country shared with themselves. Especially since, if we remain ignorant of these things, we must remain ignorant of many great matters. For my part—and, by Hercules, the same is true of you, Laelius, and of everyone eager for wisdom—it is the very knowledge and contemplation of things that delights me.”\n\nSECTION 20\n\nThen Laelius said, “I raise no objection, especially since we are on holiday. But may we hear something, or have we come too late?” PH. “Nothing has yet been discussed, and since the ground is untouched, I shall gladly yield to you, Laelius, to discourse on it.” L. “No, let us hear you—unless perhaps Manilius thinks some injunction should be drawn up between the two suns, allowing each to hold the sky as each has held it.” Then Manilius said, “Will you go on mocking that art, Laelius, in which, first, you yourself excel, and without which, second, no one can know what is his own and what belongs to another? But more of that later. Now let us hear Philus, whom I see being consulted on greater matters than either I or Publius Mucius.”\n\nSECTION 21\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\nThen Philus said, “I shall offer you nothing new, nor anything I have thought out or discovered myself. For I remember that Gaius Sulpicius Gallus—a very learned man, as you know—when this same sight was reported, happened to be visiting Marcus Marcellus, who had been his colleague as consul. He ordered a sphere to be brought out, which Marcus Marcellus’ grandfather had carried away from Syracuse after its capture, though from that most wealthy and splendid city he had brought nothing else of all the spoils into his own house. I had very often heard this sphere mentioned because of Archimedes’ fame, but its actual appearance did not strike me with much wonder. For the other sphere, also made by Archimedes, which the same Marcellus had placed in the temple of Virtue, was more graceful and better known to the public.”\n\nSECTION 22\n\n“But when Gallus began to explain the workings of this device with the greatest knowledge, I judged that the Sicilian had possessed more genius than human nature seemed capable of bearing. Gallus said that the invention of that other sphere, solid throughout, was ancient: Thales of Miletus had first turned one on a lathe, and afterward Eudoxus of Cnidus, a pupil of Plato, as he was said to be, had marked on that same sphere the constellations and stars fixed in the sky. Many years later, Aratus had taken its whole arrangement and design from Eudoxus and set it out in verse, not through a knowledge of astronomy but through a certain poetic gift. This kind of sphere, however, containing the motions of the sun and moon and of the five stars called wandering, or roving, could not have been represented on that solid sphere. In this lay the marvel of Archimedes’ invention: he had devised a way for one rotation to preserve the unequal and varied courses of bodies whose motions were utterly unlike. When Gallus moved this sphere, the moon followed the sun in the bronze through as many rotations as it took days to do so in the sky itself. Thus the same eclipse of the sun occurred on the sphere, and the moon then fell into that cone which was the earth’s shadow, when the sun, directly opposite […]”\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\n“[…] was, because I loved the man myself and knew that he had been especially esteemed and dear to my father Paulus. I remember, when I was very young, my father was consul in Macedonia and we were in camp, that our army was shaken by religious dread and fear because on a clear night the bright full moon had suddenly been eclipsed. Then Gallus, who was serving as our legate about a year before he was elected consul, did not hesitate the next day to explain openly in the camp that this was no portent; it had happened then and would always happen at fixed times, when the sun was so positioned that it could not touch the moon with its light.” “Really?” said Tubero. “Could he teach this to men who were almost peasants, and did he dare say such things before the uneducated?” S. “He certainly did, and with great […] […]”\n\nSECTION 24\n\n“neither an arrogant display nor language unsuited to a man of the greatest dignity. For he accomplished something great in dispelling empty religious dread and fear from troubled men.”\n\nSECTION 25\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\n“Something of the same kind is said to have been done by the great Pericles in that tremendous war the Athenians and Spartans waged against one another with all their strength. The foremost man of his state in authority, eloquence, and judgment, when the sun was obscured and darkness suddenly fell and the Athenians’ minds were seized by the greatest fear, he explained to his fellow citizens what he himself had learned from Anaxagoras, whose pupil he had been: this happened at a fixed time and by necessity, when the whole moon passed beneath the sun’s disk. Thus, though it did not happen at every new moon, it could happen only at the appointed time of a new moon. By explaining this through argument and reasoning, he freed the people from fear. For the explanation was then new and unknown: that the sun is eclipsed when the moon comes in front of it. They say Thales of Miletus was the first to see this. Later, it did not escape even our own Ennius, who writes that about the three hundred and fiftieth year after Rome’s foundation,\nOn the Nones of June, the moon blocked the sun, and night fell.\nAnd so much reasoning and ingenuity are involved in this matter that, from this day, which we find recorded in Ennius and in the Great Annals, earlier eclipses of the sun have been calculated backward as far as the one on the Nones of July in the reign of Romulus. Even if in that darkness nature carried Romulus away to a human death, his virtue is nevertheless said to have raised him to heaven.”\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\nThen Tubero said, “Do you see, Africanus, what a little while ago seemed otherwise to you, […]” […], which others see. Besides, what could a man think splendid in human affairs if he has looked into these kingdoms of the gods? Or lasting, if he has learned what eternity is? Or glorious, if he has seen how small the earth is—first the whole of it, then that portion inhabited by human beings—and how, fixed in a tiny part of it, utterly unknown to most nations, we nevertheless hope that our name will fly and range as widely as possible?\n\nSECTION 27\n\n“How fortunate we must consider the man who does not regard or describe as goods fields and buildings and herds and an immeasurable weight of silver and gold, because their yield seems to him slight, their use limited, their ownership uncertain, and their possession often immense even among the worst of men! He alone may truly claim everything as his own, not by the law of Roman citizens but by the law of the wise, not through a civil bond but through the common law of nature, which forbids anything to belong to anyone except the man who knows how to manage and use it. He counts our commands and consulships among the necessities, not the objects of desire: things to be undertaken to fulfill a duty, not sought for rewards or glory. Finally, as Cato writes that my grandfather Africanus used to say, he can declare of himself that he is never doing more than when he is doing nothing, never less alone than when he is alone.”\n\nSECTION 28\n\n“For who can truly think that Dionysius achieved more when, by every contrivance, he robbed his fellow citizens of their freedom, than his fellow citizen Archimedes did when, seeming to do nothing, he made that very sphere? And who would not think those men more alone who, in the forum and the crowd, have no one with whom they care to speak, than those who, with no witness present, either speak with themselves or seem to be in a council of the most learned men as they delight in their discoveries and writings? Who would think anyone richer than a man who lacks nothing that nature actually desires, or more powerful than one who obtains everything he seeks, or happier than one freed from every disturbance of the mind, or more secure in fortune than one whose possessions he can, as they say, carry with him even out of a shipwreck? What command, what magistracy, what kingship can be more excellent than to look down on all human things, judging them inferior to wisdom, and never turn over in one’s mind anything but the eternal and divine? Such a man is convinced that others are called human beings, but that only those really are so who have been refined by the arts proper to humanity;\n\nSECTION 29\n\n“so that I find that remark of Plato’s—or whoever else said it—exceedingly apt. They say that when a storm had carried him from the open sea to an unknown land and a deserted shore, and the others were frightened because they did not know the place, he noticed some geometrical figures drawn in the sand. On seeing them he cried out that they should take heart, for he could see the traces of human beings. Evidently he interpreted those traces not from the cultivation of the land he saw but from signs of learning. For this reason, Tubero, learning and learned men and those pursuits of yours have always delighted me.”\n\nSECTION 30\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\nThen Laelius said, “I do not, indeed, venture to speak against that, Scipio, nor so much you or Philus or Manilius. […]\n\n“[…] in his own paternal family was that friend of ours, a worthy example for him to imitate,\nSextus Aelius, a man of rare good sense, shrewd,\nwho was of ‘rare good sense’ and ‘shrewd,’ and was so called by Ennius, not because he investigated things he would never discover, but because he gave answers that freed his questioners from anxiety and trouble. When arguing against Gallus’ pursuits, he always had on his lips those words of Achilles in the Iphigenia:\nWhat comes of watching astrologers’ signs in the sky,\n\n“When a Goat or Scorpion rises, or some beast’s name?\n\n“No one looks at what lies at his feet; they scan the tracts of sky.\nThe same man—I heard him often and gladly—used to say that Pacuvius’ Zethus was too hostile to learning. He took greater pleasure in Ennius’ Neoptolemus, who says that he ‘wants to philosophize, but only a little; for giving himself to it entirely is not to his taste.’ But if Greek studies delight you so much, there are others of freer scope and wider reach that we can bring to bear on the conduct of life or indeed on the commonwealth itself. Those arts of yours, if they have any value at all, serve only to sharpen and, so to speak, stimulate the minds of boys a little, so that they can more easily learn greater things.”\n\nSECTION 31\n\nCHAPTER 19\n\nThen Tubero said, “I do not disagree with you, Laelius, but I ask what you understand those greater things to be.” L. “I shall tell you, by Hercules, and perhaps earn your contempt, since you asked Scipio about those celestial matters, while I think we should rather investigate what seems to lie before our eyes. For why, I ask, does a grandson of Lucius Paulus, with such an uncle, born into a most noble family and into this glorious commonwealth, ask how two suns have been seen, and not ask why in one commonwealth there are two senates and already almost two peoples? For, as you see, the death of Tiberius Gracchus, and even earlier the whole course of his tribunate, divided one people into two factions. Scipio’s detractors and enemies, following the lead first given by Publius Crassus and Appius Claudius, still hold one part of the Senate apart from you, even after those men’s deaths, under the leadership of Metellus and Publius Mucius. Nor do they allow this man, who alone has the power, to remedy these grave dangers, while our allies and the Latin people are stirred up, treaties are violated, the three commissioners, bent on sedition, devise something new each day, and good men are thrown into confusion.”\n\nSECTION 32\n\n“Therefore, young men, if you will listen to me, do not fear a second sun. Either there cannot be one, or let there be one, as it has been seen, provided it does no harm; or we can know nothing of such matters, or, even if we know them perfectly, we can be neither better nor happier for that knowledge. But that we should have one Senate and one people is possible, and it is most distressing if we do not. We know it is otherwise, and we see that if this unity is achieved we shall live both better and happier lives.”\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 20\n\nThen Mucius said, “What, then, Laelius, do you think we should learn to accomplish the very thing you demand?” L. “Those arts that will enable us to be of service to the state. For I consider this the noblest task of wisdom and the greatest proof or duty of virtue. Therefore, so that these holidays may be devoted above all to conversations most useful to the commonwealth, let us ask Scipio to explain what he considers the best constitution of a state. Then we shall inquire into other things. Once we understand them, I hope we shall arrive by a clear path at these very questions and work out the principles of the matters now pressing upon us.”\n\nSECTION 34\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\nWhen Philus, Manilius, and Mummius had warmly approved this […]\n\nSECTION 34(fr1)\n\n(Diom. GL I, p. 365 Keil) “There is no example to which we would rather liken the commonwealth.”\n\n(Non. p. 85M, p. 289M) “Therefore, if you please, bring your discourse down from heaven to these nearer matters.”\n\n“[…] I wished this to be done not only because it was right that the foremost man of the commonwealth should be the one to speak about it, but also because I remembered that you very often used to argue with Panaetius in the presence of Polybius—two Greeks deeply versed in civic affairs—and bring together many arguments to show that by far the best constitution of a state was the one our ancestors had left us. Since you are better prepared for this discussion, you will do us all a favor—and let me speak for these men too—if you explain what you think about the commonwealth.”\n\nSECTION 35\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\nThen Scipio said, “I can indeed say that there is no subject on which I habitually reflect more keenly or carefully than the very one you set before me, Laelius. For I see that every craftsman who excels at his work thinks, considers, and cares about nothing except becoming better in his own field. Since my parents and ancestors have left me this one task, the care and administration of the commonwealth, should I not confess myself more idle than any craftsman if I devoted less effort to the greatest art than they devote to the smallest?”\n\nSECTION 36\n\n“But I am neither satisfied with what the greatest and wisest men of Greece have left us in writing on this question, nor do I dare prefer my own views to theirs. Therefore I ask you to listen to me neither as someone wholly unacquainted with Greek thought, nor as someone who ranks it above our own, especially in this field. Listen to me as one of the men of the toga, given a liberal education through his father’s care and aflame since childhood with a passion for learning, but far more thoroughly schooled by experience and the teachings of his own country than by books.”\n\nSECTION 37\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\nHere Philus said, “By Hercules, Scipio, I do not doubt that no one has surpassed you in natural ability; and in experience of the greatest public affairs you easily surpass everyone. We know, too, what your studies have always been. Therefore, if, as you say, you have also turned your mind to this system, this art, as it were, I am deeply grateful to Laelius. For I hope that what you say will be far richer than all that the Greeks have written.” Then Scipio said, “You lay a very great expectation on my discourse—the heaviest burden for anyone about to speak on great matters.” Philus replied, “However great it is, you will exceed it, as you always do. There is no danger that words will fail you when you discuss the commonwealth.”\n\nSECTION 38\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\nHere Scipio said, “I shall do as you wish, as well as I can, and enter the discussion on the principle that I believe should be used in discussing any subject if we wish to avoid error: once we agree on the name of the thing we are investigating, we must explain what that name means. When we agree on that, and only then, will it be right to begin the conversation. For we can never understand the character of what we are discussing unless we first understand what it is. Therefore, since we are investigating the commonwealth, let us first consider what exactly it is that we are investigating.” When Laelius had approved, Africanus said, “But in discussing so familiar and well-known a matter, I shall not go back to the elements that learned men commonly employ in these questions, beginning with the first union of male and female, then offspring and kinship, and repeatedly defining in words what each thing is and in how many senses it is spoken of. Since I am speaking among wise men who have served with the greatest distinction in war and peace in the greatest commonwealth, I shall ensure that the very subject I discuss outshines my discourse. I have not undertaken to pursue everything like a schoolmaster, nor do I promise to ensure that not the smallest point is passed over in this conversation.” Then Laelius said, “It is precisely the kind of discourse you promise that I look forward to.”\n\nSECTION 39\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\n“The commonwealth, then,” Africanus said, “is the people’s affair. But a people is not every collection of human beings gathered in any fashion; it is a numerous gathering united in fellowship by agreement on right and a sharing of advantage. The first cause of their coming together is not so much weakness as a certain natural impulse in human beings to gather, as it were. For ours is not a solitary or a lonely wandering race, but one so formed that not even amid an abundance of everything […]”\n\nSECTION 40fr\n\n(August. epist. 138.10) “In a short time a scattered and wandering multitude had, through concord, become a state.”\n\nSECTION 41\n\nCHAPTER 26\n\n“[…] certain seeds, as it were, nor can any foundation be found for the other virtues or for the commonwealth itself. These gatherings, then, formed for the reason I have explained, first established a settlement in a definite place to provide homes. When they had enclosed it with natural defenses and their own labor, they called such a grouping of dwellings a town or city, distinguished by shrines and common spaces. Every people, therefore, which is such a gathering of a multitude as I have described, every state, which is the organized body of a people, every commonwealth, which, as I said, is the people’s affair, must be governed by some deliberative authority if it is to endure. That authority must first and always be referred to the cause that brought the state into being.”\n\nSECTION 42\n\n“Next, it must either be entrusted to one man, or to certain chosen men, or undertaken by the multitude, by everyone. Thus, when supreme control of all affairs rests with one man, we call that one man a king, and the constitution of that commonwealth a kingship. But when it rests with chosen men, the state is said to be ruled at the discretion of its best men. A popular state—as they call it—is one in which all power lies with the people. Any of these three kinds, if it preserves the bond that first bound human beings to one another in the fellowship of a commonwealth, is, though not perfect or in my judgment the best, nevertheless tolerable; yet one may be better than another. For a just and wise king, or chosen and leading citizens, or the people itself—though that is the least commendable—can, it seems, maintain a certain stable order, provided no injustices or passions intrude.”\n\nSECTION 43\n\nCHAPTER 27\n\n“But under kings the rest have too little share in common rights and deliberation; under the rule of the best men the multitude can scarcely partake of freedom, since it is excluded from all common deliberation and power; and when everything is conducted by the people, however just and moderate, that very equality is unjust, since it recognizes no degrees of worth. Thus, even if the Persian Cyrus was a most just and wise king, the people’s affair—for that, as I said before, is what a commonwealth is—does not seem to me to have been most desirable there, since it was governed by the will and measure of one man. If the people of Massilia, our clients, are governed with the greatest justice by chosen and leading citizens, there is nevertheless in that condition of the people a certain likeness to slavery. If the Athenians, at certain times, after setting aside the Areopagus, conducted everything solely by the people’s resolutions and decrees, their state did not retain its proper dignity, since they recognized no distinct degrees of worth.”\n\nSECTION 44\n\nCHAPTER 28\n\n“And I am speaking of these three kinds of commonwealth not in disorder or confusion, but each maintaining its own form. First, each of these kinds has the defects I mentioned before; then they have other, deadly defects. For there is no kind of commonwealth that does not have a steep and slippery path to a neighboring evil. Beneath that tolerable or, if you wish, even lovable king Cyrus—to name him above all others—lies the utterly cruel Phalaris, if Cyrus is free to change his disposition. The rule of one man slides easily down a sloping course into his likeness. Close beside the government of the state by the few leading men of Massilia stands the concert and faction of the thirty men who once ruled at Athens. Now the power of the Athenian people over all affairs, having been turned to the frenzy and license of the multitude—the Athenians themselves, so that we need not seek other examples— […]”\n\nSECTION 45\n\nCHAPTER 29\n\n“[…] the worst, and from this either a government of the best men, or that factional tyranny, or a royal government, or even, very often, a popular one; and from that, in turn, some one of the forms I mentioned before commonly springs into bloom. Marvelous are the circles, the circuits, as it were, of changes and turns in commonwealths. To understand them is the work of a wise man; but to foresee them as they threaten, while governing the commonwealth, moderating its course and keeping it in one’s power, belongs to a great citizen, an almost divine man. And so I judge most worthy of approval a certain fourth kind of commonwealth, balanced and blended from the three I first described.”\n\nSECTION 46\n\nCHAPTER 30\n\nHere Laelius said, “I know that is your view, Africanus; I have often heard you say so. Still, if it is no trouble, I should like to know which of those three forms of government you judge best. For it might contribute something toward […]”\n\nSECTION 47\n\nCHAPTER 31\n\n“[…] and every commonwealth takes its character from the nature or will of whoever governs it. And so freedom has no home in any state except one in which the people hold supreme power. Certainly nothing can be sweeter than freedom; and if it is not equal, it is not even freedom. Yet how can it be equal—I say nothing of a kingdom, where slavery is neither concealed nor doubtful—even in those states where everyone is free in name? They cast their votes, confer commands and magistracies, are courted and petitioned; but they give what they must give even against their will, and what they do not possess themselves, though others seek it from them. For they have no share in command, public deliberation, or the judgment of selected jurors: these are weighed out according to ancient pedigrees or wealth. But among a free people, as at Rhodes or Athens, there is no citizen who […]”\n\nSECTION 48\n\nCHAPTER 32\n\n“[…] one or more men had emerged among the people, richer and more powerful than the rest; then, they say, these governments arose from those men’s scorn and pride, while the spiritless and weak gave way and bowed beneath the arrogance of the rich. But if peoples hold fast to their rights, they declare that nothing is more excellent, freer, or happier: for they are masters of laws, trials, war, peace, treaties, each individual’s life, and property. This alone, they think, is rightly called a commonwealth—that is, the people’s concern. Thus the people’s concern is commonly reclaimed for freedom from the domination of kings and senators; free peoples do not seek kings, or the power and wealth of an aristocracy.”\n\nSECTION 49\n\n“Nor, they maintain, should this whole form of free popular government be rejected because of the failings of an unruly people. Nothing is more unchangeable, nothing firmer, than a people united and directing everything toward its own security and freedom. Concord comes most readily in a commonwealth where the same thing benefits everyone; differences of interest, when different things suit different people, give rise to dissension. Thus, when the senators held power, the state’s condition was never stable; still less under kings, among whom, as Ennius says, ‘No fellowship is sacred, nor is there faith.’ Since law is the bond of civil society, and the right established by law is equal, by what right can a society of citizens be held together when the citizens’ condition is unequal? If we do not choose to equalize wealth, if everyone’s abilities cannot be equal, surely the rights of those who are citizens in the same commonwealth ought to be equal among them. For what is a state but a partnership under law? […] […]”\n\nSECTION 50\n\nCHAPTER 33\n\n“[…] Indeed, they think the other commonwealths should not even be called by the names they wish to bear. Why should I call a man who hungers for domination or sole command, who rules over an oppressed people, a king—the title of Jupiter the Best—instead of a tyrant? A tyrant can be as merciful as he can be harsh; so the peoples’ only concern is whether they serve a kindly master or a cruel one. That they should not serve at all is impossible. And how could Sparta, even when it was thought preeminent in constitutional discipline, contrive to have good and just kings, when whoever was born of the royal line had to be accepted as king? As for the aristocrats, who could endure men who have arrogated to themselves this title of ‘the best,’ not by the people’s grant, but by votes among themselves? For how is this ‘best’ man judged? By learning, accomplishments, pursuits […] […]”\n\nSECTION 51\n\nCHAPTER 34\n\n“[…] if it does this at random, it will be overturned as quickly as a ship whose helm is taken by a passenger chosen by lot. But if a free people chooses those to whom it will entrust itself—and, if it wishes to survive, it will choose the best—then surely the safety of states rests on the counsels of the best men. Especially so, since nature has ordained not only that those highest in virtue and spirit should lead the weaker, but that the weaker should willingly obey the highest. Yet this best of constitutions, they say, has been overturned by people’s perverse opinions. Ignorant of virtue, which is possessed by few and discerned and judged by few, they think the rich and well supplied, and those of noble birth, are the best. When, through this popular error, the resources of a few, rather than their virtues, began to control the commonwealth, those leaders clung tooth and nail to the title of ‘the best,’ while lacking the reality. For riches, a name, and power, without sound judgment or a proper way of living and governing others, are full of disgrace and insolent pride; nor is any form of state uglier than one in which the wealthiest are thought the best.”\n\nSECTION 52\n\n“But what can be more splendid than a commonwealth steered by virtue? Its ruler is himself a slave to no desire; he has embraced all the principles to which he schools and summons his fellow citizens. He imposes no laws on the people that he does not obey himself, but holds his own life before his fellow citizens as their law. If one man could adequately accomplish everything, there would be no need for more; if everyone could see what was best and agree upon it, no one would seek chosen leaders. The difficulty of reaching a decision transferred government from a king to several men; the people’s errors and rashness transferred it from the multitude to a few. Thus the best men have taken the middle ground between one man’s weakness and the rashness of the many, and nothing could be more balanced. With them protecting the commonwealth, the people must be supremely happy, free from every care and thought, having entrusted their peace to others. Those others must safeguard it, and must never allow the people to suppose that their leaders neglect their interests.”\n\nSECTION 53\n\n“For the equality of rights that free peoples embrace cannot be maintained: even peoples wholly unrestrained and unbridled grant many special privileges to many men, and among them there are great distinctions of persons and rank. And this so-called equality is profoundly unjust. For when equal honor is accorded to the highest and the lowest, who must exist in every people, that very equality is most unequal. This cannot happen in states governed by the best. Such, Laelius, in broad outline, are the arguments, along with others of the same kind, commonly advanced by those who most praise that form of commonwealth.”\n\nSECTION 54\n\nCHAPTER 35\n\nThen Laelius said, “And you, Scipio? Which of those three do you most approve?” S. “You are right to ask which I most approve of the three, since I do not approve of any of them separately, in itself, and prefer to each the form compounded of them all. But if a single and simple form had to be approved, I would approve the royal one […] […] […] is called in this place, the name of king presents itself as, so to speak, a father’s name: that of one who looks after his citizens as he would those born of him, and preserves them more zealously than […] […] […] […] […] to be supported by the care of a single man, the best and highest.”\n\nSECTION 55\n\n“The best men are at hand, professing that they do this same thing better: several, they say, will have more judgment than one, yet the same fairness and good faith. But look—the people shouts at the top of its voice that it will obey neither one man nor a few; that nothing is sweeter than freedom, even to wild beasts; that everyone lacks it who serves either a king or an aristocracy. Thus kings captivate us with affection, aristocrats with judgment, peoples with freedom, so that, when we compare them, it is hard to choose what we most desire.” L. “I believe it,” he said, “but we shall scarcely be able to disentangle what remains if you leave this beginning unfinished.”\n\nSECTION 56\n\nCHAPTER 36\n\nS. “Then let us imitate Aratus, who, as he begins to speak of great matters, thinks we must begin with Jupiter.” L. “Which Jupiter? And what has this discussion in common with that poem?” S. “Only this much,” he said: “that we may duly take the beginnings of our speaking from him whom all, learned and unlearned—†to be polished—agree to be the one king of all gods and men.” “What do you mean?” said Laelius. And he replied, “What do you suppose, except what lies before our eyes? If these beliefs were established for the benefit of human life by the leaders of commonwealths—that there should be thought to be one king in heaven, who with a nod, as Homer says, would shake all Olympus, and who was held to be both king and father of all—then it is a weighty authority, with many witnesses, if we may call everyone ‘many,’ that the nations, evidently at their leaders’ direction, have agreed that nothing is better than a king, since they believe all gods are governed by the will of one. Or, if we have learned that these beliefs rest on the errors of the ignorant and resemble fables, let us hear those who are, as it were, the common teachers of educated men: men who have seen, as if with their own eyes, what we can scarcely learn by hearing.” “Who are these men?” said Laelius. And he replied, “Those who, by searching deeply into the nature of all things, perceived that this whole universe by a mind […] […]”\n\nSECTION 58\n\nCHAPTER 37\n\n“[…] But if you like, Laelius, I shall give you witnesses neither excessively ancient nor in any sense barbarous.” L. “Those are the ones I want,” he said. S. “Do you see, then, that this city has been without kings for less than four hundred years?” L. “Less, indeed.” S. “Well then, is that span of four hundred years a very long life for a city and a state?” L. “It is scarcely adulthood,” he said. S. “Then four hundred years ago there was a king at Rome?” L. “Yes, and a proud one.” S. “And before him?” L. “A most just one, and so on backward to Romulus, who was king six hundred years before our time.” S. “Then even he is not so very ancient?” L. “Not at all; Greece was already almost growing old.” S. “Tell me, Scipio: was Romulus king of barbarians?” L. “If, as the Greeks say, everyone is either Greek or barbarian, I fear he was king of barbarians. But if that name is to be assigned by character rather than language, I think the Greeks no less barbarous than the Romans.” And Scipio said, “Yet for our present inquiry we are asking about dispositions, not nationality. For if men both sensible and not ancient wished to have kings, the witnesses I employ are neither exceedingly old nor uncivilized and savage.”\n\nSECTION 59\n\nCHAPTER 38\n\nThen Laelius said, “I see you are well supplied with testimony, Scipio; but with me, as with a good judge, arguments carry more weight than witnesses.” Then Scipio said, “Use an argument, then, Laelius, from your own experience.” “What experience?” he asked. S. “If ever, by chance, you have found yourself angry with someone.” L. “More often, indeed, than I would wish.” S. “Well? When you are angry, do you permit that anger to rule your mind?” L. “Certainly not, by Hercules,” he said. “I imitate the famous Archytas of Tarentum. When he came to his country estate and found everything otherwise than he had ordered, he said to his overseer, ‘You wretch! I would have beaten you to death by now, if I were not angry.’” “Excellent,” said Scipio.\n\nSECTION 60\n\n“So Archytas evidently, and rightly, regarded anger in rebellion against reason as a kind of insurrection in the mind, and wished to quell it by judgment. Add greed, add hunger for power and glory, add lusts: you see that if there is royal government in human minds, one thing will rule—judgment, of course, for that is the mind’s best part. When judgment rules, there is no room for lust, none for anger, none for rashness.” L. “That is so,” he said. S. “Then you approve of a mind so disposed?” L. “Nothing more,” he said. S. “Then you would not approve if judgment were driven out and lusts, which are innumerable, or fits of anger controlled everything?” L. “I should consider nothing more miserable than that mind, or a person with such a mind.” S. “Then you wish all the parts of the mind to live under kingship, governed by judgment?” L. “That is certainly my wish.” S. “Why, then, do you hesitate over your opinion of the commonwealth? For we can now understand that if its management is transferred to several men, there will be no sovereign command; and unless that command is one, there can be none.”\n\nSECTION 61\n\nCHAPTER 39\n\nThen Laelius said, “What difference, I ask you, is there between one and several, if the several possess justice?” And Scipio said, “Since I have seen, Laelius, that my witnesses do not greatly move you, I shall keep using you as a witness to prove my claim.” “Me?” he said. “How?” S. “Because I noticed recently, when we were at your place at Formiae, that you strictly enjoined your household slaves to obey one man’s orders.” L. “The overseer’s, of course.” S. “Well? At home, do several men manage your affairs?” L. “On the contrary, one,” he said. S. “Well? Does anyone other than you rule the whole household?” L. “Certainly not.” S. “Why, then, do you not concede the same in the commonwealth: that the rule of single men, provided they are just, is best?” L. “I am being brought almost to agreement,” he said.\n\nSECTION 62\n\nCHAPTER 40\n\nAnd Scipio said, “You will agree all the more, Laelius, if I pass to greater matters, leaving aside the comparisons: that it is better to entrust a ship to one helmsman and a patient to one physician than to many, provided each is worthy of his craft.” L. “What are those greater matters?” S. “Well? Do you not see that the violence and pride of Tarquin alone made the royal title hateful to this people?” L. “I certainly do,” he said. S. “Then you also see something on which I expect to say more as our discussion proceeds: after Tarquin’s expulsion the people exulted in a strange excess of unaccustomed freedom. Then innocent men were driven into exile, then the property of many was plundered, then came annual consuls, then the lowering of the fasces before the people, then appeals in all cases, then the secessions of the plebs; in short, most things were managed so that everything lay in the people’s hands.” L. “It is as you say,” he said.\n\nSECTION 63\n\n“Yes,” said Scipio, “in peace and leisure; for we may run wild while we have nothing to fear, as on a ship, or often even in a slight illness. But just as a voyager, when the sea suddenly begins to bristle, and a patient, when his illness grows worse, implore one man’s aid, so our people in peace and at home gives orders and threatens its very magistrates, resists, appeals, seeks the people’s judgment; in war it obeys as it would a king. Safety carries more weight than pleasure. In more serious wars, indeed, our ancestors wished all command to rest with single men, without even a colleague; their very title indicates the force of their authority. For a dictator takes his name from being ‘named’; but in our books, Laelius, you see him called ‘master of the people.’” L. “I do,” he said. And Scipio said, “Wisely, then, those men of old […]”\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 64\n\nCHAPTER 41\n\n“[…] When a people has lost a just king, ‘long does longing possess their hearts,’ as Ennius says, ‘after the death of the best of kings’;\nat the same time among\n\n“Themselves they speak thus: ‘O Romulus, godlike Romulus,’\n\n“‘What a guardian of your country the gods begot in you!’\n\n“‘O father, O begetter, O blood sprung from the gods!’\nThey called those whom they had justly obeyed neither owners nor masters, nor, finally, even kings, but guardians of their country, fathers, gods—and not without reason. For what do they add?\nYou brought us forth within the bounds of light.\nThey thought their life, honor, and glory had been given them by the king’s justice. The same feeling would have remained in their descendants if the kings had remained alike. But you see that one man’s injustice brought down that entire form of commonwealth.” L. “I do indeed,” he said, “and I am eager to learn those cycles of change, no less in every commonwealth than in our own.”\n\nSECTION 65\n\nCHAPTER 42\n\nAnd Scipio said, “Certainly, when I have given my views on the form of commonwealth I most approve, I must discuss constitutional changes more closely, although I think they will by no means readily occur in that commonwealth. But the first and surest change in this royal form is this: when the king begins to be unjust, that form perishes at once, and that same man is a tyrant—the worst form of government, and the closest neighbor of the best. If the best men overthrow him, as commonly happens, the commonwealth has the second of the three constitutions: for there is a kind of royal, that is, paternal, council of leading men who care well for the people. But if the people itself kills or expels the tyrant, it is fairly restrained so long as it retains feeling and sense, rejoices in its achievement, and wishes to preserve the commonwealth it has established for itself. If ever, however, the people has assaulted a just king or stripped him of his kingdom, or, as happens more often, has tasted the blood of the best men and subjected the whole commonwealth to its pleasure—do not imagine that any sea or fire is so great that it is not easier to calm than a multitude unbridled by insolence—then comes about what Plato has so vividly described, if only I can express it in Latin. It is difficult, but I shall try.”\n\nSECTION 66\n\nCHAPTER 43\n\n“For he says, ‘When the people’s insatiable throat is parched with thirst for freedom, and, served by bad cupbearers, it thirstily drinks freedom not mixed in due measure but excessively undiluted, then, unless its magistrates and leaders are very mild and yielding, and serve it freedom lavishly, it pursues, accuses, and arraigns them, calling them overmighty men, kings, tyrants.’ I think these words are familiar to you.” L. “Very familiar indeed,” he said.\n\nSECTION 67\n\nS. “Then these follow: ‘Those who obey their leaders are harassed by that people and called willing slaves; but those who, while holding office, wish to be like private citizens, and private citizens who make sure that no distinction remains between citizen and magistrate, they exalt with praises and heap with honors. In a commonwealth of this sort everything must be full of freedom, every private household must be free of authority, and this evil must extend even to the beasts. Finally a father must fear his son, a son disregard his father, and all shame be absent, so that they may be entirely free; it must make no difference whether one is a citizen or a foreigner. The teacher must fear and flatter his pupils, and the pupils scorn their teachers; young men must assume the gravity of the old, and the old descend to the young men’s games, so as not to be disagreeable or oppressive to them. As a result, even slaves behave with greater freedom, wives have the same rights as husbands, and amid such freedom even dogs and horses, and finally donkeys, run into people so freely that one must step out of their way. Thus,’ he says, ‘from this boundless license the result is that the citizens’ minds grow so fastidious and delicate that they become angry and cannot bear the slightest exercise of authority. From this they begin to disregard even the laws, so that they may be entirely without a master.’”\n\nSECTION 68\n\nCHAPTER 44\n\nThen Laelius said, “You have rendered precisely what he said.” S. “And to return now to the author from whom my account comes: he says that out of this excessive license, which they think the only freedom, a tyrant springs and is, as it were, born from a root. For just as the excessive power of leaders brings about their destruction, so freedom itself brings slavery upon this excessively free people. Thus all excesses, whether they have flourished in the weather, in the fields, or in bodies, generally turn into their opposites. This happens especially in commonwealths, and that excessive freedom collapses into excessive slavery for peoples and individuals alike. And so out of this utmost freedom a tyrant is born, and that most unjust and harshest slavery. For from this unruly, or rather savage, people there is usually chosen some bold, unprincipled leader against those leading men already crushed and driven from their places. He brazenly persecutes men who have often served the commonwealth well, showering the people with gifts from others’ property and his own. Since threats confront him as a private citizen, he is given commands, and these are renewed; such men are even surrounded with bodyguards, like Pisistratus at Athens. At last they become tyrants over the very men who have raised them up. If good men overthrow them, as often happens, the state revives. But if reckless men do so, there arises that faction, a different breed of tyrants; and the same often springs from that splendid rule of the best, when some depravity has turned the leaders themselves from their course. Thus they snatch the government of the commonwealth from one another like a ball: tyrants from kings, leaders or peoples from tyrants, and factions or tyrants from these. The same form of commonwealth is never retained for long.”\n\nSECTION 69\n\nCHAPTER 45\n\n“Since this is so, of the three original forms the royal is far superior in my judgment; but superior even to the royal will be the form balanced and blended from the three best kinds of commonwealth. For I approve of having something preeminent and royal in the commonwealth, something else assigned and allotted to the authority of its leading men, and certain matters reserved for the multitude’s judgment and will. This constitution has, first, a great measure of equality, which free men can scarcely do without for long; next, stability. For those original forms readily turn into their corresponding vices, so that a king becomes a master, the best men a faction, the people a mob and a chaos; and the forms themselves are often exchanged for new forms. But in this united and moderately blended constitution of the commonwealth, that scarcely happens without great faults in the leading men. For there is no cause for revolution where each is firmly established in his own rank, and beneath him there is no place into which he may plunge and fall.”\n\nSECTION 70\n\nCHAPTER 46\n\n“But I fear, Laelius, and you, my dearest and wisest friends, that if I remain longer with this kind of discussion, my speech may seem that of someone instructing and teaching, rather than considering the matter together with you. I shall therefore enter upon things known to everyone, but long studied by us. For this is my judgment, my conviction, my assertion: no commonwealth of them all, in its constitution, distribution of powers, or discipline, can be compared with the one our fathers left us, having themselves received it from their ancestors. If you agree, then, since you wished to hear from me too what you already understood yourselves, I shall show both what it is like and that it is the best. Having set out our commonwealth as a model, I shall, if I can, fit to it the whole discussion I must undertake concerning the best condition of a state. If I can keep to this and accomplish it, I shall, in my opinion, have amply fulfilled the task Laelius has assigned me.”\n\nSECTION 71\n\nCHAPTER 47\n\nThen Laelius said, “It is truly your task, Scipio, and yours alone. For who could speak better than you about our ancestors’ institutions, when your own ancestors are so distinguished? Or about the best condition of a state? If we possess it, who could then be more eminent than you—though no one is even now? Or about counsels that provide for the future, when, by driving off two terrors of this city, you have provided for all time?”\n\n### Book 1 — Fragments of Uncertain Position\n\nSECTION 1\n\n(Plin. Nat. praef. 7)\nnor for the most learned.\n\nI do not want †Manius Persius to read this; I want Junius Congus.\n\nSECTION 2\n\n(Non. p. 426M) Thus, since our country embraces more benefits and is a parent older than the one who begot us, surely we owe it greater gratitude than we owe our parent.\n\nSECTION 3\n\n(Non. p. 526M) Nor would Carthage have possessed such great power for nearly six hundred years without wise counsels and discipline.\n\nSECTION 4\n\n(Non. p. 276M) “To recognize, by Hercules,” he said, “that habit and devotion to conversation.”\n\nSECTION 5\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 3.16.5) Certainly all their discussion, although it contains the richest wellsprings of virtue and knowledge, yet, compared with their deeds and accomplishments, may seem, I fear, to have brought people less work than enjoyment.\n\nSECTION 6\n\n(Arusianus Messius GL 7.457K) From which those men were calling them away.\n\n### Book 2\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nWhen everyone burned with eagerness to listen, Scipio began to speak as follows: “This is a saying of old Cato, whom, as you know, I loved beyond all others and most deeply admired, and to whom from my youth I devoted myself entirely, both in deference to the judgment of my two fathers and from my own inclination. I could never have enough of his conversation. Such was his experience of public affairs, which he had managed both at home and in war with supreme distinction and for a very long time; such his restraint in speaking, his charm mingled with gravity, his utmost eagerness both to learn and to teach, and the perfect harmony of his life with his words.”\n\nSECTION 2\n\n“He used to say that our state’s constitution surpassed those of other states for this reason: in those states there had generally been single men who each established their commonwealth through laws and institutions of their own—Minos for the Cretans, Lycurgus for the Spartans; for the Athenians, whose constitution had changed so often, first Theseus, then Draco, then Solon, then Cleisthenes, then many others, and finally the learned Demetrius of Phalerum, who had sustained it when it was already bloodless and prostrate. Our commonwealth, by contrast, had been established not by one man’s genius but by many, not in one human lifetime but through several centuries and generations. For, he said, no human mind had ever been so great that nothing escaped it; nor could all the geniuses assembled in one place foresee so much at a single moment that they could embrace everything without experience and the passage of time.”\n\nSECTION 3\n\n“Therefore, as he used to do, my account will now retrace the ‘origin’ of the people; I am glad to use even Cato’s word. I shall achieve our purpose more readily if I show you our commonwealth being born, growing, reaching maturity, and finally strong and vigorous, than if I invent one for myself, as Socrates does in Plato.”\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nWhen everyone had approved this, he said, “What foundation of an established commonwealth do we possess as glorious and as universally known as the beginning of this city’s founding, proceeding from Romulus? His father was Mars—for let us yield this much to human tradition, especially one not only long established but wisely handed down by our ancestors: that those who had served the common good well should be thought divine in descent as well as genius. He, then, as soon as he was born, is said to have been ordered, with his brother Remus, to be exposed beside the Tiber by Amulius, the Alban king, who feared the undermining of his throne. There, after he had been sustained at a wild beast’s teats and shepherds had taken him up and nourished him amid rustic labor and living, he is reported, on growing to manhood, to have surpassed all others so greatly in bodily strength and fierceness of spirit that all who then inhabited the fields where this city stands today willingly and readily obeyed him. Taking command of their forces—to pass now from legends to deeds—he is said to have overcome Alba Longa, a strong and powerful city in those days, and killed King Amulius.”\n\nSECTION 5\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n“Having won this glory, he is said first to have conceived the plan of founding a city under favorable auspices and establishing a commonwealth. For the city he chose a site of extraordinary advantage, something demanding the most careful foresight from anyone attempting to plant a lasting commonwealth. For he did not bring it down to the sea, although with that band and those forces it would have been very easy to advance into the territory of the Rutulians and Aborigines, or to found his city at the Tiber’s mouth, where many years later King Ancus settled a colony. Rather, this man of outstanding foresight perceived and understood that coastal sites were not the most advantageous for cities founded in the hope of endurance and empire: first, because coastal cities were exposed to many dangers, and dangers unseen.”\n\nSECTION 6\n\n“For the mainland gives advance warning of an enemy’s approach, not only when expected but even when sudden, by many signs, by a kind of rumbling and by the very sound. No enemy can swoop upon us by land without our being able to know not only that he is there but who he is and where he comes from. But an enemy coming by sea in ships can be upon us before anyone can suspect that he will come. Nor, when he arrives, does he display who he is, where he comes from, or even what he wants; in short, there is not even any sign by which we can distinguish and judge whether he is peaceful or hostile.”\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n“There is also a certain corruption and alteration of character in coastal cities. They mingle with new languages and teachings; not only foreign goods are imported, but foreign ways, so that nothing in their ancestral institutions can remain untainted. Moreover, those who inhabit these cities do not cling to their own homes, but are always swept farther from home by winged hopes and thoughts. Even when they remain in body, in spirit they are exiles and wanderers. Indeed, nothing did more to overthrow Carthage and Corinth at last, after long undermining them, than this wandering and dispersal of their citizens: through their passion for trade and seafaring they had abandoned the cultivation of their fields and the practice of arms.”\n\nSECTION 8\n\n“The sea also supplies many enticements to luxury, destructive to states, whether taken from it or imported; and its very beauty offers many alluring invitations to costly or idle pleasures. What I have said of Corinth might, I am inclined to think, be said with the greatest truth of all Greece. For the Peloponnese itself is almost entirely surrounded by sea, and no people there except the Phliasians has territory that does not touch the sea; outside the Peloponnese, only the Aenianes, Doris, and the Dolopes lie away from it. Why speak of the Greek islands? Girdled by waves, they almost seem themselves to float, together with the institutions and customs of their states.”\n\nSECTION 9\n\n“These remarks, as I said above, concern old Greece. But of the colonies the Greeks settled in Asia, Thrace, Italy, Sicily, and Africa, which, except Magnesia alone, is not washed by the waves? Thus a kind of Greek fringe seems woven along the territories of the barbarians. For among the barbarians themselves none formerly were seafaring except the Etruscans and Carthaginians, the latter for trade, the former for piracy. Here is an evident cause of Greece’s troubles and revolutions, arising from those faults of coastal cities I touched on very briefly a little earlier. Yet among these faults lies that great advantage: whatever is produced anywhere can float to the city you inhabit, and, in turn, whatever their own fields yield they can carry and send to any lands they wish.”\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\n“How, then, could Romulus have shown more divine insight in embracing the advantages of the sea and avoiding its faults than by placing his city on the bank of an ever-flowing, steady river, pouring into the sea through a broad mouth? Through it the city could receive from the sea what it needed and return what it had in excess; and by the same river it could †draw in the things most necessary for nourishment and civilized life, not only from the sea, but also receive them brought down from inland. Thus he seems to me to have divined even then that this city would one day furnish a seat and home for the greatest empire. For scarcely could a city situated in any other part of Italy have more readily maintained this immense dominion over affairs.”\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\n“As for the natural defenses of the city itself, who is so heedless as not to have marked them in his mind and thoroughly understood them? The course and line of its wall were determined by the wisdom both of Romulus and of the other kings, along steep and precipitous hills on every side, so that the single approach between the Esquiline and Quirinal hills was enclosed by an immense ditch, with a great rampart thrown across it. And the citadel was so fortified, resting on a steep circuit of rock almost sheerly cut away, that even in that terrible storm of the Gallic invasion it remained safe and untouched. He also chose a place abundant in springs and healthy in an unhealthy region: for its hills are themselves swept by breezes, and bring shade to the valleys.”\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n“All this he accomplished very quickly. He established the city, which he ordered to be called Rome after his own name; and to strengthen the new state he followed a novel and somewhat rustic plan, yet one befitting a great man, even then looking far ahead to secure the resources of his kingdom and people. For at the Consualia he ordered the abduction of Sabine maidens of honorable birth who had come to Rome for the games, which he had then first instituted as an annual celebration in the circus; and he gave them in marriage into the most eminent families.”\n\nSECTION 13\n\n“When the Sabines consequently made war on the Romans, and the contest of battle had been shifting and uncertain, he made a treaty with Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, at the entreaty of the very women who had been abducted. By this treaty he admitted the Sabines to citizenship, making their sacred rites common, and shared his kingdom with their king.”\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n“After Tatius’s death, all sovereignty returned to him. Together with Tatius he had already chosen leading men for the royal council, who were called ‘fathers’ from affection, and had divided the people into three tribes and thirty curiae, under his own name, Tatius’s, and that of Lucumo, who had fallen as Romulus’s ally in the Sabine battle. The curiae he named after those Sabine maidens who, after their abduction, had become petitioners for peace and a treaty. Yet although these divisions had been made while Tatius lived, after he was killed, Romulus governed still more through the fathers’ authority and counsel.”\n\nSECTION 15\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n“In doing so, he first perceived and judged the same thing that Lycurgus had perceived a little earlier at Sparta: states are better governed and ruled under a single command and royal power if the authority of all the best men is joined to that sovereign force. Accordingly, supported and fortified by this council, a kind of senate, he fought many wars against his neighbors with the greatest success; and although he brought none of the spoils back to his own house, he never ceased enriching his fellow citizens.”\n\nSECTION 16\n\n“Then Romulus paid the greatest heed to the auspices, a practice we preserve today to the great benefit of the commonwealth. For he himself founded the city under favorable auspices, and that was the beginning of the commonwealth; and for the inauguration of all public undertakings he co-opted one augur from each tribe to assist him with the auspices. He also divided the plebs into groups under the patronage of the leading men—how useful this was I shall consider later—and restrained them by imposing fines in sheep and cattle, not by violence and executions. For wealth then consisted in livestock and the possession of land, hence the names pecuniosi, ‘wealthy,’ and locupletes, ‘land-rich.’”\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\n“After Romulus had reigned thirty-seven years and created these two outstanding supports of the commonwealth, the auspices and the senate, he attained such distinction that, when he disappeared during a sudden darkening of the sun, he was believed to have been placed among the gods. No mortal has ever been able to win that belief without an extraordinary reputation for virtue.”\n\nSECTION 18\n\n“This is all the more remarkable in Romulus because the others who are said to have become gods from men lived in less educated ages, so that invention had an easy path, since the ignorant could readily be induced to believe. But we see that Romulus’s age was less than six hundred years ago, when letters and learning were already long established, and all that ancient error arising from humanity’s uncultivated life had been dispelled. For if, as investigation of the Greek annals shows, Rome was founded in the second year of the seventh Olympiad, Romulus’s lifetime fell in an age when Greece was already full of poets and musicians, and less credence was given to fables unless they concerned ancient events. For the first Olympiad was established a hundred and eight years after Lycurgus began to frame his laws; some, through a mistake of names, think it was founded by that same Lycurgus. And those who place Homer latest put him about thirty years before the age of Lycurgus.”\n\nSECTION 19\n\n“From this we can understand that Homer lived very many years before Romulus, so that, with people already learned and the times themselves educated, there was scarcely any room for invention. For antiquity accepted tales invented even, at times,\n\nSECTION 19(fr)\n\n(August. C.D. 22.6) “clumsily; but this already cultivated age, especially scoffing at everything impossible, rejected them.”\n\nSECTION 20\n\n“[…]us, his grandson, as some have said, through a daughter. In the very year in which he died, Simonides was born, in the fifty-sixth Olympiad, so that it can be understood more readily that Romulus’s immortality was believed in when human life was already long established, examined, and understood. But surely so great was the force of his genius and virtue that Julius Proculus, a countryman, was believed when he said of Romulus what for many centuries before people had believed of no other mortal. At the urging of the fathers, to divert from themselves the odium of Romulus’s death, he is said to have declared in an assembly that Romulus had appeared to him on the hill now called the Quirinal; that Romulus had charged him to ask the people to build him a shrine on that hill; and that he was a god and was called Quirinus.”\n\nSECTION 21\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\n“Do you see, then, that through one man’s judgment a new people was not merely born and left crying in its cradle, but was already grown and almost of age?” Then Laelius said, “We certainly do; and you have begun your discussion by a new method, found nowhere in the Greeks’ books. For their foremost writer, whom no one has surpassed in writing, took a site for himself on which to build a state at his own discretion—splendid, perhaps, but alien to human life and customs,\n\nSECTION 22\n\n“while the rest discussed the types and principles of states without any definite model or form of commonwealth. You seem to me about to do both. For you have begun in such a way that you prefer to attribute your own discoveries to others rather than invent them yourself, as Socrates does in Plato; you refer to a rational plan those matters concerning the city’s site that Romulus carried out by chance or necessity; and your discussion does not roam at large, but is fixed upon a single commonwealth. Go on, then, as you have begun; for, as you follow the remaining kings, I seem already to glimpse a commonwealth almost complete.”\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 12\n\n“Then,” said Scipio, “when that senate of Romulus, consisting of the best men, to whom the king himself had accorded so much that he wished them to be named fathers and their children patricians, tried after Romulus’s departure to govern the commonwealth itself without a king, the people would not endure it. Longing for Romulus, it thereafter never ceased demanding a king. Then those leading men wisely devised a new method of entering an interregnum, unheard of among other nations, so that until a definite king had been declared the state should neither be without a king nor have one king for long. They would not allow anyone, through long-established power, to become either slower to lay down his command or better fortified to retain it.”\n\nSECTION 24\n\n“Even then, that new people saw what escaped the Spartan Lycurgus: he thought that a king should not be chosen—if indeed this could have been within Lycurgus’s power—but that whoever was born of Hercules’ stock must be accepted, whatever he might be like. Our people, still rustic even then, saw that royal virtue and wisdom, not ancestry, should be sought.”\n\nSECTION 25\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\n“Since report said that Numa Pompilius excelled in these qualities, the people itself, passing over its own citizens, chose a foreigner for its king on the fathers’ recommendation, and summoned this Sabine from Cures to Rome to reign. When he arrived, although the people had ordered in the assembly of the curiae that he should be king, he nevertheless himself brought before the curiae a law concerning his own command. And when he saw the Romans inflamed with martial zeal by Romulus’s training, he judged that they should be drawn back a little from that habit.”\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\n“First he divided among the citizens, man by man, the lands Romulus had captured in war, and taught them that by cultivating their fields they could abound in every comfort without devastation and plunder. He instilled in them a love of leisure and peace, through which justice and good faith most readily grow strong, and under whose protection the cultivation of the fields and the gathering of crops are most securely defended. This same Pompilius, after devising the greater auspices, added two augurs to the original number and set five pontiffs, drawn from the leading men, over the sacred rites. By proposing those laws that we have in our records, he softened through religious ceremonies minds burning with the habit and desire of war. He added, besides, the flamens, the Salii, and the Vestal Virgins, and established every branch of religion with the utmost reverence.”\n\nSECTION 27\n\n“He wished the observance of the rites themselves to be demanding, but their preparation very easy: he established many things to be thoroughly learned and carefully observed, but without expense. Thus he added labor to religious observance and removed its cost. He also instituted markets, games, and every occasion for gathering and celebration. Through these institutions he recalled to humanity and gentleness the minds of men already made savage and fierce by their passion for war. Thus, after reigning thirty-nine years in the deepest peace and concord—for let us follow above all our friend Polybius, whom no one surpassed in the careful investigation of dates—he departed this life, having strengthened two things of the greatest distinction for the commonwealth’s endurance: religion and clemency.”\n\nSECTION 28\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\nWhen Scipio had said this, Manilius asked, “Is the tradition really true, Africanus, that this King Numa was a pupil of Pythagoras himself, or at least a Pythagorean? For we have often heard this from our elders, and understand that it is commonly believed; yet we do not see it sufficiently established by the authority of the public annals.” Then Scipio said, “For that whole story is false, Manilius: not merely invented, but ignorantly and absurdly invented. What is truly intolerable in a falsehood is what we see not only to be invented but to have been impossible. For Pythagoras is found to have come to Sybaris, Croton, and those parts of Italy when Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was already in the fourth year of his reign. The sixty-second Olympiad marks both the beginning of Superbus’s reign and the arrival of Pythagoras.”\n\nSECTION 29\n\n“From this, by adding up the years of the kings’ reigns, we can see that Pythagoras first reached Italy about a hundred and forty years after Numa’s death. Among those who have followed the chronology of the annals most carefully, this has never been in doubt.” “Immortal gods!” said Manilius. “How great a mistake people make, and how deeply rooted it is! Still, I am quite content that our education came not from arts brought in from overseas, but from virtues native to our own land.”\n\nSECTION 30\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\n“You will recognize that far more readily,” said Africanus, “if you watch the commonwealth advancing along a kind of natural path and course toward its best condition. Indeed, you will judge our ancestors’ wisdom worthy of praise on this very ground: you will understand that many things borrowed from elsewhere became far better among us than they had been where they were brought from and where they first arose. And you will understand that the Roman people were strengthened not by chance, but by judgment and discipline—though fortune did not oppose them.”\n\nSECTION 31\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\n“After King Pompilius died, the people, on the interrex’s proposal, elected Tullus Hostilius king in the assembly of the curiae. Following Pompilius’s example, he put the question of his own supreme command to the people, voting by curiae. His military glory was outstanding, his achievements in war great. He also built and enclosed the assembly ground and the senate house from the spoils of war, and established the law for declaring wars. This institution, inherently most just, he consecrated through the religious observances of the fetial priests, so that any war not formally announced and declared should be judged unjust and impious. And to show you how wisely our kings already understood that some powers must be granted to the people—for we have much to say on that subject—Tullus did not dare even to use the royal insignia without the people’s authorization. For, to obtain permission for twelve lictors carrying the fasces to walk before him […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\n“[…] for, in the account you have undertaken, the commonwealth is not crawling but flying toward its best condition.” S. “After him, the people appointed Ancus Marcius, Numa Pompilius’s grandson through his daughter, as king. He too carried a law through the curiae confirming his supreme command. After defeating the Latins in war, he admitted them to citizenship. He also added the Aventine and Caelian hills to the city, divided the lands he had captured, made all the coastal forests he had seized public property, and founded a city at the mouth of the Tiber, strengthening it with colonists. After reigning twenty-three years, he died.” Then Laelius said, “That king too deserves praise. But Roman history is obscure indeed, if we know that king’s mother but not his father.” S. “So it is,” he said. “But of those times, hardly any names except the kings’ have been brought to light.”\n\nSECTION 34\n\nCHAPTER 19\n\n“But at this point the community seems first to have become more learned through a graft of foreign culture. For what flowed from Greece into this city was no slender stream, but a mighty river of those studies and arts. There was, they say, a certain Demaratus of Corinth, easily foremost in his city in distinction, influence, and wealth. Unable to endure Cypselus, the tyrant of Corinth, he is said to have fled with a large fortune and made his way to Tarquinii, a most flourishing city of Etruria. Hearing that Cypselus’s domination was becoming firmly established, this free and courageous man abandoned his homeland. The people of Tarquinii admitted him as a citizen, and he established his home and dwelling in their city. There he had two sons by a respectable woman of Tarquinii, and educated them in all the arts according to Greek learning […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 35\n\nCHAPTER 20\n\n“[…] had readily been admitted to citizenship, his culture and learning made him so intimate with King Ancus that he was thought to share all his counsels and almost to share his throne. Moreover, his affability was extraordinary, as was his generosity to every citizen in offering resources, help, protection, and even gifts. Accordingly, after Marcius’s death, Lucius Tarquinius was elected king by the votes of the entire people. For he had adapted his Greek name to that form, so that in every respect he seemed to have adopted this people’s customs. Once he had carried a law confirming his supreme command, his first act was to double the original number of senators. He called the old senators ‘fathers of the greater houses’ and asked their opinions first; those he himself had enrolled he called ‘fathers of the lesser houses.’\n\nSECTION 36\n\n“He then organized the cavalry in the form that has survived to this day. Though he wished to, he could not change the names of the Titienses, Ramnenses, and Luceres, because Attus Navius, an augur of the highest renown, would not sanction it. I find that the Corinthians too were once careful to provide horses at public expense and maintain them through levies on orphans and widows. But by adding second divisions to the existing divisions of cavalry, he brought the cavalry to 1,800 and doubled its numbers. Later he subdued in war the great and fierce nation of the Aequi, which threatened the power of the Roman people. He also drove the Sabines back from the city walls, routed them with his cavalry, and defeated them in war. We are told that he was the first to celebrate the Great Games, called the Roman Games, and that during the Sabine war, in the very thick of battle, he vowed to build a temple on the Capitol to Jupiter Best and Greatest. He died after a reign of thirty-eight years.”\n\nSECTION 37\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\nThen Laelius said, “Cato’s observation grows clearer now: the constitution of a commonwealth is not the work of one time or one man. For it is plain how many good and useful things are added under each successive king. But next comes the man who, to my mind, saw furthest of all in matters of government.” “That is so,” said Scipio. “For after him Servius Tullius is said to have been the first to reign without the people’s authorization. They say he was born to a slave woman of Tarquinii, who had conceived him by a certain client of the king. Brought up among the household slaves, he used to wait at the king’s table, and the spark of talent already shining in the boy did not go unnoticed: so resourceful was he in every task and conversation. And so Tarquinius, whose children were then quite young, loved Servius so dearly that he was commonly taken for his son. He took the greatest pains to educate him in all the arts he himself had learned, according to the most refined practice of the Greeks.\n\nSECTION 38\n\n“But when Tarquinius had been killed by the treachery of Ancus’s sons, and Servius, as I said before, had begun to reign without the citizens’ authorization, but with their goodwill and consent—for while it was falsely reported that Tarquinius was still alive, ill from his wound, Servius had administered justice in royal robes, freed debtors with his own money, and by his great affability won acceptance for his claim that he was administering justice on Tarquinius’s orders—he did not entrust himself to the senators. Instead, after Tarquinius’s burial, he himself asked the people for their decision about him. Authorized to reign, he carried a law through the curiae confirming his supreme command. First he avenged the wrongs committed by the Etruscans through war; from which, when he […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 39\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\n“[…] eighteen, with the highest property assessment. Then, after setting apart a large body of cavalry from the whole population, he divided the remaining people into five classes and separated the older from the younger men. He so apportioned them that the votes were in the power not of the multitude but of the wealthy. He took care to secure what must always be maintained in a commonwealth: that the greatest numbers should not have the greatest power. If this division were unfamiliar to you, I would explain it; as it is, you see that the arrangement is this: †the cavalry centuries, including the six voting units, and the first class, with the addition of the century assigned to the carpenters for the city’s most essential service, comprise eighty-nine centuries. If just eight of the hundred and four centuries—for that is the number remaining—join them, the voting strength of the whole people is secured. The remaining and much greater multitude, in ninety-six centuries, would neither be excluded from voting, which would be arrogant, nor possess too much power, which would be dangerous.\n\nSECTION 40\n\n“In this he was careful even in his choice of words and names. He called the wealthy ‘assidui,’ from their giving money, an ‘as’; those who reported for assessment either no more than fifteen hundred asses or nothing at all beyond their own persons he called ‘proletarii,’ so that they seemed to be expected to furnish ‘proles,’ that is, offspring for the community. But in just one of those ninety-six centuries, more people were enrolled at that time than in almost the entire first class. Thus no one was denied the right to vote, and the man whose interest in the best condition of the community was greatest had the greatest weight in voting. Indeed, even the unarmed reserves, the trumpeters, the horn players, the proletarians […] […]\n\nSECTION 41\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\n(Non. p. 342M) “That the commonwealth is established in the best condition when it is moderately blended from those three forms—kingship, aristocracy, and popular government—and does not by punishment provoke a savage and ferocious spirit.”\n\nSECTION 42\n\n“[…] older by sixty-five years, since it had been founded thirty-nine years before the first Olympiad. And Lycurgus, ancient as he was, saw much the same things. Accordingly, that equitable balance and this threefold form of commonwealth seem to me to have been shared by us and those peoples. But what is peculiar to our own commonwealth, and unsurpassably admirable, I will pursue in greater detail if I can: it will prove to be something for which no parallel can be found in any other commonwealth. For the elements I have so far described were mixed, both in this state and in those of Sparta and Carthage, without being balanced in any way.\n\nSECTION 43\n\n“For in a commonwealth where one man holds permanent power, particularly the power of a king, even though there is a senate—as there was at Rome under the kings and at Sparta under Lycurgus’s laws—and even though the people too possess certain rights, as they did under our kings, still the royal title stands above all. Such a commonwealth cannot fail to be, and to be called, a kingdom. This form of government is especially liable to change for this reason: through one man’s fault, it can most easily be hurled headlong into the most destructive condition. For kingship itself, as a form of government, is not merely beyond reproach; I am inclined to think it far preferable to the other simple forms, if I were to approve any simple form of commonwealth—but only so long as it preserves its proper character. That character is this: the safety, equitable treatment, and peace of the citizens are governed by one man’s permanent power, justice, and consummate wisdom. A people under a king lack many things altogether, above all freedom, which consists not in having a just master but in having none […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 44\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\n“[…] endured. For a time, indeed, success attended that unjust and cruel master in his undertakings. He subdued all Latium in war and captured Suessa Pometia, a rich and well-stocked city. Enriched by an immense booty of gold and silver, he fulfilled his father’s vow by building the Capitol; he planted colonies and, following the customs of those from whom he sprang, sent splendid gifts to Apollo at Delphi as a kind of first offering from the spoils.\n\nSECTION 45\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\n“Here that wheel will now begin to turn: learn from the outset to recognize its natural movement and circuit. For the heart of political wisdom, the subject of our whole discussion, is to see the paths and turns of commonwealths, so that, knowing where each development tends, you may hold it back or forestall it. For that king of whom I speak, stained from the first by the murder of an excellent king, was not sound in mind. Fearing the ultimate punishment for his crime, he wanted to be feared himself. Then, propped up by victories and wealth, he ran riot in his arrogance, unable either to govern his own conduct or to curb the passions of his family.\n\nSECTION 46\n\n“And so, when his elder son raped Lucretia, the daughter of Tricipitinus and wife of Collatinus, and that modest and noble woman punished herself with death for the outrage, Lucius Brutus, a man of outstanding intelligence and courage, cast off that unjust yoke of harsh slavery from his fellow citizens. Although a private citizen, he upheld the entire commonwealth, and was the first in this state to teach that, when the citizens’ freedom is to be preserved, no one is merely a private citizen. Stirred at his urging and under his leadership, both by the fresh lament of Lucretia’s father and relatives and by the memory of Tarquinius’s arrogance and the many wrongs done by him and his sons, the community ordered the king himself, his children, and the Tarquinian clan into exile.\n\nSECTION 47\n\nCHAPTER 26\n\n“Do you see, then, how a king became a master, and through one man’s fault the form of the commonwealth changed from good to the very worst? For this is the master of a people whom the Greeks call a tyrant. By a king they mean someone who cares for his people like a father and maintains those placed under him in the best possible conditions of life. It is, as I said, certainly a good form of commonwealth, but one that leans and, as it were, slopes toward the most destructive condition.\n\nSECTION 48\n\n“For the moment this king bends toward a more unjust domination, he becomes a tyrant at once. No creature can be imagined more loathsome, more foul, or more hateful to gods and men. Though human in shape, in the savagery of his nature he surpasses the most monstrous beasts. For who could rightly call someone a human being who wishes to share neither a bond of law nor a fellowship of humanity with his fellow citizens, or indeed with the whole human race? But there will be another, more fitting place to speak of this kind of man, when the subject itself calls upon us to denounce those who sought dominion even after the state had been set free.\n\nSECTION 49\n\nCHAPTER 27\n\n“You have, then, the first origin of the tyrant. For the Greeks chose this name for an unjust king; our people, however, called everyone a king who alone held permanent power over a people. Thus Spurius Cassius, Marcus Manlius, and Spurius Maelius were said to have wanted to seize the kingship, and recently Tiberius Gracchus […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 50\n\nCHAPTER 28\n\n“[…] Lycurgus called ‘elders’ at Sparta—far too few of them, to be sure, twenty-eight. He wished them to hold the highest authority in counsel, while the king held the highest authority in command. Our people, following and translating that same practice, named the body he called ‘elders’ a ‘senate,’ as we have said Romulus had already done when he chose the fathers. Yet the king’s force, power, and title still stand high and preeminent. Give the people too some share of power, as Lycurgus and Romulus did: you will not satisfy them with freedom, but kindle their hunger for it, once you have allowed them merely a taste. And always that fear will hang over them, that the king may turn unjust, as so often happens. Fragile indeed is the fortune of a people when it rests, as I said before, on one man’s will or character.\n\nSECTION 51\n\nCHAPTER 29\n\n“Let us, then, have discovered this first shape, appearance, and origin of the tyrant in the commonwealth Romulus founded under the auspices, not in the one Socrates painted for himself in that three-part conversation Plato recorded in full. Let us see how Tarquinius, without acquiring any new power, but by using the power he had unjustly, overturned this whole form of royal government. Opposed to him let us place another man, good and wise, versed in the community’s interests and dignity, a kind of guardian and steward of the commonwealth. For that is what we should call whoever directs and pilots the state. Make sure you recognize this man: he is the one who can protect the community by his judgment and action. Since this title is not yet common in our language, and we shall have to discuss this kind of man more often in the rest of our conversation […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 52\n\nCHAPTER 30\n\n“[…] investigated, and constructed a state to be wished for rather than hoped for, as small as he could make it—not one that could exist, but one in which the principles of political life could be clearly seen. I, however, if only I can achieve it, will strive, with the same principles he discerned, to put my finger, as though with a pointer, on the cause of each public good and evil, not in a shadowy image of a state but in a commonwealth of the greatest stature. For when those two hundred and forty years of kingship, or a little more including the interregnums, had passed and Tarquinius had been expelled, the Roman people were seized by as great a hatred of the royal title as the longing that had possessed them after Romulus’s death—or rather, his departure. Just as then they could not bear to be without a king, so after Tarquinius’s expulsion they could not bear to hear the name of king. Here, when the opportunity […] […]\n\nSECTION 53fr\n\nCHAPTER 31\n\n(Non. 526M) “And so, when that splendid constitution of Romulus had stood firm for about two hundred and twenty years […]\n\nSECTION 53\n\n“[…] that law was repealed in its entirety. In this spirit our ancestors then expelled the innocent Collatinus because his kinship aroused suspicion, and the remaining Tarquins because their name gave offense. In the same spirit Publius Valerius was the first to order the fasces lowered when he began to speak in a public meeting; and he moved his house down to the foot of the Velia after noticing that the people’s suspicions were being aroused because he had begun to build higher up on the Velia, on the very spot where King Tullus had lived. And in the act that most entitled him to the name Publicola, he proposed to the people the first law carried in the assembly of the centuries: no magistrate should kill or flog a Roman citizen in defiance of an appeal.\n\nSECTION 54\n\n“The pontifical books show that there was a right of appeal even from the kings, and our augural books also indicate it. The Twelve Tables likewise declare in several laws that an appeal is permitted from every judgment and penalty. And the recorded tradition that the ten men who wrote the laws were appointed without appeal should sufficiently prove that the other magistrates were not exempt from appeal. The consular law of Lucius Valerius Potitus and Marcus Horatius Barbatus, men wisely devoted to the people’s cause for the sake of harmony, laid down that no magistrate should be appointed without appeal. Nor, indeed, did the Porcian laws—three laws by three members of the Porcian family, as you know—introduce anything new except the penalty for violation.\n\nSECTION 55\n\n“Accordingly, once that law on appeal had passed, Publicola immediately ordered the axes removed from the fasces. The next day he secured the election of Spurius Lucretius as his colleague and ordered his own lictors to pass over to him because he was older. He was the first to establish that the lictors should precede each consul in alternate months, so that a free people should have no more insignia of supreme command than there had been under the kings. To my mind, this was no ordinary man: by giving the people a measured freedom, he more easily preserved the authority of the leading men. And I am not rehearsing these things, so ancient and so forgotten, without a purpose. Rather, in distinguished persons and times I am defining examples of men and events to guide the rest of my discussion.\n\nSECTION 56\n\nCHAPTER 32\n\n“In those days, then, the senate maintained the commonwealth in this condition: among a free people, few things were done through the people, most through the senate’s authority and through established practice and custom. The consuls held power limited to a year in duration, but royal in its nature and legal scope. And what mattered most, perhaps, to preserving the nobles’ power was firmly maintained: the decisions of the people’s assemblies were not valid unless the authority of the fathers had approved them. In this very period a dictator was also appointed, Titus Larcius, about ten years after the first consuls. This seemed a new form of supreme command, closely resembling royal power. Nevertheless, the leading men kept control of everything with the highest authority, while the people yielded; and in those days great feats of war were accomplished by the bravest men invested with supreme command, dictators and consuls.\n\nSECTION 57\n\nCHAPTER 33\n\n“But what the very nature of things demanded—that the people, once freed from the kings, should claim somewhat greater rights for themselves—they attained before long, about the sixteenth year, in the consulship of Postumus Cominius and Spurius Cassius. Perhaps reason was lacking in this, but the very nature of commonwealths often overcomes reason. Hold fast to what I said at the beginning: unless there is this equitable balance in the community of rights, duties, and responsibilities, with sufficient power in the magistrates, authority in the council of leading men, and freedom in the people, this stable condition of the commonwealth cannot be preserved.\n\nSECTION 58\n\n“For when debt threw the community into turmoil, the plebeians occupied first the Sacred Mount and later the Aventine. Not even Lycurgus’s system kept those restraints in place among a Greek people. For at Sparta too, in the reign of Theopompus, five officials whom they call ephors were appointed, and in Crete ten called cosmi, to counter the force of royal power, just as the tribunes of the plebs were appointed to counter the consuls’ command.\n\nSECTION 59\n\nCHAPTER 34\n\n“†Perhaps our ancestors had some means of remedying that burden of debt, a means that had escaped neither Solon of Athens not long before, nor, somewhat later, our own senate, when all the citizens’ bonds of debt were dissolved because of one man’s lust, and bondage for debt ceased thereafter. Whenever the plebeians, weakened by the expense of a public calamity, were failing, some relief and remedy for this distress was always sought for the safety of all. That policy was neglected then, and the people found cause to diminish the senate’s power and authority by electing two tribunes of the plebs in a revolt. Yet its authority remained weighty and great, as men of the highest wisdom and courage protected the state by arms and counsel. Their influence flourished above all because, though they far surpassed the rest in honor, they fell below them in indulgence and were generally no richer. Each man’s public virtue was all the more welcome because in private affairs they most diligently protected individual citizens with their services, advice, and resources.\n\nSECTION 60\n\nCHAPTER 35\n\n“While the commonwealth was in this condition, a quaestor accused Spurius Cassius, who was plotting to seize the kingship and enjoyed immense popular favor. As you have heard, after his father declared that he had discovered him guilty of that offense, Cassius was put to death, with the people acquiescing. About the fifty-fourth year after the first consuls, the consuls Spurius Tarpeius and Aulus Aternius also carried that welcome law concerning fines and legal deposits in the assembly of the centuries. Twenty years later, because the censors Lucius Papirius and Publius Pinarius had transferred great numbers of cattle from private ownership to the state by imposing fines, a law of the consuls Gaius Julius and Publius Papirius set a low valuation on livestock used in payment of a fine.\n\nSECTION 61\n\nCHAPTER 36\n\n“But some years earlier, when the senate held the highest authority and the people submitted and obeyed, a plan was adopted whereby both consuls and tribunes of the plebs should resign their offices, and ten men should be appointed with the fullest powers and without appeal, to hold supreme command and write the laws. After drafting ten tables of laws with the greatest fairness and wisdom, they had another ten men elected for the following year, whose good faith and justice did not receive the same praise. Yet one member of that board, Gaius Julius, won exceptional praise for this: although he himself held supreme power as one of the ten, with no appeal, he nevertheless demanded sureties from a nobleman, Lucius Sestius, in whose bedroom, he said, a corpse had been dug up in his presence. For he declared that he would not disregard that splendid law which forbade a decision on a Roman citizen’s life except in the assembly of the centuries.\n\nSECTION 62\n\nCHAPTER 37\n\n“A third year of the ten men’s rule followed, since the same men remained and had refused to have others elected in their place. In this condition of the commonwealth, which I have often said could not last because it did not treat all ranks of the community equitably, the whole state was in the hands of its leading men. Ten men of the highest birth presided over it; no tribunes of the plebs opposed them, no other magistrates were associated with them, and no appeal to the people against execution or flogging remained.\n\nSECTION 63\n\n“From their injustice, then, there suddenly arose a most violent upheaval and a complete change in the commonwealth. They added two tables of unjust laws, and in these enacted a most inhuman provision forbidding intermarriage between plebeians and patricians—a right commonly granted even to separate peoples. This was later repealed by the Canuleian resolution of the plebs. In every exercise of their power they ruled the people willfully, cruelly, and greedily. The story is, of course, well known and celebrated in many written records: a certain Decimus Verginius killed his virgin daughter with his own hand in the forum because of the unbridled lust of one of those ten men, and fled in grief to the army, which was then on Mount Algidus; the soldiers abandoned the war they had in hand and occupied, under arms, first the Sacred Mount, as had been done before in a similar crisis, and then the Aventine […] […]\n\nSECTION 63fr\n\n(Philarg., Serv. G. 3.125) “when Lucius Quinctius had been appointed dictator.\n\n[…] I judge that our ancestors both approved most heartily and retained most wisely.”\n\nSECTION 64\n\nCHAPTER 38\n\nWhen Scipio had said this, and everyone waited in silence for the rest of his discourse, Tubero said, “Since these older men ask nothing of you, Africanus, you shall hear from me what I find wanting in your discussion.” “By all means,” said Scipio, “and I shall gladly hear it.” Then Tubero said, “You seem to me to have praised our commonwealth, although Laelius asked you not about ours, but about commonwealths in general. Nor have I learned from your discussion by what discipline, customs, or laws we can establish or preserve the very commonwealth you praise.”\n\nSECTION 65\n\nCHAPTER 39\n\nHere Africanus said, “I think, Tubero, that we shall soon have a better place to discuss the founding and preservation of states. As for their best condition, I thought I had answered Laelius’s question sufficiently. First I had specified three acceptable forms of government and an equal number of destructive forms opposed to those three. No one of them, I said, was best; rather, a form moderately blended from the first three surpassed each of them.\n\nSECTION 66\n\n“My use of our own state as an example served not to define the best condition—for that could have been done without an example—but to show in actual practice, in a very great state, the nature of what reason and discourse described. But if you are seeking the essential character of the best constitution without the example of any people, we must use a model drawn from nature, since you this model of a city and people […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 67\n\nCHAPTER 40\n\n“[…] whom I have long been seeking and whom I wish to reach.” L. “Perhaps you are looking for a man of practical wisdom?” Then he said, “Precisely that man.” L. “You have a fine supply among the very people here, beginning with yourself.” Then Scipio said, “If only the whole senate had a corresponding proportion! Still, there is practical wisdom in the man who, as we have often seen in Africa, sits on an immense and mighty beast, restrains and guides it wherever he wishes, and turns the wild creature with a slight signal, †not a blow.” L. “I know him, and often saw him when I was your lieutenant.” S. “That Indian or Carthaginian, then, restrains a single beast, and one that is teachable and accustomed to human ways. But what lies hidden within human souls, the part of the soul called the mind, reins in and tames more than one creature, and none easy to subdue—if it ever succeeds, as it very rarely can. For that fierce creature too must be held in check […] […]\n\nSECTION 68\n\nCHAPTER 41\n\n(Non. 300M) “which feeds on blood, which revels so wildly in every cruelty that it can scarcely be sated by the bitter deaths of human beings.\n\n(Non. 491M) but to one who desires and craves and lusts and wallows in pleasures.\n\n(Non. 72M) and the fourth, anxiety, inclined to grief, sorrowing and constantly tormenting itself.\n\n(Non. 228M) but to be crushed by anguish, by misery, or cast down by timidity and cowardice.\n\n(Non. 292M) As an unskilled charioteer is dragged from his chariot, trampled, torn apart, and crushed.”\n\nSECTION 69\n\nCHAPTER 42\n\n“[…] could be called.” Then Laelius said, “I see now what duty and task you assign to the man I have been waiting for.” “Almost this alone,” said Africanus, “for almost everything else is contained in this one thing: he must never cease to observe and examine himself, must call others to imitate him, and must offer himself to his fellow citizens like a mirror in the brilliance of his soul and life. For just as, in strings or pipes, and in singing itself and voices, a certain harmony must be maintained among distinct sounds, which trained ears cannot bear to hear altered or discordant, and that harmony is made concordant and fitting through the regulation of the most unlike voices, so a state, through the measured ordering of its highest, lowest, and intervening middle ranks as though they were sounds, sings in the accord\n\n(August. C.D. 2.21) of its most unlike elements. And what musicians call harmony in song is concord in a state, the closest and best bond of security in every commonwealth; and without justice it cannot possibly exist.”\n\nSECTION 70\n\nCHAPTER 44\n\n“[…] to be full of justice.” Then Scipio said, “I agree indeed, and I declare to you that we must think nothing has yet been said about the commonwealth, nor can we advance any further, unless it is established not only that the claim that government cannot be carried on without injustice is false, but that this is utterly true: a commonwealth cannot possibly be governed without the highest justice. But, if you please, let this be enough for today; let us put off the rest—for quite a lot remains—until tomorrow.” When they had agreed to this, the discussion ended for that day.\n\n### Book 3\n\nSECTION 1\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n[…] and vehicles for slowness; and when that same faculty found human beings uttering something rudimentary and confused in unformed sounds, it cut these sounds apart and divided them into sections, stamped words on things like signs, and bound people, formerly scattered, to one another with the most delightful bond of speech. By a similar intelligence, all the sounds of the voice, which had seemed infinite, were marked and represented through the invention of a few symbols. By these, conversations with the absent, expressions of intention, and records of past events could be preserved. To this was added number, something necessary to life and uniquely unchanging and eternal. This first impelled us also to look up into the heavens, to observe the movements of the stars to some purpose, and, by counting nights and days […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n[…] whose souls rose higher and could accomplish or conceive something worthy, as I said before, of the gods’ gift. Let us therefore regard those who discuss the conduct of life as great men, as indeed they are; let them be learned, let them be teachers of truth and virtue. Only let this other subject—whether discovered by men engaged in the changing affairs of commonwealths or also treated in those thinkers’ leisure and writings—be regarded, as it is, as by no means contemptible: the theory of government and the discipline of peoples, which brings about in gifted natures, as it has already done so very often, the emergence of a virtue almost beyond belief, a divine virtue.\n\nSECTION 5\n\nBut if anyone has thought that to the equipment of mind he possessed by nature and through civic institutions he should also add learning and a fuller knowledge of things, as did the very men taking part in the discussion in these books, everyone must place such men above all others. For what can be more glorious than the union of the management and experience of great affairs with the study and knowledge of those arts? Or what can be imagined more accomplished than Publius Scipio, Gaius Laelius, or Lucius Philus? To omit nothing that belonged to the highest distinction of illustrious men, they added to the customs of their own land and ancestors this learning brought from abroad, from Socrates.\n\nSECTION 6\n\nTherefore, the man who both wished and was able to equip himself in both ways, with his ancestors’ institutions and with learning, has, I think, attained everything that makes for glory. But if one of the two paths to wisdom must be chosen, then, even if someone thinks the quiet life devoted to the finest studies and arts happier, the life of public service is certainly more praiseworthy and illustrious. From this life the greatest men derive their distinction, as did Manius Curius,\n“Whom no one could conquer with iron or gold,”\nor […]\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n[…] was wisdom; nevertheless, there was this difference in the methods of the two groups: the former fostered nature’s first principles through words and arts, the latter through institutions and laws. This one state has produced more men who, if not wise—since those thinkers restrict that title so narrowly—are certainly worthy of the highest praise, since they honored the teachings and discoveries of the wise. And consider how many states now deserve praise or have deserved it. Since to establish a commonwealth capable of lasting is by far the greatest work of judgment in the world, if we count a single man for each state, what a multitude of outstanding men we shall find! And if we choose to survey in our minds Italy’s Latins, or its Sabine or Volscian people, Samnium, Etruria, or that great Greece in Italy, and then the Assyrians, the Persians, the Carthaginians, if these […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\n[…] And Philus said, “A splendid case you are handing over to me, when you want me to undertake the defense of wickedness!” “And of course,” said Laelius, “you must fear that, if you state the usual arguments against justice, people will think those are your own convictions—you, who are almost a unique example of old-fashioned integrity and good faith, and whose practice of arguing on opposite sides is well known, since you think truth is most easily discovered that way.” And Philus said, “Well then, I shall oblige you and knowingly smear myself with dirt. Since those who search for gold do not think they should refuse such a thing, we, who are searching for justice, something far more precious than all gold, must certainly shrink from no discomfort. And if only, just as I am to use another man’s argument, I could also use another man’s voice! As it is, Lucius Furius Philus must say what Carneades, a Greek accustomed to using words as suited his convenience […] […]\n\nSECTION 9\n\n(Non. 263M) “so that you may answer Carneades, who often makes a mockery of the best causes through the captious ingenuity of his arguments.”\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n(Non. 373M) “Justice looks outward, reaching out in its entirety and standing forth.\n\n(Non. 299M) A virtue which, beyond all others, extends and unfolds itself wholly for the benefit of others.”\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n“[…] both discover and uphold, while the other filled four quite substantial books with justice itself. For I expected nothing grand or magnificent from Chrysippus, who speaks in his own peculiar fashion, weighing everything by the slight shifts of words, not by the substance of things. It was for those heroes to lift from the dust that virtue which, if it exists at all, is uniquely generous and liberal, which loves everyone more than itself and was born for others rather than itself, and to place it on that divine throne not far from wisdom.\n\nSECTION 13\n\n“Nor did they lack either the will—for what other reason had they for writing, or what purpose at all?—or the intellect in which they surpassed everyone. But their cause defeated both their will and their resources. For the law we are investigating is a matter of civic enactment, not of nature. If it were natural, justice and injustice would be the same for everyone, just as heat and cold, bitterness and sweetness are.\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n“As things are, if someone could, in Pacuvius’s words, ‘riding in the chariot of winged serpents,’ look down upon and survey with his eyes many different nations and cities, he would see first that among the Egyptians, that exceptionally uncorrupted people who preserve in writing the memory of so many centuries and events, a certain ox is regarded as a god, whom the Egyptians call Apis; and that among them many other monsters and beasts of every kind are consecrated among the gods. Next he would see the magnificent shrines of Greece, as among us, dedicated to images in human form, which the Persians thought impious. Indeed, Xerxes is said to have ordered the Athenians’ temples burned for this reason alone: he considered it sacrilege to keep the gods shut within walls, when their home was this entire universe.\n\nSECTION 15\n\n“Later, however, both Philip, who planned war against the Persians, and Alexander, who waged it, put forward this reason for the war: each wished to exact vengeance for the shrines of Greece. The Greeks had thought these should not even be rebuilt, so that future generations might have before their eyes an everlasting witness to the Persians’ crime. How many peoples—the Tauri on the Black Sea, King Busiris of Egypt, the Gauls, the Carthaginians—have thought human sacrifice both pious and most pleasing to the immortal gods! Ways of life differ so widely that the Cretans and Aetolians consider robbery honorable, while the Spartans repeatedly declared that all the lands they could reach with a spear were theirs. The Athenians even used to swear publicly that all land bearing olives or crops belonged to them. The Gauls think it shameful to get grain by manual labor, and so, armed, they reap other people’s fields;\n\nSECTION 16\n\n“we, however, are supremely just people, who do not allow the nations beyond the Alps to plant olive or vine, so that our own olive groves and vineyards may be worth more. When we do this, we are said to act prudently, not justly, so that you may understand how wisdom differs from fairness. And Lycurgus, that inventor of excellent laws and the fairest justice, gave the lands of the wealthy to the common people to cultivate as though they were slaves.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\n“But if I wished to describe the forms of law, institutions, manners, and customs, I could show not only their variety among so many nations, but their thousand changes in a single city, even this very one. Our interpreter of the law here, Manilius, now states one set of rules about women’s legacies and inheritances, whereas in his youth, before the Voconian law was passed, he used to state another. That very law, proposed for men’s advantage, is full of injustice to women. Why should a woman not possess money? Why may a woman be heir to a Vestal Virgin, but not to her own mother? And if a limit had to be set on women’s wealth, why could Publius Crassus’s daughter, if she were her father’s only child, possess a hundred million asses without breaking the law, while mine could not possess three million asses […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 18\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\n“[…] had established laws for us, we should all observe the same ones, and the same people would not observe different laws at different times. But I ask: if it is the mark of a just man and a good man to obey the laws, which laws? Whatever laws there happen to be? Yet virtue admits no inconsistency, and nature allows no variation; our laws win acceptance through punishment, not through our justice. Law, then, has nothing natural about it; and from this it follows that people are not just by nature either. Or do they say that laws vary, but naturally good men follow the justice that truly exists, not what is thought to be just? For, they say, it is the mark of a good and just man to give each person what each deserves.\n\nSECTION 19\n\n“First, then, shall we give anything to speechless beasts? For no ordinary men, but the greatest and most learned, Pythagoras and Empedocles, proclaim that all living creatures share one legal standing, and cry out that inexpiable punishments hang over those who have harmed an animal. It is therefore a crime to harm a beast; and that crime, whoever wishes […] […]\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\n“[…] For all who hold the power of life and death over a people are tyrants, though they prefer, borrowing the title of Jupiter Best, to be called kings. When certain men control the commonwealth because of wealth, birth, or some other resources, it is a faction, though they are called the best men. If the people possess the greatest power and everything is governed at their discretion, that is called freedom, but is in truth license. But when each fears the other, man fears man and rank fears rank, then, because no one trusts in his own strength, a kind of bargain is made between the people and the powerful. From this arises the combined form of government Scipio was praising. For the mother of justice is neither nature nor inclination, but weakness. Since one of three things must be chosen—to do wrong without suffering it, to do it and suffer it, or to do neither—the best is to do wrong if you can do so with impunity; second best, neither to do it nor to suffer it; most wretched, to be forever fighting, now inflicting wrongs, now receiving them. Thus those who to attain that first […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 24fr\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\n(Non. 125M,318M,534M) “For when he was asked what criminal impulse had driven him to make the sea unsafe with a single pirate ship, he said, ‘The same one that drives you to make the whole world unsafe.’”\n\nSECTION 24\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\n“[…] all […]. Wisdom bids us increase our resources, enlarge our wealth, extend our boundaries—for how could that praise engraved on the monuments of the greatest commanders, ‘He extended the boundaries of the empire,’ have arisen unless something had been added from others’ property?—rule as many people as possible, enjoy pleasures, be powerful, reign, dominate. Justice, however, commands us to spare everyone, care for the human race, give each his due, and leave sacred, public, and other people’s property untouched. What follows, then, if you obey wisdom? Wealth, power, resources, honors, commands, kingdoms, for individuals or for peoples. But since we are speaking of the commonwealth, public actions are more conspicuous; and since the principle of justice is the same in both cases, I think we should discuss a people’s wisdom. To pass over others, did this people of ours, whose history Africanus traced yesterday from its roots, and whose empire now holds the whole world, become the greatest from being the smallest of all through justice or through wisdom? […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 25\n\n“[…] except the Arcadians and Athenians, who, fearing, I suppose, that this prohibition of justice might one day arise, invented the story that they had sprung from the earth like those little mice in the fields.\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\n“To this, the following reply is commonly made, first by men who are by no means poor disputants. They have the more authority in this case because, when the question concerns a good man, whom we wish to be open and straightforward, they are not sly, cunning, or malicious in debate. They deny that the wise man is good because goodness and justice delight him of themselves and for their own sake. Rather, it is because the lives of good men are free of fear, care, anxiety, and danger, whereas some thorn always lodges in the minds of the wicked, and trials and punishments always hover before their eyes. No advantage, no reward won by injustice is worth so much that you should always be afraid, always think some punishment present, always think it hanging over you, losses […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 27fr\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 5.12.5) “I ask: suppose there are two men, one the best of men, supremely fair, of the highest justice and extraordinary good faith, the other conspicuous for crime and audacity. Suppose the community is so mistaken that it thinks that good man criminal, wicked, and impious, while it considers the utterly wicked man a model of integrity and good faith; and, in keeping with this opinion of all the citizens, the good man is harassed, dragged away, finally subjected to violence, his eyes gouged out, condemned, chained, burned, driven into exile, left destitute,\n\nSECTION 27\n\n“and finally appears, with every justification, to be the most wretched of all; while the wicked man, on the contrary, is praised, honored, and loved by everyone, all distinctions, all commands, all wealth, and resources of every kind are heaped upon him from every side, and in everyone’s judgment he is considered the very best of men and most worthy of every blessing of fortune—who, then, will be so mad as to hesitate over which of the two he would rather be?\n\nSECTION 28\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\n“What holds for individuals holds for peoples: no state is so foolish that it would not prefer to rule unjustly rather than serve justly. Nor need I go far for an example. As consul, with you as my advisers, I investigated the treaty with Numantia. Who did not know that Quintus Pompeius had made a treaty, and that Mancinus’s case was the same? One, an excellent man, even supported the bill I proposed at the senate’s direction; the other defended himself most fiercely. If we seek a sense of shame, integrity, or good faith, Mancinus displayed these; if calculation, judgment, and prudence, Pompeius stands ahead. Which […] […]\n\nSECTION 32\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\n(Gel. N.A. 1.22.8) “I would not press you, Laelius, unless I thought these men wished it and I myself desired you too to take up some part of this conversation of ours, especially since you yourself said yesterday that you would be more than enough for us. But that, of course, is impossible; we all ask that you at least not fail us.”\n\n(Non. 323M, 324M) “but our young men must by no means listen to him. For if he thought as he speaks, he is a vile man; if he thought otherwise, as I prefer to believe, his speech is nevertheless monstrous.”\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 6.8.6) “True law is indeed right reason in accord with nature, spread among all, constant, everlasting. By its commands it calls us to duty; by its prohibitions it deters us from wrongdoing. Yet it neither commands nor forbids the good in vain, nor moves the wicked by its commands or prohibitions. It is sacrilege to enact a law against this law; no part of it may be taken away, nor can it be repealed altogether. Neither senate nor people can release us from this law, nor must we seek another to explain or interpret it. There will not be one law at Rome and another at Athens, one now and another hereafter, but one everlasting and unchanging law will bind all nations at all times. There will be one common master, as it were, and commander of all: God, the deviser, judge, and proposer of this law. Whoever disobeys him will flee from his own self and, having scorned his human nature, will by that very act pay the greatest penalties, even if he escapes the other things considered punishments.\n\nSECTION 34fr\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\n(August. C.D. 22.6) “that no war is undertaken by the best state except to keep faith or defend its safety.”\n\nSECTION 34\n\n“But private individuals often escape those penalties which even the most foolish feel—poverty, exile, imprisonment, flogging—when a swift death offers itself. For states, however, death itself is a punishment, though it seems to rescue individuals from punishment; for a state should be so established that it lasts forever. There is therefore no natural end to a commonwealth as there is to a human being, for whom death is not merely necessary but very often desirable. But when a state is removed, destroyed, extinguished, it is in a way—to compare small things with great—as though this entire universe were to perish and collapse.\n\nSECTION 35afr\n\n(Isid. Orig. 18.1.2sq.) “Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without cause. For no war can be justly waged except to exact redress or repel enemies.\n\n(Isid. Orig. 18.1.2sq.) No war is considered just unless it has been announced, unless it has been declared, unless restitution has been demanded.”\n\nSECTION 35bfr\n\n(Non. 498M) “Our people, however, by defending their allies have now gained possession of the whole world.”\n\nSECTION 36\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\n(August. C.D. 19.21) “Why, then, does God rule over man, the soul over the body, reason over passion and the other vicious parts of the soul?”\n\nSECTION 37\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\n(August. c. Iul. 4.12.61) Do we not see that nature herself has given dominion to the best, to the great benefit of the weak? Why else does God rule man, the mind the body, reason desire and anger and the other vicious elements of that same mind?\n\n(August. c. Iul. 4.12.61) But we must also recognize distinctions in ruling and in serving. For as the mind is said to rule the body, so it is said to rule desire; yet it rules the body as a king rules his citizens or a parent his children, but desire as a master rules slaves, since it restrains and breaks it. Thus the authority of kings, commanders, magistrates, fathers, and peoples governs citizens and allies as the mind governs the body; masters, however, keep their slaves under harsh discipline as the best part of the mind, that is, wisdom, does the vicious and feeble parts of the same mind—desires, fits of anger, and the other passions.\n\n(August. C.D. 14.23) that the body’s limbs are ruled like children because they obey so readily, but the vicious parts of the mind are curbed like slaves by a harsher authority?\n\n(Non. 109M) For there is a kind of unjust slavery, when those who could belong to themselves belong to another; but when those serve […]\n\nSECTION 39\n\nCHAPTER 27\n\n(Prisc. GL 2.399K) in which cases I agree that an anxious and perilous justice does not befit a wise person.\n\nSECTION 40\n\nCHAPTER 28\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 5.18.4) Virtue certainly desires honor, and virtue has no other reward […]. Yet she accepts it readily, without demanding it harshly […]. What riches will you set before this man? What commands? What kingdoms? He regards those things as human, but judges his own goods divine […]. But if universal ingratitude, widespread envy, or powerful enemies strip virtue of her rewards, she surely delights in many consolations, and above all sustains herself by her own beauty.\n\n(August. C.D. 22.4) Their bodies were not carried up to heaven; for nature would not permit what was of earth to remain anywhere but on earth.\n\n(Non. 125M) Never a very brave man’s courage, tireless energy, endurance […]\n\n(Non. 132M) As though Pyrrhus lacked generosity to offer Fabricius, or the Samnites lacked resources to offer Curius!\n\n(Non. 522M,68M) Our own Cato, when he came to his Sabine estate, used to visit this man’s hearth, as we heard from his own lips. Seated beside it, Curius had rejected the gifts of the Samnites, once his enemies, by then his clients.\n\nSECTION 41\n\nCHAPTER 29\n\n[…] Asia, Tiberius Gracchus persisted in the case of the citizens, but disregarded the rights and treaties of the allies and the Latin peoples. If this practice and license begin to spread further and turn our rule from justice to force, so that those who until now obey us willingly are held by terror, then, though for us at our age the watch is nearly over, I am troubled for our descendants and for that immortality of the commonwealth, which could have lasted forever had we lived by our ancestral institutions and customs.\n\nSECTION 42\n\nCHAPTER 30\n\nWhen Laelius had finished, everyone present showed how greatly he had delighted them; but Scipio, carried away beyond the others by a kind of joy, said, “You have often defended many cases, Laelius, in such a way that I, with you, neither our colleague Servius Galba, whom you placed above everyone while he lived, nor indeed any of the Attic orators, either for sweetness […].”\n\n[…]\n\n(Non. 262M) that he had lacked two things, confidence and a voice, and their absence kept him from speaking before the people and in the Forum […]\n\n(Sch. Iuvenal. Sat. 6.480) the bull bellowed with the groaning of the men imprisoned inside it.\n\nSECTION 43\n\nCHAPTER 31\n\n[…] bring back. “Then who would call that a people’s affair—that is, a commonwealth—when everyone was crushed by one man’s cruelty, and there was no single bond of law, no agreement and fellowship of an assembly, such as constitutes a people? The same applies to Syracuse. That splendid city, which Timaeus calls the greatest of Greek cities and the most beautiful of all; its citadel, a sight to behold; its harbors flowing deep into the town’s recesses and up to the city’s edges; its broad streets, colonnades, temples, walls—none of these made it a commonwealth while Dionysius held it. Nothing belonged to the people, and the people themselves belonged to one man. Where there is a tyrant, therefore, we must say that there is not a defective commonwealth, as I said yesterday, but, as our reasoning now compels us to say, no commonwealth at all.”\n\nSECTION 44\n\nCHAPTER 32\n\n“An excellent point,” said Laelius; “I now see where the argument is going.” S. “Then you see that a state wholly in the power of a faction cannot truly be called a commonwealth either.” L. “That is certainly my judgment.” S. “And a perfectly sound judgment it is. For what belonged to the Athenians when, after that great Peloponnesian War, the Thirty ruled their city with such injustice? Did the city’s ancient glory or the town’s splendid appearance, its theater, gymnasiums, colonnades, famous gateways, citadel, the marvelous works of Phidias, or that magnificent Piraeus make it a commonwealth?” “Certainly not,” said Laelius, “since it was not the people’s affair.” S. “What about Rome, when the decemvirs held power without appeal in that third year, when liberty herself had lost her claim to freedom?” L. “Nothing belonged to the people; indeed, what the people did was to recover what was theirs.”\n\nSECTION 45\n\nCHAPTER 33\n\nS. “I come now to the third kind, where we may perhaps seem to face difficulties. When everything is said to be done by the people and to lie in the people’s power; when the multitude puts anyone it wishes to death; when they do, plunder, possess, and scatter whatever they please—can you then deny, Laelius, that this is a commonwealth? Everything belongs to the people, and we maintain that a commonwealth is the people’s affair.” Then Laelius said, “There is none I would more readily deny to be a commonwealth than this one, which is entirely […]. It was not held that there was a commonwealth at Syracuse or Agrigentum or Athens when tyrants ruled there, or here when the decemvirs ruled. Nor do I see how the name of commonwealth is any more in evidence under the multitude’s domination. First, as you so well defined it, Scipio, I do not regard a group as a people unless it is held together by agreement in law. Rather, such an assembly is as much a tyrant as a single man would be, and more hideous still, since no beast is more savage than this one that assumes the people’s appearance and name. Nor indeed is it consistent, when the property of the insane is legally in the power of their relatives in the male line, because now their […]”\n\nSECTION 46\n\nCHAPTER 34\n\n[…] “may be said, why that should be a commonwealth and a people’s affair—the arguments made about monarchy.” “And with far greater force,” said Mummius; “for a king, being one man, more closely resembles a master. But where several good men hold power in a commonwealth, nothing can be more blessed than that state. Still, I prefer even monarchy to a free people; for that is the third kind of commonwealth you have left, the most defective of all.”\n\nSECTION 47\n\nCHAPTER 35\n\nHere Scipio said, “I recognize that habit of yours, Spurius, your aversion to popular government. Although one can take it more gently than you generally do, I agree that none of these three kinds deserves less approval. But I do not agree with you that aristocrats are better than a king. If it is wisdom that governs the commonwealth, what difference, after all, does it make whether it resides in one man or in several? Yet a certain misconception misleads us when we argue this way. When they are called ‘the best men,’ nothing can seem more excellent: what better thing can be imagined than the best? But when a king is mentioned, even an unjust king comes to mind. We are not now speaking of an unjust king, however, when we inquire into the monarchical commonwealth itself. Think, then, of King Romulus or Pompilius or Tullius, and perhaps you will not be so dissatisfied with that commonwealth.”\n\nSECTION 48\n\nM. “What praise, then, do you leave for a popular commonwealth?” S. Then he said, “What? Do you think, Spurius, that the Rhodians, whom we recently visited together, have no commonwealth?” M. “I certainly think they have, and one by no means deserving blame.” S. “You are right. But, if you remember, the very same men were alternately commoners and senators, taking turns so that in some months they performed the people’s duties, in others the senate’s. In both capacities they received a fee for attendance; and the same men judged capital cases and all the others in the theater and in the senate house. The senate had only as much power and standing as the multitude […] […]”\n\n### Book 3 — Fragments of Uncertain Position\n\nSECTION 1\n\n(Non. 301M) There is, then, something turbulent within each of us, which either leaps with pleasure or is broken by distress.\n\nSECTION 2\n\n(Non. 364M) But as they themselves †or if should put the mind to the test—I am—they see what they think they are going to do.\n\nSECTION 3\n\n(Non. 431M) The Carthaginians were the first, through their trade and their merchandise, to bring greed, extravagance, and insatiable desires for everything into Greece.\n\nSECTION 4\n\n(Sch. Iuvenal. Sat. 10.362) That Sardanapallus, far more disfigured by his vices than by his very name.\n\nSECTION 5\n\n(Prisc. GL 2.255K) unless someone wants to turn the whole of Athos into a monument. For what Athos or Olympus is so great?\n\n### Book 4 — Surviving Fragments\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n(Non. 500M) And that very mind which foresees the future remembers the past.\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 5.11.2) For if there is no one who would not rather die than be changed into the shape of some beast, even though he would retain a human mind, how much more wretched it is to have a savage mind in a human shape! To me, certainly, the difference seems as great as the mind’s superiority to the body.\n\n(August. c. Iul. 5.12.59) that he did not think a ram’s good and Publius Africanus’s good were the same.\n\n(Non. 234M) and by interposing itself produces shadow and night, suited both to the reckoning of days and to rest from labor.\n\n(Non. 343M) And when in autumn the earth has opened herself to receive the crops, in winter has loosened herself to †receive them, and with summer’s ripening has mellowed some things and parched others.\n\n(Non. 159M) when shepherds apply it to their flocks.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n[…] favor. How suitably the orders, ages, classes, and cavalry are arranged! Within the cavalry are also the senate’s votes, though already far too many foolishly wish to remove this advantage, seeking a new bounty through some plebiscite requiring the return of the horses.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n“Consider now how wisely the other provisions have been made for that fellowship of citizens in a happy and honorable life. That is the first reason for coming together, and the commonwealth must secure it for people partly through institutions, partly through laws. To begin with, they chose to have no fixed education for freeborn children, prescribed by law, publicly established, or uniform for all—a matter on which the Greeks have spent much fruitless labor, and the one point on which our guest Polybius accuses our institutions of neglect. For […]”\n\nSECTION 3(fr1)\n\n(Serv. A. 5.546) that those entering military service were customarily given guardians to direct them in their first year.\n\nSECTION 3(fr2)\n\n(Non. 20M) not merely as at Sparta, where boys learn to seize and steal.\n\nSECTION 3(fr3)\n\n(Serv. A. 10.325) that it was considered a disgrace for young men to have no lovers.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n[…] “a youth who has reached puberty to be stripped naked. Thus the foundations, so to speak, of modesty have been laid deep. But how absurd is the training of young men in the gymnasiums! How frivolous that military service of the youths! How unrestrained and free their fondling and love affairs! I pass over the Eleans and Thebans, among whom lust in the love of freeborn youths is actually granted an unchecked license. The Spartans themselves, in allowing everything in the love of young men except illicit sexual relations, put a very thin wall around the thing they forbid: they permit embraces and sharing a bed, with cloaks laid between.” Here Laelius said, “I understand perfectly, Scipio, that in criticizing these Greek practices you would rather wrestle with the most famous peoples than with your own Plato, whom you do not even touch, especially since […]”\n\nSECTION 5\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\n(Non. 362M) and our Plato even more than Lycurgus, since he commands that absolutely everything be held in common, so that no citizen can call anything his own property.\n\n(Non. 308M) “I certainly—to the same place to which he sends Homer, crowned with garlands and steeped in perfumes, out of the city he imagines for himself.”\n\nSECTION 6\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\n(Non. 24M) The censor’s judgment brings the condemned man almost nothing but a blush. And so, since this entire judgment concerns only nomen, one’s good name, that censure was called ignominia, ‘disgrace.’\n\n(Non. 423M) It is said that the citizen body first shuddered †at their severity.\n\n(Non. 499M) Nor should an overseer be appointed over women, as is commonly done among the Greeks; rather, let there be a censor to teach men to govern their wives.\n\n(Non. 5M) So powerful is the discipline of modesty: all women abstain from wine.\n\n(Non. 306M) And if any woman had a bad reputation, her relatives would not offer her a kiss.\n\n(Non. 23M) Thus petulantia, ‘petulance,’ is named from petendo, ‘seeking’; and procacitas, ‘impudence,’ from procando—that is, poscendo, ‘demanding.’\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n(Non. 24M) “For I do not want the same people to be both the world’s ruler and its customs collector. I consider thrift the best revenue, both in private households and in the commonwealth. Indeed, fides, ‘good faith,’ seems to me to take its very name from fit quod dicitur—from doing what is said.”\n\n(Non. 194M) “that, in a distinguished citizen and a man of noble birth, coaxing, flattery, canvassing—†my—to be signs of frivolity.”\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n(Non. 430Msq.) “I admire the elegance not only of the provisions but also of the words. ‘If they quarrel,’ it says. A disagreement between well-disposed people, not a lawsuit between enemies, is called a quarrel […]. Thus the law holds that neighbors quarrel with one another, not that they litigate.”\n\n(Non. 174M) that human cares have the same boundary as human life; thus, under pontifical law, the sanctity of burial.\n\n(Non. 293M) that they killed innocent men for leaving unburied those whom the violence of the storm had prevented them from rescuing from the sea.\n\n(Non. 519M) “Nor in this dispute did I take up the people’s cause, but that of the good men.”\n\n(Prisc. GL 3.76K) For a strong people is not easily resisted if you grant it either no rights or too few.\n\n(Non. 469M) “For whom indeed I wish I may have prophesied truly, faithfully, †abounding.”\n\nSECTION 9\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n(August. C.D. 2.14ext.) When to these are added the people’s shouts and approval, as though the people were some great and wise teacher, what darkness they spread, what terrors they bring, what desires they set ablaze!\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\n(August. C.D. 2.13) Since they considered the actor’s art and the entire stage disgraceful, they decreed that this class of men should not only lack the honors of other citizens, but should also be removed from their tribe by the censor’s brand.\n\nSECTION 11\n\n(August. C.D. 2.9) Comedies could never have won approval in the theaters for their scandals unless the habits of daily life had permitted it. […] Whom did comedy not touch—or rather, whom did it not torment? Whom did it spare? Granted, it wounded wicked popular leaders, seditious men in public affairs: Cleon, Cleophon, Hyperbolus. Let us bear that, although it is better for such citizens to be branded by a censor than by a poet. But that Pericles, after leading his state for many years with the greatest authority in peace and war, should be assailed in verses, and those verses performed on stage, was no more fitting than if our Plautus or Naevius had chosen to abuse Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius to abuse Marcus Cato […]\n\nSECTION 12\n\n() Our Twelve Tables, by contrast, although they made very few things punishable by death, thought this too should be so punished: if anyone chanted abuse or composed a song that brought infamy or disgrace upon another. An excellent rule: our lives ought to be exposed to magistrates’ judgments and lawful trials, not to poets’ ingenuity; nor should we hear accusations of disgrace except on terms that allow us to answer and defend ourselves in court. […] that the ancient Romans disapproved of either praising or blaming any living man on stage.\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\n(August. C.D. 2.11)\n\nAeschines of Athens, a supremely eloquent man, entered public life after often acting in tragedies as a youth; and the Athenians frequently sent Aristodemus, likewise a tragic actor, as an envoy to Philip on the most important questions of peace and war.\n\n### Book 5 — Surviving Fragments\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n(August. C.D. 2.21,Non. 417M)\n\n(Ennius)\nOn ancient customs and on men the Roman state stands firm,\n\nand in its brevity and truth that verse seems to me an utterance he delivered as though from an oracle. For neither the men, had the state not possessed such customs, nor the customs, had such men not presided over them, could have founded or so long maintained so great a commonwealth, with so broad and far-reaching a dominion. Thus, before our time, ancestral custom itself called forth outstanding men, and excellent men preserved the old custom and their ancestors’ institutions.\n\nSECTION 2(fr)\n\nBut our own age received the commonwealth like an exquisite painting already fading with time, and not only neglected to renew it with its original colors, but (August. C.D. 2.21, Non. 417M) did not even take care to preserve at least its shape and, so to speak, its outer outlines. For what remains of those ancient customs on which he said the Roman state stood? We see them so worn away by oblivion that they are not merely neglected, but now unknown. And what am I to say of the men? The customs themselves have perished for lack of men; for so great an evil we must not merely render an account, but must in some sense plead our case as though on trial for our lives. For through our own vices, not through any accident, we retain the commonwealth in name, but in reality have long since lost it.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n“that nothing is so kingly as the exposition of equity, which involved interpreting the law; private citizens used to seek that law from kings. For these reasons broad and fertile tracts of arable land, orchards, and pastures were marked out to be royal property and to be cultivated without the kings’ own work or toil, so that no concern for private business might draw them away from the people’s affairs. Nor was any private citizen the judge or arbitrator of a lawsuit: everything was settled by royal judgments. Our Numa, it seems to me, adhered most closely to this ancient custom of the Greek kings. For the others, although they too performed this duty, spent much of their time waging wars and observing the laws of war. But Numa’s long peace became the mother of law and religion for this city. He even wrote laws which, as you know, still exist—a task indeed proper to the citizen we are discussing […]”\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n(Non. 497M)\n\nbut still, as a good head of a household needs some practical experience in farming, building, and accounting.\n\nSECTION 5\n\n[…] “will it trouble you to learn about roots and seeds?” M. “Not at all, provided the work has something to show.” S. “Do you consider that the bailiff’s field of study?” M. “Certainly not, since farming so very often runs short of hands.” S. “Then, just as the bailiff knows the nature of the soil and the steward knows his letters, but each turns from the pleasure of knowledge to its practical use, so this ruler of ours should indeed have studied law and statutes, and must certainly have examined their sources. But he must not entangle himself in endlessly answering legal questions, reading, and writing, so that he can, as it were, manage the commonwealth’s accounts and in a sense act as its bailiff. He must be thoroughly versed in the highest law, without which no one can be just, and not ignorant of civil law, but in the way a pilot knows the stars or a doctor natural science. Each uses those things for his own art, but does not let them obstruct his own task. This man, however, will see to it […]”\n\nSECTION 6\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n[…] states, in which the best men seek praise and honor and shun disgrace and dishonor. They are not so much deterred by fear and the punishment established by law as by modesty, which nature has given man as a kind of fear of deserved reproach. The ruler of commonwealths has strengthened this through accepted beliefs and perfected it through institutions and training, so that shame would keep citizens from wrongdoing no less than fear. These matters concern moral honor and could have been discussed at greater length and with greater fullness.\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\n“For life and the practice of living, however, a plan has been laid out through lawful marriage, legitimate children, and the hallowed homes of the household gods and family Lares, so that everyone might enjoy both common advantages and his own, and so that living well would be impossible without a good commonwealth, and nothing could be happier than a well-ordered state. For this reason I am often greatly astonished at what this great […] might be”\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\n(Cic. Att. 8.11.1) For just as a pilot’s goal is a successful voyage, a doctor’s health, and a general’s victory, so this director of the commonwealth has as his goal the citizens’ happy life, secure in resources, rich in wealth, splendid in glory, and honorable in virtue. I want him to bring to completion this work, the greatest and best among human endeavors.\n\n(August. epist. 104.7) And what becomes of the fact that your own writings too praise the ruler of his country who considers the people’s benefit more than their wishes?\n\nSECTION 9\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n(August. C.D. 5.13) that he must be nourished on glory […] that their ancestors had done many marvelous and splendid deeds from a desire for glory.\n\n(P.Pictav. Bibl. Lugd. 22.824) that the state’s leading man must be nourished on glory, and that the commonwealth stands as long as everyone shows honor to its leader.\n\n(Non. 233M) Then by virtue, labor, and diligence he would preserve the inborn promise of a great man, unless his all too spirited, fierce nature—him, to I know not where […]\n\n(Non. 201M) the virtue called courage, which contains greatness of spirit and a profound contempt for death and pain.\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n(Non. 337M) Marcellus as fierce and combative, Maximus as deliberate and slow.\n\n(Char. GL 1.139K) encompassed within the world […]\n\n(Non. 37M) because he could give your households a share in the troubles of his old age.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n(Gel. N.A. 12.2.6sq.) as Menelaus the Spartan possessed a certain sweet-spoken charm […] let him cultivate brevity in speaking.\n\n(Amm. Marc. 30.4.10) “Since nothing in the commonwealth ought to be so uncorrupted as a vote or a judgment, I do not understand why a man who corrupts them with money deserves punishment, while one who does so with eloquence even wins praise. It seems to me that the man who corrupts a judge by speech does more harm than one who does so by a bribe, because no one can corrupt an honorable man with money, but he can with words.”\n\n(Non. 521M) When Scipio had said these things, Mummius strongly approving; for he was imbued with hatred †of which rhetoricians […]\n\n(C. anon. Verg. G. I, 2.348 Bandin.) then fine seeds had been scattered in the best of fields.\n\n### Book 6 — Surviving Fragments\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n(Non. 42M) “You expect, then, the full measure of this ruler’s prudence, which takes its very name from foresight.”\n\n(Non. 256M) “For this reason this citizen must equip himself to be always armed against whatever shakes the state’s settled order.”\n\n(Non. 25M, Serv. A. 1.149) “And this division among citizens is called ‘sedition,’ because some go apart to join others.”\n\n(Non. 519M) “Indeed, in civil discord, when the good have more weight than the many, I think citizens should be weighed, not counted.”\n\n(Non. 424M) “For desires, harsh mistresses of our thoughts, compel and command things without limit; and because they can never be filled or satisfied in any way, they drive those they have inflamed with their enticements into every crime.”\n\n(Non. 492M) who has crushed his violence and that unbridled ferocity.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n(Gel. N.A. 7.16.11,Non. 290M) This was all the more remarkable because, though the colleagues stood in the same case, they were not merely unequal in unpopularity: the affection felt for Gracchus even pleaded against the hostility felt for Claudius.\n\n(Non. 409M) Who †number of the aristocrats and of the leading men offered, he with words and of his own gravity left that tone, stern and full of dignity.\n\n(Non. 501M) so that, as that writer says, a thousand men came down to the Forum every day in cloaks dyed with shellfish purple.\n\n(Non. 517M) among these, as you remember, a funeral was suddenly furnished by a gathering of the most frivolous of the multitude and by a collection of money.\n\n(Non. 512M,Prisc. GL 3.70K) For our ancestors wished marriages to be firmly established.\n\n(Non. 398M) The speech of Laelius, which we all have in our hands: how pleasing to the immortal gods are the priests’ ladles and, as he writes, their Samian earthenware cups.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n(Eulog. somn. Scip. 401Or.) […] who had come back to life after being laid on the funeral pyre, and had told many secrets of the underworld […] that these statements about the immortality of the soul and about heaven were not inventions of dreaming philosophers or incredible tales ridiculed by the Epicureans, but the conjectures of thoughtful men.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n(August. C.D. 22.28) that he had been jesting rather than having wished to say †that someone affirms this to be true.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n(Macr. Sat. 1.4.2sq.) “But although for the wise the very consciousness of splendid deeds is virtue’s richest reward, still that divine virtue longs not for statues fixed in lead or triumphs with withering laurels, but for kinds of reward more enduring and more fresh.” “What, then, are they?” said Laelius. Then Scipio said, “Allow me, since this is now our third day of leisure […]”\n\n### Book 6 — Dream of Scipio\n\nSECTION 9\n\n#### Dream\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nWhen I came to Africa, as you know, as military tribune of the fourth legion under the consul Manius Manilius, nothing mattered more to me than to meet King Masinissa, for good reasons the closest friend of our family. When I reached him, the old man embraced me and wept. A considerable time later he looked up to heaven and said, “I thank you, supreme Sun, and you, the other gods of heaven, that before I depart this life I behold in my kingdom and under this roof Publius Cornelius Scipio, whose very name refreshes me. Thus the memory of that excellent and utterly unconquerable man never leaves my mind.” Then I questioned him about his kingdom, and he questioned me about our commonwealth; and with much talk back and forth we spent that day.\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\nAfterward, entertained with royal splendor, we prolonged our conversation far into the night. The old man spoke of nothing but Africanus, remembering not only all his deeds but also his sayings. Then, when we parted to go to bed, a sleep deeper than usual enfolded me, weary as I was from the journey and from staying awake so far into the night. Here Africanus appeared to me—I believe as a result of our conversation, for our thoughts and talk commonly bring forth something in sleep like what Ennius writes about Homer, of whom he evidently used very often to think and speak while awake. Africanus had the appearance I knew better from his portrait than from the man himself. When I recognized him, I shuddered; but he said, “Take heart, Scipio, put away your fear, and commit what I shall say to memory.”\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\n“Do you see that city which, though compelled by me to obey the Roman people, renews its ancient wars and cannot rest?” He was pointing out Carthage from a lofty place, bright and radiant and full of stars. “You now come to besiege it, little more than a common soldier. Within these two years you will destroy it as consul, and earn for yourself the surname you have so far inherited from us. When you have destroyed Carthage, celebrated a triumph, served as censor, and traveled as envoy through Egypt, Syria, Asia, and Greece, you will be elected consul again in your absence and bring a very great war to an end: you will raze Numantia. But when you have ridden in your chariot to the Capitol, you will find the commonwealth thrown into turmoil by my grandson’s schemes.\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 12\n\n“Here, Africanus, you will have to reveal to your country the light of your spirit, talent, and judgment. But at that time I see, as it were, a branching road of fate. For when your age has completed eight times seven circuits and returns of the sun, and these two numbers, each held to be complete for a different reason, have by their natural revolution made up the sum fated for you, the whole state will turn to you alone and to your name. The senate, all good men, the allies, the Latins will look to you; you alone will be the support on which the state’s safety rests. In short, you must set the commonwealth in order as dictator, if you escape the impious hands of your relatives.” Here Laelius cried out and the others groaned deeply, but Scipio smiled gently and said, “Hush, please! Do not wake me from my dream; listen a little longer to the rest.”\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n“But to make you more eager, Africanus, to defend the commonwealth, know this: for all who have preserved, aided, or enlarged their country, a certain place is set apart in heaven, where in blessedness they may enjoy everlasting life. For nothing done on earth is more welcome to that supreme god who rules the whole universe than the assemblies and gatherings of men joined in a fellowship of law, which are called states. Their rulers and preservers set out from here, and here return.”\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\nThen, although I was terrified, not so much by fear of death as of treachery from my own people, I nevertheless asked whether he himself was alive, and my father Paulus, and the others we considered dead. “Indeed,” he said, “those are alive who have flown out of the bonds of the body as from a prison; but what you call your life is death. Look—do you not see your father Paulus coming toward you?” When I saw him, I poured out a flood of tears, but he embraced and kissed me and told me not to weep.\n\nSECTION 15\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\nAs soon as I had checked my tears and could begin to speak, I said, “Tell me, most revered and best of fathers, since this is life, as I hear Africanus say, why do I linger on earth? Why do I not hurry here to you?” “That is not permitted,” he said. “Unless the god to whom this whole temple you behold belongs has freed you from the body’s imprisonment, the way here cannot lie open to you. For human beings were born under this law: to guard that globe you see in the middle of this temple, which is called the earth. A soul has been given them from those everlasting fires which you call constellations and stars, which, spherical and round, animated by divine minds, complete their circles and orbits with marvelous speed. Therefore you, Publius, and all who are dutiful must keep your souls in the body’s custody. You must not depart human life without the command of him who gave you your soul, lest you seem to have deserted the human duty assigned by God.\n\nSECTION 16\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\n“But as your grandfather here did, Scipio, and as I who fathered you did, cultivate justice and devotion: great toward parents and relatives, greatest toward one’s country. Such a life is the road to heaven and to this company of those who have finished living and, released from the body, inhabit the place you see”—it was a circle shining among the fires with the most dazzling whiteness—“which, following the Greeks, you call the Milky Way.” From there, as I surveyed everything, all the other sights seemed splendid and marvelous. There were stars we have never seen from here, and all of them were of sizes we had never suspected. The smallest was that one which, farthest from heaven and nearest the earth, shone with borrowed light. The globes of the stars easily surpassed the earth in size. Indeed, the earth itself seemed so small to me that I felt ashamed of our empire, with which we touch scarcely a point of it.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\nAs I gazed at it more intently, Africanus said, “Tell me, how long will your mind remain fixed on the ground? Do you not see what temples you have entered? Everything is joined together in nine circles, or rather spheres. One is the heavenly sphere, the outermost, which embraces all the others: it is itself the supreme god, enclosing and containing the rest. In it are fixed the eternal, revolving courses of the stars. Beneath it are seven spheres turning backward, in a motion opposite to the heavens. One of these belongs to the star which on earth they call Saturn. Next comes that radiance, favorable and beneficent to the human race, which is called Jupiter. Then comes the red star, terrible to the earth, which you call Mars. Below, the sun holds almost the middle region, leader, chief, and governor of the other lights, the mind and ordering principle of the universe, so vast that it illuminates and fills everything with its light. The courses of Venus and Mercury follow it like companions, and in the lowest sphere the moon revolves, lit by the sun’s rays. Below it nothing remains that is not mortal and perishable, except the souls given to the human race by the gift of the gods. Above the moon everything is eternal. For the earth, the ninth sphere at the center, does not move and lies lowest, and all heavy bodies are borne toward it by their own inclination.”\n\nSECTION 18\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\nI gazed at these things in wonder; then, coming to myself, I said, “What is this? What is this vast and lovely sound that fills my ears?” “This,” he said, “is the sound produced by the impulse and movement of the spheres themselves, divided by intervals unequal yet distinguished in due proportion; by blending high with low, it creates varied harmonies in even measure. Such great motions cannot be driven on in silence, and nature requires that the extremes at one end sound low, and at the other high. For this reason the highest, star-bearing course of heaven, whose revolution is swifter, moves with a high and piercing sound, while this lowest course, the moon’s, has the deepest sound. The earth, the ninth, remains motionless, always fixed in one place, occupying the center of the universe. Those eight courses, of which two have the same pitch, produce seven sounds separated by intervals; that number is the binding knot of almost everything. Learned men, by imitating this with strings and singing, have opened for themselves a return to this place, as have others who, with outstanding gifts, pursued divine studies in their human lives.\n\nSECTION 19\n\n“Filled with this sound, human ears have grown deaf; and no sense in you is duller. So too, where the Nile plunges from the highest mountains at the falls called Catadupa, the people living there have lost their hearing because of the tremendous sound. But this sound, arising from the immensely swift revolution of the entire universe, is so great that human ears cannot take it in, just as you cannot look straight at the sun: its rays overpower your sight and your perception.” Yet while I marveled at these things, I kept turning my eyes back to the earth.\n\nSECTION 20\n\nCHAPTER 19\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\nThen Africanus said, “I see that even now you are gazing at the dwelling and home of humankind. If it seems small to you, as indeed it is, look always at these heavenly things and look down upon those human affairs. For what renown in the talk of men, what glory worth seeking, can you attain? You see that the earth is inhabited only in scattered, narrow places, and that even among these inhabited patches, as it were, vast wildernesses lie between. Those who inhabit the earth are not only cut off so that nothing can pass from one group to another: some stand at a slant to you, some at right angles, and some even opposite you. From these you can certainly expect no glory.\n\nSECTION 21\n\nCHAPTER 20\n\n“You see, moreover, that this same earth is wreathed and encircled, as it were, by belts. Two of them, farthest apart and resting beneath the very poles of heaven on either side, you see stiffened with frost, while the middle and largest is scorched by the sun’s heat. Two are habitable. The southern one, whose inhabitants press their footprints opposite yours, has no connection with your race. As for this other one, lying beneath the north wind, which you inhabit, see how slender a part of it belongs to you. For all the land you dwell in, narrowed at its ends and broader at its sides, is a small island surrounded by the sea which on earth you call the Atlantic, the great sea, the Ocean. Yet you see how small it is, for all its great name.\n\nSECTION 22\n\n“Even from these very lands, cultivated and known, has your name or that of any of us been able to cross this Caucasus you see, or swim across that Ganges? Who in the remaining farthest regions of the rising or setting sun, of the north or south, will hear your name? With these cut off, you surely see within what narrow confines your glory seeks to spread. And those very people who speak of us—how long will they speak?\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n“Indeed, even if that succession of future generations should wish to hand down to posterity the praises of each of us as received from their fathers, still, because of the floods and conflagrations across the lands that must occur at appointed times, we cannot attain eternal glory, nor even glory that lasts for long. What difference does it make that those born afterward will speak of you, when those born before you never did,\n\nSECTION 24\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\nwho were no fewer and certainly better men, especially when even among those who can hear our name, no one can attain remembrance lasting a single year? For people commonly measure a year merely by the return of the sun, that is, of one star. But when all the stars have returned to the same place from which they once set out, and after long intervals have restored the same arrangement of the entire sky, then that may truly be called a revolving year. I scarcely dare say how many generations of humankind it contains. For just as once the sun seemed to men to fail and be extinguished when the soul of Romulus entered these very temples, so whenever the sun is eclipsed again in the same quarter and at the same season, then, with all the constellations and stars brought back to their starting point, you may reckon the year complete. Know that not even a twentieth part of that year has yet revolved.\n\nSECTION 25\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\n“Therefore, if you have despaired of returning to this place, where all things await great and outstanding men, what, after all, is that human glory worth, when it can scarcely extend through a tiny part of a single year? So if you wish to look on high and contemplate this dwelling, this eternal home, you must neither surrender yourself to the multitude’s talk nor place the hopes of your achievements in human rewards. Virtue herself must draw you by her own allurements toward true honor. What others say of you is their concern; yet they will speak. But all such talk is bounded by the narrow limits of the regions you see. It has never been everlasting for anyone; it is buried by the death of men and extinguished by the forgetfulness of posterity.”\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\nWhen he had said this, I said, “Indeed, Africanus, if a path to the entrance of heaven lies open to those who have served their country well, then, although from boyhood I have followed in my father’s footsteps and yours and have not failed your honor, now, with so great a reward set before me, I shall strive far more watchfully.” And he said, “Strive indeed, and know this: it is not you who are mortal, but this body. For you are not the being your outward form reveals; each person’s mind is his true self, not that figure which can be pointed out with a finger. Know, then, that you are a god, if a god is that which lives, feels, remembers, foresees, and rules, governs, and moves the body over which it is set, just as that supreme god rules this universe. And as the eternal god himself moves the universe, which is mortal in some part, so an everlasting soul moves a frail body.\n\nSECTION 27\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\n“For what is always in motion is eternal; but what imparts motion to something else and is itself moved from elsewhere must necessarily come to the end of life when its motion ends. Only what moves itself, therefore, since it never abandons itself, never ceases even to move; indeed, it is the source and first principle of motion for all other things that move. A first principle has no origin: everything arises from a first principle, but it cannot itself be born from anything else, for it would not be a first principle if it were generated from elsewhere. And if it never comes into being, neither does it ever perish. For a first principle once extinguished will neither itself be reborn from another nor create another thing from itself, since everything must arise from a first principle. Thus the first principle of motion lies in what moves itself; and this can neither be born nor die. Otherwise the whole heaven and all nature must collapse and stand still, with no power to set them in motion by a first impulse.\n\nSECTION 28\n\nCHAPTER 26\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n“Since it is plain, then, that what moves itself is eternal, who can deny that this nature has been bestowed upon souls? Everything driven by an external impulse is without soul; but what is alive is stirred by an inward motion of its own, for this is the soul’s distinctive nature and power. If it alone of all things moves itself, it certainly has not been born, and is eternal.\n\nSECTION 29\n\n“Exercise this power in the noblest pursuits! The noblest concerns are those for your country’s safety. A soul stirred and exercised by these will fly more swiftly to this dwelling, its own home. It will do so sooner still if, even while enclosed in the body, it reaches outward and, contemplating what lies beyond, draws itself away from the body as much as possible. For the souls of those who have surrendered themselves to bodily pleasures, made themselves their servants, as it were, and, driven by desires obedient to pleasure, violated the laws of gods and men, wheel about the earth itself after slipping from their bodies; nor do they return to this place until they have been tossed about for many ages.” He departed; I awoke from sleep.\n\n### Fragments of Uncertain Book\n\nSECTION 1\n\n(Non. 321M) and nature herself would not merely invite this, but even compel it.\n\nSECTION 2\n\n(Diom. GL 1.339K) strive\n\nSECTION 3\n\n(Diom. GL 1.374K) they excel\n\nSECTION 5\n\n(Serv. A. 6.877) “Fannius, it is a difficult task to praise a boy: what must be praised is not achievement, but promise.”\n\nSECTION 6\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 1.18.11)\nIf anyone may rightly rise to the regions of the gods,\n\nFor me alone heaven’s greatest gate stands open,\n[…] “It does indeed, Africanus; for that same gate stood open to Hercules too.”\n\nSECTION 7\n\n(Sen. Ep. 108.32sq.) in fact […] himself […] “Since his interruption has called us back from the very finish line […].”\nto whom no citizen or enemy\n\nCould render a reward to match his deeds.\n\nSECTION 8\n\n(Anon. Parad. Koronne,Bielowsk) All who win people’s esteem through feasts, banquets, and lavish spending openly show that they lack the true honor born of virtue and worth.\n\nSECTION 9\n\n(Cod. ms. note 458 p. 82bib. Ossol.) that the strings should be struck gently and calmly, not with force and violence […]","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/cicero-republic/translations/trn_cicero_republic_mouseia.txt"},{"id":"trn_cicero_republic_plain","translator":"Mouseia","kind":"plain","note":"All surviving text in Mueller’s 1889 edition, including the Dream of Scipio and fragments. Machine-assisted Plain English directly from Latin, not from Musean or a historical English edition, with Latin-source model review. […] marks loss; † marks a corrupt reading. In the Original, braces mark deleted words, which are not translated. Unidentified letter remnants remain in the Original.","text":"### Book 1\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n[…] would have freed it from the attack. Nor would C. Duelius, A. Atilius, and L. Metellus have freed it from the terror of Carthage. The two Scipios wouldn’t have put out the spreading fire of the Second Punic War with their own blood. When it flared up again with greater forces, Q. Maximus wouldn’t have weakened it, M. Marcellus wouldn’t have crushed it, and P. Africanus wouldn’t have torn it away from this city’s gates and driven it inside the enemy’s walls. As for M. Cato, a man without a famous name or family background in high office, he certainly could have enjoyed a quiet life at Tusculum, a healthy spot close by. All of us with the same aims look to him as a model of hard work and good conduct. But this madman, as those people think him, preferred to be tossed about in these waves and storms into extreme old age, though nothing forced him to. He could instead have enjoyed a wonderfully pleasant life of peace and leisure. I’m leaving out countless men, each of whom saved this country. And since they aren’t far removed from living memory, I’ll stop naming them, so no one complains that I’ve left out either him or someone in his family. I insist on just this one point: nature has given human beings such a strong need to do good, and such a strong love of protecting everyone’s safety, that this force has overcome every attraction of pleasure and leisure.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nNor is it enough to possess virtue, as if it were some skill, without using it. A skill can still be kept through knowledge alone even when you do not use it. Virtue, however, consists entirely in its use. Its greatest use is governing a state and carrying out in practice, not just in words, the very things these people preach in their corners. No sound and honorable statement made by philosophers fails to have its origin and confirmation in the people who established laws for communities. Where did devotion to duty come from, and who gave us religious practice? Where did the law of nations come from, or what we call civil law? Where did justice, trustworthiness, and fairness come from? What about decency, self-control, avoiding disgrace, and seeking praise and honor? What about courage in hardship and danger? Surely these came from the people who first shaped them through teaching, then reinforced some through custom and gave others the force of law.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nThey even tell us that Xenocrates, a particularly distinguished philosopher, was asked what his students gained from him. He answered that they learned to do willingly what the laws would force them to do. So the citizen who uses his authority and the penalties of law to make everyone do what philosophers can barely persuade a few people to do deserves preference even over the teachers who discuss these questions. What lecture of theirs is so polished that it should be ranked above a state well organized through public law and custom? Just as I think “great and powerful cities,” as Ennius calls them, should rank above little villages and forts, so I think the people who guide those cities with their judgment and authority rank far above people with no part in public affairs, even in wisdom itself. We feel a particularly strong drive to increase the resources of the human race. We work through our planning and effort to make human life safer and richer, and nature itself spurs us toward this satisfaction. So let us keep to the course that the best people have always followed. Let us not listen to the signals sounding a retreat, which aim to call back even those who have already advanced.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\nOpponents answer these clear, solid arguments by first pointing to the hard work needed to defend the country. That's hardly an obstacle for anyone alert and hardworking. Even in ordinary studies, duties, or business, it should count for nothing, let alone in such great matters. Next they add the risks to life. They confront brave men with a shameful fear of death. Brave men usually think it's worse to let nature and old age wear them away. They'd rather have the chance to give their lives for their country above all. After all, they must give those lives back to nature anyway. But our opponents think they have plenty to say, and say it well, when they list famous men's misfortunes. They recount the wrongs these men suffered from ungrateful fellow citizens.\n\nSECTION 5\n\nThat's why they bring up these Greek examples. Miltiades defeated and crushed the Persians, yet died in chains among his own citizens. He had survived the enemy's weapons. The wounds on the front of his body, received in that glorious victory, hadn't yet healed. Themistocles was driven out of the country he'd freed and frightened into flight. He didn't escape to the Greek harbors he'd saved. Instead, he sought shelter in the foreign lands he'd devastated. Examples aren't lacking of how fickle and cruel the Athenians were to their greatest citizens. These practices began and became common among them. We're told they even spilled over into our own very steady country;\n\nSECTION 6\n\npeople point to Camillus’s exile, the hostility Ahala faced, the resentment against Nasica, Laenas’s expulsion, Opimius’s conviction, Metellus’s flight, the terrible disaster that struck C. Marius and the killing of leading citizens, or the deaths of many of those men that followed soon afterward. And now they don’t even leave my name out. I suppose it’s because they think my judgment and the risks I took kept them alive and at peace that they complain about me even more bitterly—and more lovingly. But I couldn’t easily say why, when they themselves cross seas to study or see the sights […]\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n[…] I’d sworn it was safe, as I left office as consul, at a public meeting where the Roman people took the same oath. I could easily offset all the worry and distress caused by the wrongs done to me. In fact, my troubles brought more honor than hardship, and less distress than glory. The good people’s longing for me gave me more joy than the bad people’s delight gave me pain. But if things had turned out otherwise, as I said, how could I complain? In return for my great achievements, nothing had happened to me that I hadn’t foreseen or that was worse than I’d expected. I could have gained more from a quiet life than other people, because of the varied pleasures of the studies I’d pursued since childhood. Or, if something especially harsh happened to everyone, I could have faced the same fate as the rest, rather than being singled out. Yet I didn’t hesitate to face the fiercest storms, almost the lightning bolts themselves, to save my fellow citizens. By putting myself in danger, I won a peaceful life for everyone else.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nOur country did not give us birth and bring us up on the understanding that it would expect no support from us in return. It was not simply to serve our interests, providing a safe refuge for our leisure and a peaceful place to rest. Instead, it claims for its own use the greatest and largest share of our spirit, ability, and judgment. It leaves us for private use only as much as it can spare.\n\nSECTION 9\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\nThen there are the excuses they fall back on to enjoy their leisure more easily. These certainly do not deserve a hearing. They say that the people who enter public life are generally worthless. Being compared with them is degrading, while fighting them is painful and dangerous, especially when the crowd has been stirred up. So, they say, a wise person should not take the reins when he cannot restrain the crowd’s wild and uncontrolled impulses. Nor should a free person struggle against filthy, savage opponents and suffer the blows of their insults, or expose himself to wrongs that a wise person should not have to bear. As if good, brave, high-spirited people could have any better reason to enter public life than to avoid being ruled by the wicked, or having to watch those same people tear the state apart when they themselves cannot help it, however much they might wish to!\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\nAnd who could ever accept this exception? They say a wise person won't take any part in government unless events and necessity force them. As if anyone could face a greater emergency than I did! What could I have done then if I hadn't been consul? And how could I have become consul without following the path I'd taken since childhood? That path took me, born into the equestrian class, to the highest office. So you can't help your country on the spot, or whenever you like, however great its danger. You must already hold a position that lets you do it.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nThere’s something I always find especially strange in what educated people say. They claim they can’t steer a ship on a calm sea, because they’ve never learned and have never bothered to find out how. Yet these same people announce that they’ll take the helm when the biggest waves rise. They openly say, and even take great pride in saying, that they’ve never learned and don’t teach anything about how to set up or preserve governments. They think knowledge of these matters should be left to people with practical experience in that field, not to scholars and wise people. So how does it make sense for them to promise their services to the country only when necessity forces them to? They don’t know how to govern when no emergency is pressing, which is much easier. Even if it were true that a wise person doesn’t normally choose to take part in civic affairs, but would nevertheless accept that duty when circumstances forced them to, I’d still think they must not neglect this knowledge of public affairs. They need to have everything ready that they might someday have to use.\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\nI have discussed this at some length because in these books I have undertaken a discussion of the state. To keep that discussion from being pointless, I had first to remove people’s hesitation about entering public life. Still, if anyone is influenced by the authority of philosophers, let them pay attention for a moment and listen to those with the greatest authority and reputation among the most learned people. Even those who took no part in government, I think, nevertheless performed a public service by their extensive inquiries and writings about the state. As for the seven whom the Greeks called wise men, I find that nearly all of them were deeply involved in public affairs. For there is no activity in which human virtue comes closer to divine power than founding new communities or preserving those already founded.\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\nOn these matters, since we ourselves have had the good fortune both to achieve something worth remembering in public life and, in explaining political principles, a certain ability, not just through experience but also through a love of learning and teaching † we were authorities. By contrast, some earlier men were expert debaters but had no achievements to show. Others did well in public life but were poor at explaining things. Still, we aren't to introduce some new theory of our own invention. Instead, we must recall a discussion among our country's most distinguished and wisest men, all from one generation. Publius Rutilius Rufus once described it to you and me, when you were still a young man. We were together at Smyrna for several days. That discussion left out almost nothing of great importance for understanding matters of every kind.\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\nThis Publius Africanus, Paulus's son, had decided to stay in his gardens during the Latin Festival. Tuditanus and Aquilius were consuls. His closest friends had said they'd visit him often during those days. On the festival morning, Quintus Tubero, his sister's son, arrived first. Scipio greeted him warmly and was pleased to see him. “What brings you here so early, Tubero?” he asked. “This holiday gave you a really good chance to get on with your studies.” He replied, “I can turn to my books at any time. They're never busy. But it's a real prize to catch you free, especially with the country in such turmoil.” Scipio said, “You've caught me all right. But by Hercules, I'm less occupied with work than I am in my mind.” He replied, “But you need to let your mind relax too. As we agreed, several of us are ready to spend all this free time with you, if it suits you.” Scipio: “I'd be glad to. That way, we'll be reminded of our interest in learning for once.”\n\nSECTION 15\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\nHe then said, “You're inviting me, in a way, and giving me hope you'll join in. So, Africanus, before the others arrive, shall we first look into that second sun reported in the senate? What exactly is it? Quite a few people say they've seen two suns, and they're not unreliable people. So it's less a question of refusing to believe them than of finding an explanation.” Scipio said, “If only we had our friend Panaetius with us! He's always keen to investigate things, and especially things in the sky. Still, Tubero—I'll tell you openly what I think—I don't quite agree with our friend about this whole field. He makes firm claims about things we can barely even guess the nature of. He speaks as if he could see them with his own eyes or actually hold them in his hand. That's another reason I usually think Socrates was wiser. He set aside all concerns like these. He said questions about nature either went beyond human reason or had nothing at all to do with human life.”\n\nSECTION 16\n\nThen Tubero said, “Africanus, I don't know why tradition says Socrates rejected all this kind of discussion. Supposedly, he only asked questions about how we live and behave. But who could we name as a more reliable source about him than Plato? In many passages of Plato’s books, Socrates speaks quite differently. Even when discussing behavior, virtues, or government, he tries to bring in numbers, geometry, and musical harmony, as Pythagoras did.” Then Scipio said, “That's true. But Tubero, I believe you've heard about Plato’s travels after Socrates died. He first went to Egypt to learn, then hurried to Italy and Sicily. He wanted to learn all about Pythagoras’ discoveries. He spent much time with Archytas of Tarentum and Timaeus of Locri, and obtained notebooks from Philolaus. At that time, Pythagoras’ name still carried weight in those places. Plato devoted himself both to Pythagoras’ followers and to their studies. But he loved Socrates above everyone else and wanted to credit him with everything. So he combined Socrates’ charm and subtle conversation with Pythagoras’ hard-to-follow ideas and deep learning across so many fields.”\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\nScipio had just said this when he spotted L. Furius arriving unexpectedly. He greeted him, took his hand very warmly, and seated him on his own couch. P. Rutilius, who told us about this conversation, had arrived at the same time. Scipio greeted him too and asked him to sit beside Tubero. Then Furius said, “What are you all doing? Have we interrupted some conversation of yours by coming in?” “Not at all,” Africanus replied. “You like exploring the very sort of subject Tubero started asking about a little earlier. Our friend Rutilius here sometimes explored questions like this with me even beneath Numantia’s walls.” “What subject had come up?” asked Philus. Scipio replied, “Those two suns. Philus, I'm keen to hear what you think about them.”\n\nSECTION 18\n\nCHAPTER 12\n\nHe had just said this when a boy announced that Laelius was coming to see him and had already left home. Scipio put on his shoes and clothes and left his bedroom. After walking a little in the porch, he greeted Laelius as he arrived, along with his companions. They were Spurius Mummius, whom Scipio especially liked, and Laelius’ sons-in-law, C. Fannius and Quintus Scaevola. These were well-educated young men, now old enough to be quaestors. After greeting them all, he turned back along the porch and put Laelius in the middle of the group. Their friendship had a sort of rule about this. On military service, Laelius honored Africanus like a god because of his outstanding military fame. At home, Scipio in turn treated Laelius like a father because he was older. They exchanged just a few words as they walked back and forth once or twice. Scipio was very pleased and grateful that they had come. Since it was winter, they agreed to sit in the sunniest part of the little lawn. As they were about to do this, M’. Manilius arrived. He was a man of sound judgment whom they all liked and loved. Scipio and the others greeted him very warmly, and he sat beside Laelius.\n\nSECTION 19\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\nThen Philus said, “I don't think their arrival means we need a different subject. Instead, we should look more closely at this one and say something worth their hearing.” At this Laelius said, “What were you discussing? What conversation have we interrupted?” Philus: “Scipio had asked me what I thought about the fact that two suns had been seen.” Laelius: “Really, Philus? We're asking what happens in the sky. Does that mean we've already settled everything about our homes and our country?” Philus replied, “Doesn’t knowing what goes on at home matter to our households? Home isn't the space our own walls enclose, but this whole universe. The gods gave it to us as a home and country to share with them. Besides, without knowing about these things, we must stay ignorant about many important matters. Learning about things and thinking about them is itself a pleasure to me. By Hercules, Laelius, it's the same for you and everyone eager for wisdom.”\n\nSECTION 20\n\nThen Laelius said, “I won’t stand in the way, especially since we are on holiday. But can we hear something, or have we arrived too late?” Philus: “Nothing has been discussed yet. Since the subject is still untouched, Laelius, I would gladly let you discuss it.” Laelius: “No, let us hear you—unless Manilius thinks we should draw up a court order between the two suns, allowing each to possess the sky on the same terms as before.” Then Manilius said, “Are you still making fun of that profession, Laelius? In the first place, you excel at it yourself. And without it, no one can know what belongs to him and what belongs to someone else. But we can deal with that later. For now, let us hear Philus. I see he is already being consulted on greater matters than I am, or Publius Mucius.”\n\nSECTION 21\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\nThen Philus said, “I won’t bring you anything new, or anything I have thought up or discovered myself. I remember Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, a very learned man, as you know, being told that this same phenomenon had been seen. He happened to be visiting Marcus Marcellus, who had been consul with him, and asked for a model of the heavens to be brought out. Marcus Marcellus’s grandfather had taken it from the immensely rich and beautifully furnished city of Syracuse after capturing it, though he brought home nothing else from all that plunder. I had very often heard this model mentioned because of Archimedes’ fame, but I was not particularly impressed by its appearance. The other one, also made by Archimedes and placed by the same Marcellus in the Temple of Virtue, was more attractive and better known to the public.\n\nSECTION 22\n\nBut once Gallus began explaining how this machine worked, with such expert knowledge, I judged that the Sicilian’s genius went beyond what seemed humanly possible. Gallus said the invention of the other sphere, solid all the way through, was old. Thales of Miletus had first made it on a lathe. Later, Eudoxus of Cnidus, a pupil of Plato according to Gallus, marked that same sphere with constellations and stars fixed in the sky. Many years later, Aratus took all its patterns and markings from Eudoxus and described them in verse. He did this through a gift for poetry, not knowledge of astronomy. But that solid sphere couldn't represent this other kind of model. This one included the movements of the sun, moon, and the five stars called wanderers, or rovers. The amazing thing about Archimedes’ invention was this. He had worked out how one turn could maintain their uneven, varied paths despite their very different movements. As Gallus moved this bronze model, the moon followed the sun. This took as many turns as it takes days in the actual sky. As a result, the same eclipse of the sun occurred in the model. And the moon then reached the point that was Earth’s shadow, when the sun opposite […]\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\n“[…] was that I liked the man myself. I also knew my father Paulus had thought very highly of him and loved him. I remember being in camp as a very young man, when my father was consul in Macedonia. Our army was troubled by religious worries and fear. On a clear night, the bright full moon had suddenly gone dark. He was our deputy commander then, about a year before he was elected consul. The next day, he didn't hesitate to explain openly in camp that this wasn't an omen. It had happened then and would always happen at fixed times. This happened whenever the sun was so placed that its light couldn't reach the moon.” “Really?” said Tubero. “Could he teach this to men who were practically peasants? Did he dare say this to people with no education?” Scipio: “He certainly did, and with great […] […]”\n\nSECTION 24\n\nneither an arrogant display nor a speech out of character for so serious a man. He achieved something important: he removed empty religious fear and terror from men who had been deeply troubled.\n\nSECTION 25\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\n“People say Pericles explained something similar during that great war. The Athenians and Spartans were fighting each other with all their strength. He led his city in influence, speaking skill, and judgment. The sun went dark, darkness fell suddenly, and the Athenians were terribly afraid. He explained to his fellow citizens what he'd learned from Anaxagoras, whose student he'd been. This happens at a set time and must happen when the moon moves fully in front of the sun's disk. So it doesn't happen at every new moon, but it can only happen at a particular time during a new moon. By talking them through his reasons, he freed the people from fear. This explanation was new and unfamiliar then: the sun goes dark when the moon blocks it. They say Thales of Miletus was the first to recognize this. Later, our own Ennius knew it too. He writes that around the three hundred fiftieth year after Rome was founded,\nOn the Nones of June the moon blocked the sun, and night fell.\nThe calculations and skill involved are so great that earlier solar eclipses have been worked out from that date. We find it recorded in Ennius and the Great Annals. Those calculations go back to the eclipse on the Nones of Quinctilis, when Romulus was king. Even if nature carried Romulus off to a human death during that darkness, people say his fine qualities raised him to heaven.”\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\nThen Tubero said, “Do you see, Africanus, what seemed otherwise to you a little while ago, […]” […], which others see. And what could someone who has studied these realms of the gods think impressive in human affairs? Or lasting, once he knows what's eternal? Or glorious, once he's seen how small the earth is—first the whole earth, then the part of it people live in—and how we, stuck in a tiny part of it and completely unknown to most peoples, still hope our name will fly and travel far and wide?\n\nSECTION 27\n\n“How lucky we should think a man who doesn't count or describe these things as goods: land, buildings, livestock, and huge amounts of silver and gold! He sees that they offer little enjoyment, little use, and no secure ownership. Often, even the worst people own enormous amounts of them. Only he can truly claim everything as his own. His right isn't that of a Roman citizen, but that of a wise person. It rests not on a civil contract, but on nature's law, which applies to everyone. This law allows nothing to belong to anyone who doesn't know how to handle and use it. He sees our military commands and consulships as necessary jobs, not things to want. They should be taken on to do a duty, not sought for rewards or fame. Finally, he can say about himself what my grandfather Africanus often said, as Cato writes: ‘I never do more than when I'm doing nothing. I'm never less alone than when I'm alone.’”\n\nSECTION 28\n\n“Who can really think that Dionysius did more when he worked in every way to rob his fellow citizens of their freedom than his fellow citizen Archimedes did when, apparently doing nothing, he made that very model? And surely people who have no one they want to talk to in the crowded Forum are more alone than those who, with no one watching, either talk to themselves or seem to attend a gathering of the most learned people as they enjoy their discoveries and writings. Who could think anyone richer than a person who lacks nothing that nature requires, or more powerful than one who obtains everything he wants? Who could be happier than someone free of every emotional disturbance, or more secure in his fortune than someone who owns things he can, as they say, carry away with him even from a shipwreck? What command, office, or kingdom could be better than looking down on all human affairs and regarding them as inferior to wisdom, while thinking about nothing but what is eternal and divine? Such a person is convinced that others are called human, but only those refined by the arts proper to humanity truly are human;\n\nSECTION 29\n\n“So I find that saying especially good, whether Plato said it or someone else did. They say a storm carried him from the open sea to an unfamiliar land and a deserted shore. The others were afraid because they didn't know the place. He noticed some geometric shapes drawn in the sand. When he saw them, he called out for them to cheer up: he could see traces of human beings. Clearly, he judged that by the signs of learning, not the planted fields he saw. That's why, Tubero, I've always liked learning, educated people, and these studies of yours.”\n\nSECTION 30\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\nThen Laelius said, “I certainly don't dare answer those points, Scipio, and not so much you or Philus or Manilius. […]\n\n“[…] In his own father's family there was that friend of ours, someone for him to take as a model,\n‘A remarkably wise man, sharp Sextus Aelius,’\nwho was ‘remarkably wise’ and ‘sharp,’ as Ennius called him, not because he investigated things he would never find out, but because his answers freed the people who asked him from worry and trouble. Whenever he argued against Gallus's studies, he always had these words of Achilles from Iphigenia on the tip of his tongue:\n‘What good is watching the astronomers' signs in the sky,\n\nWhen a goat or a scorpion or some other beast's name rises!\n\nNobody looks at what's in front of their feet; they scan the reaches of the sky.’\nAnd he also used to say—I listened to him a lot, and gladly—that Pacuvius's Zethus was much too hostile to learning. He preferred Ennius's Neoptolemus, who says he ‘wants to do philosophy, but in small doses; he doesn't like doing it extensively.’ But if you're so delighted with Greek studies, there are other fields more worthy of free citizens and wider in their reach, which we can apply to everyday life or even to government itself. Those subjects you've mentioned, if they're worth anything at all, are worth this: they sharpen young people's minds a little and, so to speak, prod them, so they can learn more important things more easily.”\n\nSECTION 31\n\nCHAPTER 19\n\nThen Tubero said, “I don't disagree with you, Laelius, but I'd like to know what you mean by more important things.” Laelius: “I'll tell you, by Hercules, though you may look down on me for it. You've asked Scipio about those things in the sky, while I think we should look more closely into what's right in front of our eyes. Why, I ask, does someone who is Lucius Paulus's grandson, with this man as his uncle, born into a family of the highest standing and a state as famous as ours, ask how two suns appeared, but not why one state has two senates and now almost two separate peoples? As you can see, Tiberius Gracchus's death—and, even before that, his whole approach as tribune—split a single people into two sides. Scipio's critics and those who envy him are still keeping one part of the senate at odds with you, under the leadership of Metellus and Publius Mucius. Publius Crassus and Appius Claudius started this, but their deaths haven't changed anything. And they won't let this man, the only one who can help, tackle these grave dangers: the allies and the Latins stirred up, treaties broken, the deeply divisive three-man commission plotting something new every day, and respectable men thrown into turmoil.”\n\nSECTION 32\n\n“So, young men, if you'll listen to me, don't be afraid of a second sun. Either there can't be one, or let it be real, just as it seemed to be, provided it doesn't cause trouble. Either we can know nothing about such things or, even if we know all about them, that knowledge can't make us better or happier. But having a united senate and people is possible, and not having them united causes serious trouble. Here we know and see that the opposite is true: if we achieve that unity, we'll live both better and happier lives.”\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 20\n\nThen Mucius said, “What do you think we should learn, then, Laelius, so we can achieve exactly what you're asking for?” Laelius: “The skills that let us be useful to our state. I think that's wisdom's finest service and the greatest proof—or duty—of virtue. So, to devote these holidays above all to discussions that will really help our state, let's ask Scipio to explain what he thinks is the best form of government. Then we'll look into other questions. Once we understand those, I hope we'll find our way to these very issues and work out how to deal with the problems facing us now.”\n\nSECTION 34\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\nWhen Philus, Manilius, and Mummius had all strongly agreed with this […]\n\nSECTION 34(fr1)\n\n(Diom. GL I, p. 365 Keil) “There's no model we'd rather have our state resemble.”\n\n(Non. p. 85M, p. 289M) “So, if you don't mind, bring your discussion down from the sky to matters closer to home.”\n\n“[…] I wanted this not just because it was right that the state's leading man should be the one to speak about the state, but also because I remembered how often you used to debate with Panaetius in front of Polybius, two Greeks with an exceptional knowledge of politics. You used to bring together many arguments and show that by far the best form of government was the one our ancestors had left us. Since you're better prepared for that discussion, you'll be doing all of us a favor—and let me speak for the others too—if you explain what you think about government.”\n\nSECTION 35\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\nThen Scipio said, “I really cannot say that I usually think about any subject more intensely or carefully than the very one you are putting to me, Laelius. I see that every craftsman who excels at his own work thinks, plans, and cares about nothing except getting better at his particular craft. My parents and ancestors have left me just one task: looking after and running the state. Wouldn’t I be admitting that I was lazier than any craftsman if I put less effort into the greatest skill than they put into the smallest?”\n\nSECTION 36\n\n“But I'm not satisfied with what Greece's greatest and wisest men left us in writing on this question. Nor do I dare put my own views above theirs. So I ask you to listen to me in this light. I'm not completely unfamiliar with Greek thought. Nor do I put it above our own, especially on this subject. I'm just a toga-wearing Roman, given a decent education through my father's care. I've been eager to learn since childhood. Still, experience and Roman teaching have taught me far more than books.”\n\nSECTION 37\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\nHere Philus said, “No, by Hercules, Scipio, I don't doubt that no one has surpassed you in ability. And in experience of the greatest affairs of state, you've easily outdone everyone. We also know what studies you've always pursued. So if, as you say, you've also applied your mind to this organized field of study—this art, you might call it—I'm very grateful to Laelius. I expect what you say will be much richer than everything the Greeks have written.” Then Scipio said, “You're certainly setting very high expectations for my speech. That's the heaviest burden anyone about to discuss important subjects can carry.” And Philus said, “However high they are, you'll exceed them, as you always do. There's no danger you'll run out of things to say when you're discussing government.”\n\nSECTION 38\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\nHere Scipio said, “I'll do what you want as well as I can. I'll begin the discussion by following a rule that I think we should use whenever we discuss anything, if we want to avoid confusion. Once we agree on what to call the subject we're examining, we should explain what that name means. Only when we've agreed on that should we begin the conversation. We can never understand what something is like until we've first understood what it is. So, since we're examining the state, let's first see what this thing we're examining actually is.” Laelius agreed, and Africanus continued, “But in discussing something so clear and familiar, I won't go back to the basic starting points that scholars usually use in these matters. I won't begin with the first union of a man and a woman, then move on to their children and family relationships, repeatedly defining what each thing is and all the ways its name is used. I'm speaking to men with good judgment who've served in the greatest state with the highest distinction, both in war and at home. So I won't let my speech overshadow the subject itself. I haven't taken this on to go through everything like a teacher, and I don't promise that no little detail will be left out of this conversation.” Then Laelius said, “That's exactly the kind of discussion I'm looking forward to.”\n\nSECTION 39\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\n“So,” Africanus said, “a state is the people's business. But a people isn't just any collection of human beings gathered together in any way. It's a large group joined together by agreement on law and by shared interests. Their first reason for coming together isn't so much weakness as a natural tendency for human beings to gather together. Our species doesn't live alone or wander by itself. It's born in such a way that not even when everything is plentiful […]\n\nSECTION 40fr\n\n(August. epist. 138.10) “In a short time, a scattered and wandering crowd had become a community through harmony.”\n\nSECTION 41\n\nCHAPTER 26\n\n“[…] certain seeds, so to speak, and no foundation could be found for either the other virtues or the state itself. These groups, then, formed for the reason I've explained, first settled in a particular place to make their homes. After enclosing it with the help of the terrain and their own labor, they called this cluster of buildings a town or city, marked out by shrines and public spaces. So every people—a large group of the kind I've described—every political community, which is a people organized, and every state, which, as I said, is the people's business, needs some guiding judgment if it's going to last. That judgment must always be directed first toward the reason that brought the community into being.\n\nSECTION 42\n\n“Next, it must be assigned either to one person or to certain chosen people, or taken up by the whole population, everyone together. So when supreme control of everything belongs to one person, we call that person a king and that form of government a monarchy. When it belongs to chosen people, we say that the community is ruled by the judgment of its best citizens. A popular government, as it is called, is one in which everything belongs to the people. Any of these three kinds, if it maintains the bond that first joined people together in political association, is not perfect or, in my opinion, the best, but is nevertheless tolerable, though one may be better than another. For a fair and wise king, or chosen leading citizens, or even the people themselves—though that is the least desirable arrangement—can apparently maintain a reasonably stable condition, provided no injustice or selfish desires intervene.\n\nSECTION 43\n\nCHAPTER 27\n\n“But under kings, everyone else has too little share in the rights and decisions of the community. Under the rule of the best citizens, the population can hardly share in freedom, since it has no part in public decision-making or power. And when everything is managed by the people, however fair and restrained they may be, that very equality is unfair, since it recognizes no differences in standing. So even if Cyrus the Persian was an exceptionally just and wise king, I still don't think his state—the people's business, as I said before—was the most desirable kind, since it was governed by one man's nod and will. Even if the people of Massilia, who are under our protection, are governed with complete justice by chosen, leading citizens, their situation still has something like slavery about it. And if the Athenians at certain times did away with the Areopagus and acted only through the people's votes and decrees, their state didn't retain its proper dignity, since they had no distinct levels of standing.\n\nSECTION 44\n\nCHAPTER 28\n\n“And I'm talking about these three forms of government when they aren't disrupted or mixed together, but each keeps its own form. Each has the faults I mentioned earlier, and then other destructive faults as well. Every one of these forms of government has a steep, slippery path to a closely related evil. Give that tolerable king—or, if you like, even lovable king—Cyrus, whom I'll single out, the freedom to change his disposition, and the utterly cruel Phalaris is just underneath. Rule by one man easily slides downhill into something like his rule. Close beside the government of Massilia by a few leading citizens lies the united faction of thirty men that once existed at Athens. And then the power of the Athenians themselves over everything, so we needn't look for others, having been turned to the mob's madness and lawlessness […]\n\nSECTION 45\n\nCHAPTER 29\n\n“[…] the worst, and from this can grow either rule by the best citizens, or that tyrannical rule by a faction, or monarchy, or even, very often, government by the people. And from that, in turn, one of the kinds I mentioned earlier usually grows. There are remarkable cycles—rounds, you might call them—of change and reversal in governments. It takes a wise person to understand them. But to see them coming while steering a state, controlling its course and keeping it in your own hands, takes a truly great citizen, a man who's almost godlike. So I think a fourth kind of government deserves the strongest approval: a balanced blend of the three I described first.”\n\nSECTION 46\n\nCHAPTER 30\n\nThen Laelius said: “I know that's your view, Africanus. I've often heard you say so. Still, if you don't mind, I'd like to know which of those three forms of government you think best. After all, it might offer some help with […]”\n\nSECTION 47\n\nCHAPTER 31\n\n“[…] Every state matches either the character or the wishes of its ruler. So freedom has no home except where the people hold the highest power. Nothing could be sweeter than freedom. And unless everyone has it equally, it isn't even freedom. But how can freedom be equal? Never mind a kingdom, where slavery isn't even hidden or in doubt. What about states where everyone is free only in name? People vote, hand out powers and public offices, and get courted and asked for support. But they give what they'd have to give even against their will. Others ask them for things they don't have themselves. They have no share in power, public decision-making, or the decisions of handpicked judges. These depend on ancient family lines or money. But among a free people, as in Rhodes or Athens, there's no citizen who […]”\n\nSECTION 48\n\nCHAPTER 32\n\n[…] one or more men had become richer and more powerful than the rest of the people. They say it then arose from these men's contempt and arrogance, as the timid and weak gave way and submitted to the arrogance of the rich. But if peoples keep hold of their rights, they say that nothing is better, freer, or happier. The people control laws, trials, war, peace, treaties, every individual's life, and property. They think this alone is properly called a commonwealth, that is, the people's business. That is why the people's business is usually freed from the control of kings and aristocrats. Free peoples, on the other hand, do not ask for kings or for the power and resources of aristocrats.\n\nSECTION 49\n\n“They also say we shouldn't reject this whole form of government by a free people because of the faults of an unruly people. Nothing is more stable or secure than a united people that directs everything toward its own safety and freedom. Agreement comes most easily in a state where the same thing benefits everyone. Conflicts arise from differing interests, when different things suit different people. So when the senators held power, the state was never stable. Still less was it stable under kings, where, as Ennius says, ‘There's no sacred partnership, and no trust.’ Now, law is the bond that holds a society of citizens together, and the rights established by law are equal. So what rights can hold a society of citizens together when its citizens don't have equal standing? Even if we don't want to equalize wealth, and everyone's abilities can't be equal, surely people who are citizens of the same state should have equal rights. After all, what is a state but a partnership in rights? […] […]\n\nSECTION 50\n\nCHAPTER 33\n\n“[…] They don't even think other states should get the names they want for themselves. Why call a man ‘king,’ using the title of Jupiter the Best? He wants to dominate or hold power alone, ruling over an oppressed people. Why not call him a tyrant instead? A tyrant can be kind just as easily as harsh. So the difference for the people is whether their master is friendly or harsh. Either way, they can't escape slavery. And how could Sparta ensure it had good, fair kings? This was when people thought its system of government was the best. Yet anyone born into the royal family had to be accepted as king. And who could stand the so-called ‘best men’? They gave themselves this name through their own elections, without the people's consent. How is that man judged the best? By learning, skills, interests […] […]”\n\nSECTION 51\n\nCHAPTER 34\n\n“[…] If it does this randomly, it'll fall as quickly as a ship when a passenger chosen by lot takes the helm. But suppose a free people chooses whom to put in charge. It'll choose the best people, if it wants to survive. Clearly, states depend for their survival on the judgment of the best people. Nature has made people with the best character and courage lead weaker people. It has also made weaker people want to obey the best. But they say people's mistaken views have ruined this best form of government. People don't understand good character: few have it, and few can judge or recognize it. They think men with wealth and plenty of resources, and men of noble birth, are the best. Because of this popular mistake, a few people's wealth, not their character, begins to control the state. Those leaders cling fiercely to the name ‘best men.’ But they don't have the real thing. Without judgment and a proper way of living and leading others, wealth, status, and power are shameful and full of overbearing pride. No state looks uglier than one where the richest people count as the best.”\n\nSECTION 52\n\n“What could be finer than a state governed by excellence? The person who rules others is himself a slave to no desire. He has personally embraced all the things he trains his fellow citizens for and calls on them to do. He doesn't impose laws on the people that he doesn't obey himself. Instead, he holds up his own life as a law for his fellow citizens. If one man could adequately manage everything, there'd be no need for more. If everyone together could see what was best and agree on it, no one would look for specially chosen leaders. The difficulty of working out what to do shifted government from a king to several people; the people's mistakes and recklessness shifted it from the masses to a few. So the best men took the middle position between one man's limitations and the recklessness of the many. Nothing could be more balanced. With them looking after the state, the people must be as happy as can be, free from every worry or concern. They've entrusted their peace and quiet to others, whose job it is to protect it and never let the people think their leaders are neglecting their interests.\n\nSECTION 53\n\n“For the equality of rights that free peoples embrace can't be maintained (however unchecked and unrestrained peoples may be, they themselves single out many individuals for all kinds of favors, and they make sharp distinctions between people and their standing). And what they call equality is deeply unfair. When the same honor goes to the highest and the lowest—and every people is bound to have both—equality itself is deeply unfair. That can't happen in states governed by the best. These, Laelius, and others along the same lines, are roughly the arguments usually offered by those who praise this form of government most.”\n\nSECTION 54\n\nCHAPTER 35\n\nThen Laelius said, “What about you, Scipio? Which of those three do you like best?” Scipio: “You're right to ask which of the three I like best. I don't approve of any one on its own. I prefer a blend of all three to any single one. But if I had to choose one simple form, I'd choose rule by a king […] […] […] is called here. The word ‘king’ sounds almost like a father's title. He cares for his citizens as his own children, and works harder to keep them safe than […] […] […] […] […] to be supported by the care of one man, the best and greatest.”\n\nSECTION 55\n\n“The best men step forward. They claim that they can do this same thing better: several men will have more good judgment than one, they say, but the same fairness and loyalty. But look! The people shout at the top of their voices that they do not want to obey either one man or a few. Nothing is sweeter than freedom, even for wild animals. Everyone lacks it if they serve either a king or the best men. So kings attract us through affection, the best men through judgment, and peoples through freedom. When we compare them, it is difficult to choose which we want most.” Laelius: “I agree,” he said. “But we can hardly work out the rest if you leave this question unfinished.”\n\nSECTION 56\n\nCHAPTER 36\n\nScipio: “Then let's follow Aratus. When he starts speaking about great matters, he thinks he should begin with Jupiter.” Laelius: “Which Jupiter? And what does this discussion have in common with that poem?” Scipio: “Just this,” he said, “that we should properly begin speaking with him. Everyone, educated or not, agrees he alone is king of all gods and humans—†to be polished.” “What?” said Laelius. And he replied, “What do you think, except what's right in front of us? Perhaps heads of states set up these beliefs to help everyday life. People were to believe one king ruled in heaven. As Homer says, he shook all Olympus with a nod. He was also held to be everyone's king and father. If so, this carries great weight, and many people back it up—if ‘many’ is a fair word for everyone. The nations agreed on this, plainly following their leaders' decisions: nothing is better than a king. After all, they think one god's will rules all the gods. Or perhaps we've learned that these beliefs rest on ignorant people's mistakes and are like made-up stories. Then let's listen to the teachers all educated people share, so to speak. It's as if they saw with their own eyes what we barely grasp by hearing about it.” “Who are these men?” said Laelius. And he replied, “The men who studied the nature of everything and understood that this whole universe, by a mind […] […]”\n\nSECTION 58\n\nCHAPTER 37\n\n[…] “But if you like, Laelius, I'll give you witnesses who aren't too ancient or at all barbarian.” Laelius: “Those are the ones I want,” he said. Scipio: “Then do you see that this city has been without kings for less than four hundred years?” Laelius: “Yes, less.” Scipio: “Well, is four hundred years a very long lifetime for a city and its people?” Laelius: “It's barely grown up,” he said. Scipio: “So Rome had a king four hundred years ago?” Laelius: “Yes, and a proud one at that.” Scipio: “What about before him?” Laelius: “A very fair one, and then back in turn to Romulus. He was king six hundred years before our time.” Scipio: “So even he wasn't all that long ago?” Laelius: “Not at all. And Greece was already nearly old by then.” Scipio: “Tell me, Scipio, was Romulus king of barbarians?” Laelius: “The Greeks say everyone is either Greek or barbarian. If that's right, I'm afraid he was king of barbarians. But suppose that name depends on people's behavior, not their language. Then I think the Greeks are no less barbarian than the Romans.” And Scipio said, “But for our question, we're not asking about their race. We're asking what sort of people they were. Sensible people, not from long ago, wanted kings. So my witnesses are neither very ancient nor uncivilized and savage.”\n\nSECTION 59\n\nCHAPTER 38\n\nThen Laelius said, “I see you've got plenty of witnesses, Scipio. But like a good judge, I care more about arguments than witnesses.” Then Scipio said, “Then use your own experience as an argument, Laelius.” “What experience?” he asked. Scipio: “Any time you happened to notice you were angry with someone.” Laelius: “Yes, more often than I'd like.” Scipio: “Well, when you're angry, do you let that anger rule your mind?” Laelius: “Certainly not, by Hercules,” he said. “I follow the example of Archytas of Tarentum. He once came to his country house and found everything done differently from his orders. He told his farm manager, ‘You miserable man! I'd have beaten you to death by now if I weren't angry.’” “Very good,” said Scipio.\n\nSECTION 60\n\n“So Archytas clearly saw anger fighting against reason as a kind of rebellion in the mind. He was right, and he wanted judgment to calm it down. Add greed. Add the wish to rule. Add the wish for fame. Add cravings. Then you see this: if the mind has a king, just one thing will rule it—judgment. That's the best part of the mind. When judgment rules, there's no room for cravings, no room for anger, no room for rashness.” Laelius: “That's right,” he said. Scipio: “So you approve of a mind arranged like that?” Laelius: “Yes, more than anything,” he said. Scipio: “Then you wouldn't approve if judgment were driven out and cravings, which are endless, or fits of anger controlled everything?” Laelius: “I'd find nothing more miserable than that mind, and nothing more miserable than a person with a mind like that.” Scipio: “So you want every part of the mind under a king, ruled by judgment?” Laelius: “Yes, that's what I want.” Scipio: “Then why aren't you sure what to think about government? If control is handed to several people, you can already see that there will be no ruling power. That power can only exist if it is one.”\n\nSECTION 61\n\nCHAPTER 39\n\nThen Laelius said, “What difference is there, please, between one ruler and several, if the several are just?” Scipio replied, “Since I realized that my witnesses made little impression on you, Laelius, I will keep using you as a witness to prove what I say.” “Me? How?” he asked. Scipio: “Because recently, when we were at your place at Formiae, I noticed you giving your household strict orders to obey one person.” Laelius: “The manager, of course.” Scipio: “Well, at home, are several people in charge of your business?” Laelius: “No, just one,” he said. Scipio: “And does anyone else besides you govern the whole household?” Laelius: “Certainly not.” Scipio: “Then why not admit that the same is true in the state, and that government by individuals is best, provided they are just?” Laelius: “You are bringing me close to agreement,” he said.\n\nSECTION 62\n\nCHAPTER 40\n\nAnd Scipio said: “You'll agree even more, Laelius, if I move on to bigger matters. I'll leave aside comparisons—for example, that it's better to entrust a ship to one captain and a sick person to one doctor than to several, provided they're qualified in their fields.” Laelius: “What bigger matters?” Scipio: “Well, don't you see that the outrageous behavior and arrogance of just one man, Tarquin, made these people hate the very title of king?” Laelius: “Yes, I do,” he said. Scipio: “Then you also see something I expect to say more about as our discussion goes on. Once Tarquin was driven out, the people exulted in freedom with a remarkable lack of restraint. Then innocent people were driven into exile. Then many people's property was plundered. Then consuls were appointed for a year at a time. Then the rods of office were lowered before the people. Then there were appeals to the people in every kind of case. Then the common people withdrew in protest more than once. In short, most things were done in a way that put everything in the people's hands.” Laelius: “It's as you say,” he said.\n\nSECTION 63\n\n“It certainly is,” said Scipio, “in peaceful, quiet times. You can fool around when you've nothing to fear, as on a ship, or often even during a mild illness. But when the sea suddenly grows rough, someone on board begs one person for help. A sick person does the same when the illness grows worse. It's the same with our people. In peacetime, at home, they give orders and threaten even their own officials. They refuse orders, appeal to other officials, and appeal to the people. But in war they obey as if under a king. Safety matters more than getting their own way. In more serious wars, our people have even wanted one man to hold full power, without a colleague. The very name of these men shows the strength of their power. A dictator gets that name because he is ‘named.’ But in our books, Laelius, you see him called ‘master of the people.’” Laelius: “I do,” he said. And Scipio said, “So, wisely, those people of long ago […]”\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 64\n\nCHAPTER 41\n\n[…] “When a people loses a just king, ‘longing stays long in their hearts,’ as Ennius says, ‘after the death of an excellent king’;\nat the same time, among\n\nThemselves they say, ‘Romulus, godlike Romulus,’\n\n‘What a guardian of your country the gods brought into the world in you!’\n\n‘Father, founder, blood descended from the gods!’\nThey did not call the men they had justly obeyed owners or masters, or even kings. They called them guardians of their country, fathers, gods. And not without reason. What do they add?\nYou brought us into the world of light.\nThey believed that the king's justice had given them life, honor, and distinction. Their descendants would have kept the same feelings if the kings had remained the same kind of men. But you see that one man's injustice brought down that whole form of government.” Laelius: “I certainly do,” he said, “and I am eager to understand these cycles of change, not just in our state but in every state.”\n\nSECTION 65\n\nCHAPTER 42\n\nAnd Scipio said, “Once I've explained what I think about the form of government I favor most, I'll certainly need to discuss changes in government more closely, though I think such changes would be very hard to bring about in that state. But the first and surest change in kingship is this. Once a king starts acting unjustly, that form of government immediately disappears, and the very same man is now a tyrant. That's the worst form of government, right next to the best. If the leading men overthrow him, as usually happens, the state takes on the second-best of the three forms. It has something like a royal council—that is, a fatherly council of leaders who look after the people's interests. But if the people themselves kill or drive out the tyrant, they show more restraint, as long as they stay sensible and sane. They're pleased with what they've done and want to protect the state they've set up themselves. But sometimes the people attack a just king or strip him of his kingship, or, as happens more often, get a taste of the leading men's blood and put the whole state at the mercy of their own whims. Don't imagine there's any sea or fire so fierce that it wouldn't be easier to bring under control than a crowd running wild with arrogance. Then what Plato described so vividly happens—if I can manage to put it into Latin. That's hard to do, but I'll try.”\n\nSECTION 66\n\nCHAPTER 43\n\n“He says, ‘When the people's insatiable throat is parched with thirst for freedom, and using bad servants, it has thirstily drunk freedom not moderately diluted but far too strong, then it pursues, accuses, and denounces its officials and leaders, calling them overbearing men, kings, and tyrants, unless they are very mild and indulgent and provide it with freedom in generous quantities.’ I think you know this passage.” Laelius: “I certainly know it very well,” he said.\n\nSECTION 67\n\nScipio: “So here's what follows: ‘The people attack those who obey their leaders and call them willing slaves. But officials who want to act like private citizens, and private citizens who make sure there's no difference between a private citizen and an official, get lavish praise and honors. So in a state like this everything has to be full of freedom. Every private home must be free of anyone's control, and this evil must reach even the animals. In short, fathers fear their sons, sons pay no attention to their fathers, and all shame disappears, so that they're completely free. It makes no difference whether someone is a citizen or a foreigner. Teachers fear their students and flatter them, while students look down on their teachers. Young people take on the authority of their elders, and old people lower themselves to the games of the young so as not to seem unpleasant and tiresome to them. As a result, even slaves behave more freely, wives have the same rights as their husbands, and in all this freedom even dogs and horses, and donkeys too, charge about so freely that people have to get out of their way. So,’ he says, ‘this unlimited license leads to a final result: the citizens become so touchy and soft that if the slightest authority is brought to bear on them, they get angry and can't stand it. That's how they start ignoring the laws too, so that they won't have any master at all.’”\n\nSECTION 68\n\nCHAPTER 44\n\nThen Laelius said, “You've captured exactly what he said.” Scipio: “And now I'll return to the man whose account I'm following. He says this excessive freedom, which they think is the only real freedom, is the root from which a tyrant grows. Too much power brings down the leading citizens. In the same way, freedom itself enslaves a people that's too free. Things that thrive too much usually swing to the opposite extreme. This happens in weather, in crops, and in our bodies. *It* happens most of all in states. That excessive freedom ends in excessive slavery, both for peoples and for individuals. So this extreme freedom produces a tyrant and the harshest, most unjust slavery. These unruly, or rather savage, people usually choose a leader against the leading citizens, already beaten down and ousted. He's bold and corrupt. He shamelessly hounds men who have often served the state well. He wins the people's favor with other people's property and his own. Because he faces threats as a private citizen, he's given powers, and these are extended. Such leaders are even surrounded by bodyguards, as Pisistratus was at Athens. Finally, they become tyrants over the very people who raised them up. If good men overthrow them, as often happens, the state comes back to life. But if ruthless men do it, they form that clique, another set of tyrants. The same clique often emerges even from that highly praised rule by the best men. This happens when some fault leads those very leaders astray. So they snatch control of the state from each other like a ball. Tyrants take it from kings; leading citizens or the people take it from tyrants. Cliques or tyrants then take it from them. No form of government ever stays the same for long.”\n\nSECTION 69\n\nCHAPTER 45\n\n“Since that is so, in my opinion kingship is by far the best of the three original forms. But better than kingship itself will be a balanced combination of the three best forms of government. I want the state to have a supreme, royal element; another part assigned and entrusted to the authority of leading men; and certain matters reserved for the people's judgment and wishes. First, this constitution has a substantial measure of equality, which free people can hardly do without for long. Second, it has stability. Those original forms easily change into their opposite faults: the king becomes a master, the best men become a faction, and the people become a confused mob. The forms themselves also often change into new forms. But this hardly happens in a constitution that combines and blends them in proper measure, unless the leading men have serious faults. There is no reason for change when everyone is firmly placed in their proper position and there is nowhere below for them to plunge and fall.\n\nSECTION 70\n\nCHAPTER 46\n\n“But I'm afraid, Laelius, and all of you, my very dear and wise friends, that if I stay on this subject any longer, I'll sound like someone laying down rules and teaching, rather than thinking things through together with you. So I'll move on to things everyone knows, but that we've been investigating for a long time. This is my judgment, my belief, and my firm claim: no state at all can compare, in its constitution, its organization, or its practices, with the one our fathers handed down to us after receiving it themselves from our ancestors. If you agree, since you wanted to hear from me too what you already knew for yourselves, I'll show both what it's like and why it's the best. Once I've set out our own state as a model, I'll try to apply to it everything I have to say about the best form of government. If I can keep to that and carry it through, I think I'll have more than fulfilled the task Laelius has assigned me.”\n\nSECTION 71\n\nCHAPTER 47\n\nThen Laelius said, “That's certainly for you, Scipio—you alone. Who could speak better than you about our ancestors' practices? Your own ancestors were so distinguished. Or about the best form of government? If we have that, who could then be more successful than you? No one could, even now. Or about planning for the future? You've removed this city's two terrors and looked ahead for all time to come.”\n\n### Book 1 — Fragments of Uncertain Position\n\nSECTION 1\n\n(Plin. Nat. praef. 7)\nnot for the greatest scholars either.\n\n“I don't want †Manius Persius to read this. I want Junius Congus to.”\n\nSECTION 2\n\n(Non. p. 426M) So our country gives us more benefits and is an older parent than our father. We certainly owe it more thanks than we owe him.\n\nSECTION 3\n\n(Non. p. 526M) “Nor would Carthage have had such great resources for nearly six hundred years without good judgment and discipline.”\n\nSECTION 4\n\n(Non. p. 276M) “To get to know that habit of yours and your interest in conversation, by Hercules,” he said.\n\nSECTION 5\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 3.16.5) “Certainly all their discussion contains very rich sources of excellence and knowledge. Still, compared with their actions and achievements, I fear it may seem to have given people less useful work than enjoyment.”\n\nSECTION 6\n\n(Arusianus Messius GL 7.457K) From which those men were calling away.\n\n### Book 2\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\nEveryone was burning with eagerness to listen, and Scipio began speaking like this: “This comes from old Cato, whom, as you know, I loved dearly and admired enormously. From my youth I devoted myself entirely to him, whether because of both my fathers’ opinion of him or because of my own enthusiasm. I could never get enough of his conversation. He had so much experience in government, which he’d handled both extremely well and for a very long time, at home and on campaign. There was such restraint in his speaking, such wit mixed with seriousness, such eagerness both to learn and to teach, and such a close match between his life and his words.\n\nSECTION 2\n\n“He used to say that our state's constitution was better than those of other states for this reason. In those states, generally one individual had established each commonwealth with his own laws and institutions. Minos did so for the Cretans, and Lycurgus for the Spartans. At Athens, where the constitution changed very often, it was Theseus, then Draco, then Solon, then Clisthenes, and then many others. Finally, when it was already drained of life and lying helpless, the learned Demetrius of Phalerum supported it. Our commonwealth, on the other hand, was established by the abilities of many men, not one, and over several centuries and generations, not one man's lifetime. He said no mind had ever been great enough for anyone, at any time, to overlook nothing. Nor could all minds combined foresee enough at a single moment to cover everything without practical experience and the passage of time.\n\nSECTION 3\n\n“So my discussion will now go back to the origin of the people, as he used to do. I am glad to use even Cato's own word. I will achieve my purpose more easily if I show you our commonwealth at birth, as it grew, as it reached adulthood, and when it became firm and strong, rather than inventing one myself, as Socrates does in Plato.”\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nOnce everyone had agreed, he said, “What state's beginnings are as clear and as familiar to everyone as this city's founding by Romulus? He was said to be the son of Mars. Let's accept the story people tell. It's not just old: our ancestors also had good reason to pass it down. They wanted men who served the community well to be thought divine by birth, not just in talent. The story goes, then, that soon after his birth, Amulius, king of Alba, ordered him abandoned by the Tiber with his brother Remus. The king feared for his throne. There a wild animal fed him at her teats. Shepherds took him in and raised him to a country life of hard work. They say that as he grew up, he outdid everyone in physical strength and fierceness of spirit. So everyone then living in the fields where this city stands today obeyed him willingly and gladly. He took command of their forces. Now, to move from stories to facts, he is said to have crushed Alba Longa, a strong and powerful city then. He is also said to have killed King Amulius.”\n\nSECTION 5\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n“After winning this glory, he is said to have first planned to found a city after taking the auspices, and to establish a state securely. He chose an extraordinarily suitable site for the city. Anyone trying to plant a lasting state must give the most careful thought to this. He did not place it beside the sea. With his force of men, he could very easily have advanced into the territory of the Rutulians and Aborigines, or founded the city himself at the Tiber's mouth, where King Ancus established a colony many years later. But this man of exceptional foresight understood and saw that coastal sites are not the most suitable for cities founded in the hope of lasting and gaining power. First, coastal cities face dangers that are not only numerous but also unseen.\n\nSECTION 6\n\n“Land gives advance warning of enemy arrivals, not just expected ones but sudden ones too. It offers many signs, almost making a crash and noise itself. No enemy can rush at us by land without our knowing he's there. We can also tell who he is and where he's from. But an enemy attacking by sea can be there before anyone even suspects he's coming. And when he comes, he doesn't show who he is, where he's from, or even what he wants. In short, no sign lets us tell or judge whether he comes in peace or as an enemy.”\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n“Coastal cities also suffer a certain corruption and change in their ways. They mix with new languages and teachings. Not only foreign goods but also foreign customs are imported, so nothing in their ancestral institutions can remain unchanged. Moreover, the inhabitants of these cities do not stay attached to their own homes. Their restless hopes and thoughts constantly carry them far from home. Even when they remain there physically, their minds live abroad and wander. Nothing did more to weaken Carthage and Corinth over time, and eventually destroy them, than this wandering and scattering of their citizens. Their eagerness for trade and seafaring had made them abandon the cultivation of the fields and the practice of arms.\n\nSECTION 8\n\n“The sea also supplies many temptations to luxury that ruin states. Some are caught there; others are imported. Its beauty itself offers many temptations to expensive pleasures or lazy living. And what I said about Corinth might well be completely true of all Greece. The Peloponnese itself is almost entirely surrounded by sea. Apart from the people of Phlius, no one there has land that doesn't touch the sea. Outside the Peloponnese, only the Aenianes, Doris, and the Dolopes are away from the sea. What should I say about the Greek islands? Waves surround them, and they almost float about themselves, along with their cities' institutions and customs.”\n\nSECTION 9\n\n“These examples, as I said before, concern old Greece. But of the colonies the Greeks founded in Asia, Thrace, Italy, Sicily, and Africa, which one, apart from Magnesia alone, isn’t washed by the waves? Greece seems to form a sort of border stitched onto the lands of non-Greeks. Among the non-Greeks themselves, none had previously been seafarers except the Etruscans and Carthaginians—one for trade, the other for piracy. This clearly explains Greece’s troubles and upheavals, given those faults of coastal cities that I touched on very briefly just now. Still, these drawbacks come with one great advantage: whatever is produced anywhere can reach the city you live in by sea, and in return people can carry and send the produce of their own fields to whatever countries they want.\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\n“So how could Romulus have shown more inspired judgment in gaining the advantages of the sea while avoiding its drawbacks than by placing his city on the bank of a river that flows all year, runs steadily, and empties into the sea in a broad stream? The city could receive from the sea whatever it needed and send back whatever it had to spare. By that same river it could not only †take in from the sea the goods most essential for food and everyday life, but also receive them when brought in from inland. It seems to me that even then he foresaw that this city would one day provide a seat and home for supreme power. A city could hardly have held such enormous power more easily anywhere else in Italy.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\n“And who is so careless that he has not noticed and clearly understood the city's natural defenses? Through the wisdom of Romulus and the other kings, the line and course of its wall were laid out along steep, rugged hills on every side. The one approach, between the Esquiline and Quirinal hills, was blocked by a huge earthwork and surrounded by an enormous ditch. The citadel was protected by the steep circuit of rock around it, almost as if the rock had been cut away. It remained safe and untouched even during that terrible storm of the Gauls' arrival. He also chose a place with abundant springs, healthy despite being in an unhealthy region. The hills themselves catch the breezes and provide shade for the valleys.\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n“He accomplished all this very quickly. He founded the city and ordered it to be called Rome after himself. To strengthen the new state, he adopted a novel and rather rough plan. Still, as a way to secure the strength of his kingdom and his people, it showed a great man who was already thinking far ahead. At the Consualia festival he ordered the abduction of young unmarried Sabine women from respectable families who’d come to Rome for the games, which he’d just established as an annual event in the circus. He married them into the most prominent families.\n\nSECTION 13\n\n“When the Sabines went to war against the Romans because of this, and the fighting went back and forth with the outcome uncertain, he made a treaty with T. Tatius, king of the Sabines, at the pleading of the abducted women themselves. Under that treaty he admitted the Sabines as citizens, shared religious rites with them, and shared his rule with their king.\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n“After Tatius died, all the power returned to Romulus. With Tatius, he had selected leading men for the royal council. They were called ‘fathers’ out of affection. He had also divided the people into three tribes and thirty curiae, naming the tribes after himself, Tatius, and Lucumo, an ally of Romulus who had died in the battle with the Sabines. He named the curiae after the abducted Sabine women who had later pleaded for peace and a treaty. These arrangements had been made while Tatius was alive. Still, after Tatius was killed, Romulus ruled even more through the authority and advice of the fathers.\n\nSECTION 15\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n“After doing this, he first recognized and accepted what Lycurgus had recognized shortly before at Sparta. Cities are better governed and better ruled by a single king when the best citizens add their authority to his power. Supported and protected by this council—a kind of senate—he fought many highly successful wars against his neighbors. He took none of the spoils home himself, but kept making his citizens richer.”\n\nSECTION 16\n\n“Then Romulus paid the closest attention to the auspices, a practice we still keep today, to the great benefit of the state. He himself founded the city after taking the auspices, and that was the beginning of the state. To assist him with the auspices in every public undertaking, he appointed one augur from each tribe. He assigned the common people to the leading men as their clients—I’ll consider later how useful that was—and kept them in line by imposing fines of sheep and cattle, not by force and executions. Wealth then consisted of livestock and landholdings, which is where the words pecuniosi and locupletes, both meaning ‘wealthy,’ came from.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\n“And after Romulus had ruled for thirty-seven years and established these two outstanding supports for the state—the taking of omens and the senate—he gained such standing that, when the sun suddenly went dark and he disappeared, people thought he'd been given a place among the gods. No mortal has ever won that reputation without being famous for exceptional excellence.\n\nSECTION 18\n\n“This is all the more remarkable in Romulus's case. The others said to have become gods after being human lived in less educated times. That made stories easy to invent, since ignorant people were easily persuaded. But Romulus lived less than six hundred years ago, as we know. Writing and learning were already well established. All the old errors born of humanity's rough early life were gone. Greek records show that Rome was founded in the second year of the seventh Olympiad. If that's right, Romulus lived when Greece was already full of poets and musicians. People were less ready to believe stories, except about the distant past. The first Olympiad was established 108 years after Lycurgus began writing laws. Some confuse the names and think the same Lycurgus established it. Even the shortest estimates place Homer about thirty years before Lycurgus's time.”\n\nSECTION 19\n\n“So we can see that Homer lived many years before Romulus. People were already educated, and the age itself was learned. There was hardly any room left for invention. Earlier ages accepted made-up stories, sometimes even ones put together\n\nSECTION 19(fr)\n\n(August. C.D. 22.6) clumsily. But this more educated age rejected them. In particular, it laughed at anything that couldn't happen.”\n\nSECTION 20\n\n“[…] his grandson through his daughter, as some have said. In the very year he died, Simonides was born, during the fifty-sixth Olympiad. This makes it easier to see when people believed Romulus had become immortal. Human life had already been long established, studied, and understood. But his gifts and courage were certainly so great that people believed Proculus Julius, a man from the country, about Romulus. They hadn't believed anything like it about any other human being for many centuries. The senators urged Proculus on, hoping to escape blame for Romulus's death. He is said to have told a public meeting that he'd seen Romulus on the hill now called the Quirinal. Romulus had told him to ask the people to build him a shrine on that hill. He said he was a god and was called Quirinus.”\n\nSECTION 21\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\n“So don't you see how one man's planning not only brought a new people into being, but also, instead of leaving it crying in its cradle, left it already well grown and nearly ready for manhood?” Then Laelius said: “We certainly do. And we see that you've begun the discussion with a new approach, one that's nowhere to be found in Greek books. Their leading writer, whom no one has surpassed, took a plot of ground for himself on which to build a state just as he pleased. A splendid one, perhaps, but out of touch with people's lives and habits,\n\nSECTION 22\n\n“while the others discussed the different kinds of states and how they work without any definite example or model of government. You seem to me to be planning to do both. You've begun in a way that shows you'd rather credit others with your own discoveries than invent things yourself, as Socrates does in Plato. You also give a reasoned explanation of things about the city's location that Romulus did by chance or out of necessity. And instead of letting your discussion wander, you keep it focused on one state. So go on as you've begun. As you take us through the remaining kings, I already feel as if I can see a fully developed state ahead.”\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 12\n\n“So,” Scipio said, “Romulus's senate consisted of the best men, whom the king himself had honored so highly that he wanted them called ‘fathers’ and their children ‘patricians.’ After Romulus's departure, this senate tried to govern the state itself without a king. The people would not tolerate it, and from then on never stopped demanding a king because they missed Romulus. The leaders wisely devised a new way of arranging an interregnum, unheard of among other nations. Until a definite king was announced, the state would neither be without a king nor have any one king for long. They would not let anyone hold power so long that he became either slower to give up command or more securely placed to keep it.\n\nSECTION 24\n\n“At that time, this new people nevertheless saw what Lycurgus of Sparta missed. He thought a king should not be chosen—if the matter really was within Lycurgus's power—but that anyone born from Hercules' line should be accepted, whatever sort of person he was. Our people, still country folk at that time, saw that they should look for the excellence and wisdom of a king, not his ancestry.\n\nSECTION 25\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\n“Since Numa Pompilius was said to stand out for these qualities, the people themselves passed over their own citizens and, on the senators' recommendation, chose a foreigner as their king. They summoned him, a Sabine, from Cures to Rome to rule. When he arrived here, although the people had ordered that he should be king through a vote in the assembly of the curiae, he still personally proposed a law in that assembly to grant him command. When he saw that Romulus's example had fired the Romans with enthusiasm for war, he thought they needed to be drawn back a little from that habit.\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\n“First, he divided the land Romulus had captured in war among the citizens, giving each man a share. He taught them that by farming they could have plenty of everything, without laying waste to land or plundering it. He gave them a love of quiet and peace, which most readily strengthen justice and good faith, and offer the best protection for farming and gathering crops. This same Pompilius introduced the higher forms of taking omens and added two augurs to the existing number. He also put five pontiffs, chosen from the leading men, in charge of religious rites. By laying down the laws we have in our records, and through religious ceremonies, he calmed spirits fired by the habit of war and the desire to fight. He also added the flamen priests, the Salian priests, and the Vestal Virgins, and gave every part of religion the most sacred standing.\n\nSECTION 27\n\n“He wanted the proper performance of the rites themselves to require great care, but their equipment to be very simple. He laid down many things to be thoroughly learned and observed, but they cost nothing. So he added effort to religious practice and removed expense. He also established markets, games, and every kind of occasion for gatherings and public celebrations. Through these institutions he brought people's minds, already made savage and fierce by enthusiasm for war, back to civilized and gentle ways. He ruled for thirty-nine years in complete peace and harmony. Let us follow our friend Polybius above all, since no one investigated dates more carefully. Then he died, having firmly established two outstanding supports for the state's lasting survival: religion and kindness.\n\nSECTION 28\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\nAfter Scipio had said this, Manilius asked, “Is it really recorded, Africanus, that King Numa was a student of Pythagoras himself, or at least a follower of his teaching? We've often heard this from older people. We understand that it's the common belief. Yet we don't find it firmly established by the official records.” Then Scipio said, “The whole story is false, Manilius. It's not just made up, but made up ignorantly and absurdly. The really intolerable lies are the ones we can see aren't just invented, but couldn't possibly have happened. We find that Pythagoras reached Sybaris, Croton, and that part of Italy when Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was already in his fourth year as king. The sixty-second Olympiad marks both the start of Superbus's reign and Pythagoras's arrival.”\n\nSECTION 29\n\n“Counting up the years of the kings’ reigns shows that Pythagoras first reached Italy about 140 years after Numa’s death. People who have studied the yearly records most carefully have never had any doubt about this.” Manilius said, “Immortal gods! What a great mistake people have made, and for how long! Still, I am quite happy that our education came not from skills imported from overseas but from good qualities native to our own country.”\n\nSECTION 30\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\n“And you will see that much more clearly,” Africanus said, “if you watch our state develop and reach its best form by a kind of natural progress. In fact, you will decide that our ancestors’ wisdom deserves praise for this very reason: you will see that even many things borrowed from elsewhere were made much better here than they had been in the places they came from, where they first appeared. You will see that the Roman people grew strong not by chance but through planning and training, though fortune did not work against them.”\n\nSECTION 31\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\n“After King Pompilius died, the people elected Tullus Hostilius king in the assembly of the curiae, on the motion of the interim king. Following Pompilius’s example, he asked the people, voting by curiae, to authorize his command. He gained outstanding military fame and achieved great things in war. With the spoils he also built and enclosed the assembly place and the senate house. He established rules for declaring war. This was an entirely just invention in itself, and he gave it religious force through the fetial priests. Any war that had not been announced and formally declared was to be considered unjust and offensive to the gods. Notice how wisely even our kings understood that some powers had to be given to the people—we will have a great deal to say about this. Tullus did not even dare to use the royal insignia without the people’s permission. For, to obtain permission for twelve lictors carrying the rods of office to walk in front of him […]\n\n[…]”\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\n“[…] In the account you've begun, the state isn't crawling toward its best form. It's flying there.” Scipio: “After him, the people made Ancus Marcius king. He was Numa Pompilius's grandson through his daughter. He too had the curiate assembly pass a law granting his command. After defeating the Latins in war, he made them citizens. He also added the Aventine and Caelian hills to the city. He divided up the land he'd captured and made all the coastal forests he'd taken public property. He founded a town at the mouth of the Tiber and strengthened it with settlers. He died after ruling for twenty-three years.” Then Laelius said, “That king deserves praise too. But Roman history is obscure: we know that king's mother, yet don't know his father.” Scipio: “That's right,” he said. “But from those times, it's mostly just the kings' names that are well known.”\n\nSECTION 34\n\nCHAPTER 19\n\n“But this seems to be when learning from abroad first made the community better educated. What flowed into our city from Greece wasn't a little stream. It was a huge river of Greek learning and skills. They say a man called Demaratus of Corinth was by far his city's leading man in status, influence, and wealth. Unable to bear Cypselus, the tyrant of Corinth, he is said to have fled with a large sum of money. He went to Tarquinii, a most prosperous city in Etruria. When he heard that Cypselus's rule was becoming firmly established, this free and brave man fled his homeland. The people of Tarquinii made him a citizen, and he settled down and made his home there. With a wife from Tarquinii, he had two sons. He gave them a Greek education in all the arts […]\n\n[…]”\n\nSECTION 35\n\nCHAPTER 20\n\n[…] “had been readily accepted as a citizen, his culture and learning made him a close friend of King Ancus. He was thought to share in all his plans and almost to be his partner in ruling. He was also extremely friendly and very generous to all the citizens, offering his resources, help, and protection, and even gifts. So, when Marcius died, Lucius Tarquinius was unanimously elected king by the people. That was how he had changed his Greek name: he appeared to follow this people’s customs in every way. Once he had brought forward a law authorizing his command, his first act was to double the former number of senators. He called the original senators members of the greater families, and asked them for their opinions first; those he himself had added he called members of the lesser families.”\n\nSECTION 36\n\n“He then organized the cavalry in the form still kept today. He wanted to change the names Titienses, Rhamnenses, and Luceres, but couldn't. Attus Navius, a highly respected augur, wouldn't approve. I see that the Corinthians, too, once carefully managed the assignment and feeding of publicly owned horses. They paid for this through taxes on orphans and widows. Still, he added a second set of cavalry units to the original ones. This doubled their number, bringing the cavalry to 1,800. Later he defeated the Aequi, a large and fierce people threatening Rome's interests. He also drove the Sabines back from the city's walls. His cavalry routed them, and he defeated them in war. We are told he was the first to hold the great games called the Roman Games. During the actual fighting in the Sabine war, he promised Jupiter Best and Greatest a temple on the Capitol. He died after reigning for thirty-eight years.”\n\nSECTION 37\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\nThen Laelius said, “Now Cato's point becomes more certain. A state isn't put together in a single age or by one man. It's clear how much each king added that was good and useful. But next comes the man who, I think, understood government best of all.” “That's right,” said Scipio. “After him, Servius Tullius reportedly became the first king to rule without the people's authorization. They say his mother was a slave woman from Tarquinii. His father was one of the king's dependents. He grew up *among* the servants and waited on the king at meals. The spark of talent already shining in the boy didn't go unnoticed. He was so quick at every task and in every conversation. Tarquin's own children were then very young. He loved Servius so much that people generally thought Servius was his son. He took great care to teach him all the skills he'd learned himself, following the Greeks' most refined educational practices.”\n\nSECTION 38\n\n“But Tarquinius was murdered in a plot by Ancus’s sons. As I said before, Servius began to reign without an order from the people, but with the citizens’ goodwill and consent. They were falsely told that Tarquinius was alive but ill from his wound. Meanwhile Servius, dressed as king, had administered justice and freed people from debt with his own money. Through many friendly acts he had persuaded people that he was administering justice on Tarquinius’s orders. He did not put his case in the senators’ hands. Instead, once Tarquinius was buried, he himself asked the people to decide about him. When they authorized him to reign, he brought before the curiae a law authorizing his command. First, he avenged the wrongs done by the Etruscans by going to war. As a result, when […]\n\n[…]”\n\nSECTION 39\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\n“[…] eighteen with the highest property assessment. Then he separated a large cavalry force from the whole population. He divided the remaining people into five classes, separating older men from younger men. He made their voting power unequal, so the rich controlled the vote, not the mass of people. He made sure the largest number didn't have the most power. Every state must always keep to that rule. If you didn't know this arrangement, I'd explain it. As it is, you see how the numbers work. The †cavalry voting groups, with the six voting units, and the first class make eighty-nine groups, counting the extra group assigned to carpenters for the city's most essential needs. Only eight of the remaining 104 groups needed to join them. That settled the vote of the whole people. The much larger number of people in the other ninety-six groups weren't shut out of voting. That would have been arrogant. But they didn't have too much power, either. That would have been dangerous.”\n\nSECTION 40\n\n“He was careful even about the words and names he used. He called the wealthy assidui, from paying a copper coin. Those who reported no more than fifteen hundred copper coins in property, or nothing at all apart from their own person, he called proletarians. This suggested that what was expected from them was, so to speak, offspring—in other words, a new generation for the state. At that time, just one of those ninety-six centuries had more citizens on its rolls than almost the entire first class. So no one was denied the right to vote, but the person with the greatest stake in the state's being in the best possible condition had the most voting power. What's more, for the unarmed reservists, trumpet players, horn players, and proletarians […] […]\n\nSECTION 41\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\n(Non. p. 342M) “A state has the best constitution when it is a balanced combination of those three forms—royal, aristocratic, and popular—and does not stir up a savage, brutal spirit by punishment.”\n\nSECTION 42\n\n[…] “sixty-five years older, because it was founded thirty-nine years before the first Olympiad. And Lycurgus, who lived so long ago, saw much the same things. So I think we shared this balance and this three-part form of government with those peoples. But there is something special about our state, something that could not be better. If I can, I will explain it more closely. It is something you will not find in any other state. The elements I have described so far were combined in this community, in Sparta, and in Carthage, but they were not balanced in any way.”\n\nSECTION 43\n\n“In a state where one man holds permanent power, especially royal power, the royal position is still supreme. There may be a senate, as there was at Rome under the kings, and at Sparta under Lycurgus’s laws. The people may even have some rights, as they did under our kings. But such a state cannot fail to be a monarchy or to be called one. This form of government is particularly liable to change for this reason: one man’s failings can very easily push it over into the most destructive form. Monarchy itself is not only free from blame; I am not sure it should not be ranked far above the other simple forms, if I approved of any simple form of government. But that holds only as long as it keeps its proper character. Its character is this: the safety, fair treatment, and peace of the citizens are directed by the permanent power, justice, and complete wisdom of one man. A people living under a king lacks many things altogether, especially freedom. Freedom does not mean having a just master, but having none […]\n\n[…]”\n\nSECTION 44\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\n“[…] they endured. For some time, good luck helped that unjust and harsh master succeed. He defeated all Latium in war. He captured Suessa Pometia, a rich city stocked with supplies. An enormous haul of gold and silver made him wealthy. By building the temple on the Capitol, he fulfilled his father's promise. He also founded colonies. Following the customs of the people he came from, he sent magnificent gifts to Apollo at Delphi. They were like first offerings from the spoils.”\n\nSECTION 45\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\n“Now that cycle will begin to turn. Learn to recognize its natural movement and course from the start. The central task of political understanding—the subject of this whole discussion—is to see the paths and turns that states take. When you know the direction each situation is taking, you can hold it back or head it off. The king I am speaking of was, to begin with, stained by the murder of an excellent king and was not sound of mind. He himself feared the severest punishment for his crime, and wanted others to fear him. Then, supported by his victories and riches, he became wildly arrogant. He could control neither his own behavior nor the desires of his own people.”\n\nSECTION 46\n\n“So his elder son raped Lucretia, Tricipitinus's daughter and Collatinus's wife. This respected woman of noble birth punished herself with death for that outrage. Then Lucius Brutus, a man of outstanding intelligence and courage, freed his fellow citizens from that unjust burden of cruel slavery. Although he held no public office, he took responsibility for the whole state. He was the first in this city to teach this lesson: when citizens' freedom needs defending, nobody is merely a private person. At his urging and under his leadership, the citizens rose up. Lucretia's father and relatives stirred them with this fresh complaint. They also remembered Tarquin's arrogance and the many wrongs he and his sons had done. They ordered the king himself, his children, and the Tarquin family into exile.”\n\nSECTION 47\n\nCHAPTER 26\n\n“So do you see how a king became a master, and how one man’s failings changed a form of government from good to the worst of all? This master of the people is what the Greeks call a tyrant. By ‘king’ they mean someone who looks after the people like a parent, and keeps those in his care in the best possible living conditions. As I said, it is certainly a good form of government. But it leans toward, and is almost ready to fall into, the most destructive condition.”\n\nSECTION 48\n\n“As soon as this king turns toward more unjust domination, he immediately becomes a tyrant. No living creature can be imagined more disgusting, more repulsive, or more hated by gods and humans. Though he has a human shape, the brutality of his behavior outdoes the most savage beasts. Who could rightly call someone human if he wants no legal bond or human fellowship with his fellow citizens, or indeed with the whole human race? But we will have a more suitable place to discuss this sort of person when the subject itself calls on us to speak against those who sought absolute power even after the community had been freed.”\n\nSECTION 49\n\nCHAPTER 27\n\n“So there you have the first appearance of a tyrant. The Greeks chose this name for an unjust king. Our people, however, called everyone a king who alone held permanent power over a people. So Spurius Cassius, Marcus Manlius, and Spurius Maelius were said to have wanted to seize royal power, and recently *Tiberius Gracchus* […]\n\n[…]”\n\nSECTION 50\n\nCHAPTER 28\n\n[…] “Lycurgus called them ‘elders’ at Sparta. There were certainly too few of them, twenty-eight. He wanted them to have the final say in deliberation, while the king held supreme command. Our people followed and translated that same usage. What he called elders they named a senate, as we have said Romulus had already done after choosing the fathers. Still, the king’s strength, power, and title stand out above the rest. Give the people some power too, as Lycurgus and Romulus did. You will not satisfy their desire for freedom. You will inflame it, since you have only given them a chance to taste it. There will certainly always be the fear that the king will turn unjust, as happens very often. So the people’s well-being is insecure when, as I said before, it depends on one man’s wishes or character.”\n\nSECTION 51\n\nCHAPTER 29\n\n“So let's first find this form, shape, and origin of a tyrant in the state Romulus founded after taking the auspices. Not in the one Socrates pictured for himself in that three-part conversation, as Plato recorded it fully. Let's see how Tarquin overturned this whole form of king-led government. He hadn't gained any new power. He simply used the power he had unjustly. Against him, set another man: good and wise, who understands the community's interests and honor. He acts as a guardian and manager of the state. Let's call anyone who leads and guides the state by that name. Make sure you recognize this man. *He* can protect the community through his judgment and work. Since this name is still less familiar in our language, and we will often have to *discuss* this kind of man in the rest of our talk […]\n\n[…]”\n\nSECTION 52\n\nCHAPTER 30\n\n“[…] sought and created a state people could wish for rather than expect. He made it as small as possible. It wasn't a state that could exist, but one that showed how government works. If I can only manage it, I'll use the same principles he recognized. But I'll work with a vast republic, not a state's shadow and image. I'll try to point out the cause of every public good and evil, as if touching it with a little rod. Those 240 years of kingship had passed—a little longer, roughly, counting the intervals between kings—and Tarquin had been expelled. The Roman people then hated the title of king as deeply as they had missed Romulus after his death—or rather, his departure. Back then, they couldn't bear being without a king. After Tarquin's expulsion, they couldn't bear even hearing the title. Here, an opportunity, when […] […]”\n\nSECTION 53fr\n\nCHAPTER 31\n\n(Non. 526M) “So that excellent constitution of Romulus, after it had stood firm for about 220 years […]”\n\nSECTION 53\n\n[…] “that law was entirely repealed. It was in this spirit that our ancestors expelled the innocent Collatinus, suspected because of his family ties, and the other Tarquinii because their name gave offense. In the same spirit, Publius Valerius was the first to order the rods of office lowered when he began to address a public meeting. He also moved his house below the Velia. He had begun building higher up on the Velia, on the very site where King Tullus had lived, and realized that this was making the people suspicious. His greatest act as ‘Publicola,’ the people’s friend, was to bring a law before the people—the first passed in the assembly of the centuries—forbidding any magistrate to kill or flog a Roman citizen against his appeal.”\n\nSECTION 54\n\n“The pontiffs' books show that appeals were possible even against kings. Our augurs' books indicate this too. Several laws in the Twelve Tables also show that appeals were allowed against any judgment or penalty. Tradition says the ten men who wrote the laws were appointed without a right of appeal. That should sufficiently show that other magistrates weren't exempt from appeals. Lucius Valerius Potitus and Marcus Horatius Barbatus wisely supported the people's interests to promote harmony. Their law as consuls forbade appointing any magistrate without a right of appeal. As you know, there are three Porcian laws, passed by three members of the Porcius family. They added nothing new except penalties for breaking the law.”\n\nSECTION 55\n\n“Once Publicola had passed that law on appeals, he immediately ordered the axes removed from the bundles of rods. The next day he appointed Spurius Lucretius to fill the vacant consulship alongside him. Since Lucretius was older, Publicola ordered his own lictors to go over to him. He first established the practice of having lictors lead each consul in alternate months. A free people should have no more symbols of authority than they had under kings. As I see it, this was no ordinary man. By giving the people a measured amount of freedom, he more easily maintained the leading men's authority. I'm not going over these ancient, forgotten things for no reason. I'm identifying examples of people and events from famous lives and times. These will guide the rest of my discussion.”\n\nSECTION 56\n\nCHAPTER 32\n\n“At that time, then, the senate kept the state in this condition: the people were free, but few things were done by the people. Most were done by the senate’s authority, following established practice and custom. The consuls’ power was limited to a year, but in its nature and legal scope it was royal. There was also a firmly maintained rule that did more than almost anything to preserve the nobles’ power: decisions in the people’s assemblies were not valid unless the fathers had given their authoritative approval. In this same period, about ten years after the first consuls, a dictator was appointed, Titus Larcius. This was seen as a new kind of command, very close to royal power. Still, the leading men held everything under their very great authority, with the people giving way. And in those days very brave men holding supreme command, dictators and consuls, achieved great things in war.”\n\nSECTION 57\n\nCHAPTER 33\n\nBut the very nature of things made it inevitable that the people, once freed from kings, would claim a little more power for themselves. They got it not long afterward, around the sixteenth year, when Postumus Cominius and Spurius Cassius were consuls. Sound judgment may have been missing in this, but the very nature of governments often gets the better of sound judgment. Remember what I said at the beginning: unless a state has this even balance of rights, duties, and burdens, with enough power for the officials, enough authority for the council of leading citizens, and enough freedom for the people, this stable political order can't be preserved.\n\nSECTION 58\n\n“For when debt threw the community into turmoil, the common people occupied first the Sacred Mount and then the Aventine. Even Lycurgus’s system did not keep the Greeks under those restraints. At Sparta, too, during Theopompus’s reign, five officials called ephors were established; in Crete there were ten called ‘cosmoi,’ or directors. Just as our tribunes of the people were set against the consuls’ command, these were set against royal power.”\n\nSECTION 59\n\nCHAPTER 34\n\n†There may have been some way for our ancestors to deal with that debt problem. Such a remedy hadn't escaped Solon of Athens not long before, or our own Senate some time afterward, when one man's lust led to the ending of all the citizens' debt bondage, and people stopped being bound for debt after that. Whenever the common people, weakened by expenses during a public disaster, could no longer keep going, some relief and remedy has always been sought for people in that position, for everyone's safety. Neglecting that policy then gave the people grounds, once two tribunes of the plebs had been elected in an uprising, to reduce the Senate's power and authority. Still, its authority remained strong and considerable, with the wisest and bravest men protecting the state both with weapons and with their judgment. Their authority was especially strong because, although they stood far above everyone else in honor, they indulged in pleasures less and generally weren't any richer. Each man's worth in public life was all the more appreciated because in private matters they took great care to help individual citizens with their work, advice, and money.\n\nSECTION 60\n\nCHAPTER 35\n\n“Under this form of government, Spurius Cassius was plotting to seize the kingship. He enjoyed enormous popularity, but a quaestor brought charges against him. As you've heard, his father said he had discovered his son's guilt, and Cassius was put to death while the people stood aside. About 54 years after the first consuls, the consuls Spurius Tarpeius and Aulus Aternius passed another welcome law. They put it through the centuriate assembly, covering fines and deposits in lawsuits. Twenty years later, the consuls Gaius Julius and Publius Papirius passed a law setting low values for livestock paid as fines. This followed the censors Lucius Papirius and Publius Pinarius taking large numbers of cattle from private owners into state hands through fines.”\n\nSECTION 61\n\nCHAPTER 36\n\n“But some years earlier, the senate held supreme authority, and the people accepted and obeyed it. A plan was agreed on: both the consuls and the people's tribunes would resign. Ten men would then be appointed with the greatest power, without a right of appeal. They would hold supreme command and write the laws. They drew up ten tables of laws with great fairness and good judgment. Then they appointed another group of ten for the following year. Their honesty and fairness didn't earn the same praise. Still, one member of that group, Gaius Julius, deserves exceptional praise for this action. He said a dead man had been dug up in the bedroom of a nobleman, Lucius Sestius, in his presence. Julius had supreme power because he was one of the ten, with no appeal against his decisions. Even so, he demanded bail guarantors from Sestius. He said he wouldn't disregard that excellent law which protected a Roman citizen's life. It forbade decisions in capital cases anywhere except the centuriate assembly.”\n\nSECTION 62\n\nCHAPTER 37\n\n“A third year of the ten men’s rule followed. The same men remained in office and would not appoint replacements. I have already said several times that this condition of government could not last, because it was not balanced fairly among all the community’s ranks. The entire state was in the hands of the leading men. Ten men of the highest birth headed it, with no tribunes of the people to oppose them, no other magistrates alongside them, and no appeal to the people left against execution and flogging.”\n\nSECTION 63\n\n“So their injustice suddenly brought enormous turmoil and a complete change of government. They added two tables of unfair laws. One utterly inhumane law forbade marriage between commoners and patricians—a right usually granted even between separate peoples. The Canuleian vote of the commoners later repealed it. They used all their power to rule the people as they pleased, harshly and greedily. The following story is certainly well known and recorded in many written accounts. A certain Decimus Verginius killed his unmarried daughter with his own hand in the forum because one of those ten men couldn't control his lust. Grieving, he fled to the army, which was then on Mount Algidus. The soldiers abandoned the war they were fighting. They *occupied under arms* first the Sacred Mount, as had happened earlier in a similar situation, and then the Aventine […] […]”\n\nSECTION 63fr\n\n(Philarg., Serv. G. 3.125) “after Lucius Quinctius had been appointed dictator.\n\n[…] I think our ancestors approved most strongly and preserved most wisely.”\n\nSECTION 64\n\nCHAPTER 38\n\nWhen Scipio had finished, everyone waited silently for him to continue. Then Tubero said, “Since these older men aren't asking you for anything more, Africanus, you'll hear what I find missing in your discussion.” “Certainly,” Scipio said, “and gladly.” Then Tubero said, “You seem to have praised our republic. But Laelius asked you about government in general, not about ours. And your discussion still hasn't taught me something. What education, customs, or laws can we use to establish or preserve this very republic you're praising?”\n\nSECTION 65\n\nCHAPTER 39\n\nAt this Africanus said, “Tubero, I think we will soon have a better opportunity to discuss how to establish and preserve communities. As for the best form of government, I thought I had answered Laelius’s question well enough. First, I identified three acceptable types of community and the same number of destructive ones opposed to them. None of them on its own was the best. What surpassed each of them was a balanced mixture of the first three.”\n\nSECTION 66\n\n“My use of our own community as an example did not help to define the best form of government. That could have been done without an example. Its purpose was to let us see, in a very great community in actual life, what our reasoning and discussion were describing. But if you are looking for the best form itself, without an example from any people, we must use nature as our model, since, as for this picture of a city and a people, you […]\n\n[…]”\n\nSECTION 67\n\nCHAPTER 40\n\n“[…] who I've been looking for all this time and want to get to.” Laelius: “Maybe you're looking for a man with good judgment?” Then he said, “That's exactly who I mean.” Laelius: “You have a fine choice among the very people here. You could even start with yourself.” Then Scipio said, “If only the Senate as a whole had its fair share of such people! But still, a man who sits on a huge, wild beast, as we often saw in Africa, knows what he's doing. He holds the beast in check and guides it wherever he wants. He turns that wild animal with a light signal, †not force.” Laelius: “I know him, and I often saw him when I was your deputy.” Scipio: “So that Indian or Carthaginian controls just one beast, and a tame one used to human ways at that. But what's hidden in human souls—the part of the soul called the mind—doesn't rein in and tame just one beast, or one that's easy to subdue, if it ever manages it at all, which it very rarely can. For that fierce one too must be kept in check […] […]\n\nSECTION 68\n\nCHAPTER 41\n\n(Non. 300M) “which feeds on blood and delights so much in every act of cruelty that even people’s painful deaths can hardly satisfy it.\n\n(Non. 491M) but to someone eager, seeking, lustful, and wallowing in pleasures.\n\n(Non. 72M) and fourth, anxiety, inclined to mourning, grieving, and constantly troubling itself.\n\n(Non. 228M) but to be crushed by distress, to be crushed by misery or cast down by fear and cowardice.\n\n(Non. 292M) Like an untrained driver, he is dragged from the chariot, trampled, torn apart, and crushed.”\n\nSECTION 69\n\nCHAPTER 42\n\n[…] “could be said.” Then Laelius said, “I now see what duty and task you are assigning to that man I have been waiting for.” Africanus said, “Almost this one alone, of course—for practically all the others are contained in it: never to stop watching and examining himself, to invite others to follow his example, and through the brilliance of his character and life to offer himself to the citizens like a mirror. On stringed instruments and pipes, and in singing and voices themselves, a certain harmony must be kept among the different notes. Trained ears cannot stand it when this is changed or out of tune. By balancing very different voices, that harmony is nevertheless made unified and consistent. In the same way a community, reasonably balanced out of the highest, lowest, and intermediate ranks, like notes, through the agreement\n\n(August. C.D. 2.21) of very different people makes a harmony. What musicians call harmony in singing is agreement in a community. It is the strongest and best bond of security in every state, and it cannot possibly exist without justice.”\n\nSECTION 70\n\nCHAPTER 44\n\n[…] to be full of justice. Then Scipio: “I agree. And I tell you, we should consider nothing said about the state so far. Nor can we go further until we've established two things. It's false that we can't run a state without injustice. More importantly, it's absolutely true that we can't run one without the greatest justice. But let's stop here for today, if you agree. Let's leave the rest for tomorrow; there's still quite a lot.” Everyone agreed, and the discussion ended for that day.\n\n### Book 3\n\nSECTION 1\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n[…] and vehicles to make up for slowness. And when that same intelligence found people making rough, confused noises with unformed sounds, it broke those sounds up and divided them into distinct parts. It attached words to things like labels, and bound people who'd previously been separate to one another with the very pleasant bond of conversation. Similar intelligence also invented a few symbols to mark and represent all the sounds of the voice, which had seemed endless. These could preserve conversations with people who weren't there, expressions of people's wishes, and records of past events. Then came number, something both necessary for life and uniquely unchanging and eternal. It was also the first thing to prompt us to look up at the sky, to study the movements of the stars with a purpose, and, by counting nights and days […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n[…] whose minds rose higher and could either accomplish or think of something worthy of the gods’ gift, as I said before. So let us regard those who discuss how to live as great men, as they are. Let them be learned men and teachers of truth and virtue. But let us also acknowledge this particular subject, political understanding and the training of peoples. Whether it was invented by men experienced in the changing affairs of states or studied by those thinkers in their leisure and writings, it is certainly not to be looked down on. When applied to good natural abilities, it produces, as it has already done very often, an almost unbelievable and divine excellence.\n\nSECTION 5\n\nBut suppose someone thought he should add education and a fuller knowledge of things to the mental resources he'd gained from nature and society's institutions, as the very men taking part in the discussion in these books did. Everyone ought to rank such men above all others. What could be finer than combining the handling of great affairs and practical experience with the study and knowledge of those arts? Or can anyone imagine a more fully developed man than P. Scipio, C. Laelius, or L. Philus? They added this teaching from abroad, which came from Socrates, to their native customs and ancestral traditions, so they wouldn't leave out anything that could bring distinguished men the highest praise.\n\nSECTION 6\n\nThat's why I think anyone who wanted and was able to equip himself with both our ancestors' institutions and learning has achieved everything needed to earn praise. But if one of these two paths to wisdom has to be chosen, then even if someone thinks a quiet life spent on the best studies and arts is happier, a life in public service is certainly more praiseworthy and more distinguished. That way of life brings honor to the greatest men, such as M’. Curius,\nWho no one could defeat with iron or gold,\nor […]\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n“[…] was wisdom. Still, the two approaches differed in this respect: those men nurtured the beginnings supplied by nature through words and systematic study, while these men did it through institutions and laws. This one state has produced more men who, if not wise—since those thinkers use that name so narrowly—certainly deserve the highest praise, because they put wise men's teachings and discoveries into practice. And think how many states there are, and have been, that deserve praise! Since establishing a government that can last takes by far the greatest judgment in the world, what a huge number of outstanding men we'd find if we counted just one for each state! And if we wanted to survey in our minds Italy's Latium, or its Sabine or Volscian people, or Samnium, Etruria, or that Greater Greece, and then the Assyrians, the Persians, the Carthaginians, or these […]\n\n“[…]\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\n“[…].” And Philus: “What a splendid case you're handing me, asking me to take up the defense of wrongdoing!” “Oh yes,” Laelius said, “you should worry that if you repeat the usual arguments against justice, people might think you actually believe them! After all, you're practically the one model of old-fashioned honesty and good faith, and everyone knows your habit of arguing both sides, because you think that's the easiest way to find the truth.” And Philus: “All right, then,” he said, “I'll do what you want and knowingly get myself dirty. Gold miners don't think they should refuse to do that. So when we're looking for justice, something worth far more than all the gold in the world, we certainly shouldn't shrink from any trouble. And I wish that, just as I'll be using someone else's arguments, I could use someone else's mouth too! As it is, L. Furius Philus has to say what Carneades, a Greek who was used to using words however it suited him […] […]\n\nSECTION 9\n\n(Non. 263M) “so that you can answer Carneades, who often uses clever quibbling to make a mockery of the strongest cases.\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n(Non. 373M) “Justice looks outward, projects itself entirely outward, and stands out.\n\n(Non. 299M) This virtue, more than the others, reaches out and extends itself entirely toward other people’s interests.”\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n“[…] could both discover it and defend it, while the other filled four really large books with justice itself. I never expected anything great or grand from Chrysippus. He has his own way of talking, weighing everything by the force of words rather than the weight of facts. It was up to those heroes to lift this virtue from where it lay and place it on that divine throne, not far from wisdom—the one virtue, if it exists at all, that's supremely generous and openhanded, loves everyone else more than itself, and was born for others rather than itself.\n\nSECTION 13\n\n“They certainly did not lack willingness. What other reason or purpose did they have for writing? Nor did they lack talent, in which they surpassed everyone. But their subject defeated both their willingness and their resources. The justice we are investigating is something belonging to a particular community; there is no natural justice. If there were, the same things would be just and unjust for everyone, just as the same things are hot and cold, bitter and sweet.”\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n“As things are, suppose someone could, in Pacuvius’s words, ‘ride in a chariot of winged snakes,’ and look down on and survey many different peoples and cities. First he would see, among that exceptionally uncorrupted Egyptian people, whose writings preserve the memory of so many centuries and events, that a certain ox, whom the Egyptians call Apis, is considered a god. Among them, many other monsters and beasts of every kind are also included among the gods. Then he would see in Greece, as among us, magnificent shrines consecrated to images in human form. The Persians considered these an offense against the gods. Xerxes is said to have ordered the burning of the Athenians’ temples for this reason alone: he thought it wrong to shut up within walls the gods whose home was this whole universe.”\n\nSECTION 15\n\n“Later, both Philip, who planned a war against the Persians, and Alexander, who fought it, gave this reason for going to war: they wanted to avenge Greece's temples. The Greeks had decided not even to rebuild them, so that later generations would always have visible proof of the Persians' crime. How many peoples—the Taurians on the Black Sea, the Gauls, the Carthaginians—and rulers like Busiris, king of Egypt, have thought that sacrificing human beings was a religious duty and especially pleasing to the immortal gods! Ways of life differ so much that the Cretans and Aetolians think robbery is honorable, while the Spartans kept saying that every field a spear could reach belonged to them. The Athenians even used to swear publicly that all land producing olives or grain was theirs. The Gauls think it's shameful to get grain by working with their hands, so they harvest other people's fields with weapons in hand;\n\nSECTION 16\n\n“and we're such just people: we won't let the peoples beyond the Alps plant olives or vines, so that our own olive groves and vineyards will be worth more. When we do that, we're said to act wisely, but not justly. That should show you that wisdom and fairness don't agree. And Lycurgus, who devised those excellent laws and that exceptionally fair legal system, assigned the rich men's fields to the common people to farm as slaves.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\n“If I wanted to describe the different kinds of law, institutions, customs, and practices, I could show not only how they vary among so many peoples, but how they've changed a thousand times within a single city, even this very one. Our legal expert here, Manilius, now says that one set of rules applies to women's legacies and inheritances, whereas he used to say something different when he was young, before the Voconian law had been passed. That very law, introduced for men's benefit, is full of injustice toward women. Why shouldn't a woman own money? Why can she be heir to a Vestal Virgin, but not to her own mother? And if a limit had to be set on women's wealth, why could Publius Crassus's daughter, if she were her father's only child, have a hundred million without breaking the law, while mine couldn't have three million […]\n\n“[…]\n\nSECTION 18\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\n“[…] had laid down laws for us, and everyone would follow the same ones, and the same people wouldn't follow different ones at different times. But I ask: if it's the mark of a just person and a good man to obey laws, which laws? Whatever laws happen to exist? But virtue doesn't admit inconsistency, and nature doesn't allow variation. And what gives laws their authority is punishment, not our justice. So law has nothing natural about it. It follows that people aren't just by nature either. Or do they say that laws vary, but that good men naturally follow justice as it really is, not as people think it is? For, they say, what makes a man good and just is giving each person what they deserve.\n\nSECTION 19\n\n“So, first of all, will we give anything to the animals that cannot speak? Not ordinary men but great and learned ones, Pythagoras and Empedocles, declare that all living creatures share one legal standing. They cry out that punishments which can never be paid off hang over those who have harmed an animal. So it is a crime to harm a beast, and anyone willing to commit that crime […] […]”\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\n“[…] Everyone who has power over a people's life and death is a tyrant, but they prefer to be called kings, taking their title from Jupiter the Best. When certain men control the state because of wealth, birth, or some other source of power, that's a faction, but they're called ‘the best men.’ If the people have the most power and everything is governed by their decisions, that's called freedom, but it's really people doing whatever they please. But when everyone fears everyone else—one person fears another, and one class fears another—then, because no one trusts their own strength, a sort of agreement is made between the people and the powerful. This produces the mixed form of government that Scipio praised. For justice is born not from nature or choice, but from weakness. There are three options: to do wrong without suffering it, to do wrong and suffer it, or to do neither. The best is to do wrong, if you can get away with it. Second best is neither to do it nor suffer it. The most miserable option is to fight it out constantly, now doing wrong and now suffering it. So those who to attain that first option […]\n\n“[…]\n\nSECTION 24fr\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\n(Non. 125M,318M,534M) “For when he was asked what criminal impulse had led him to make the sea unsafe with a single pirate ship, he said, ‘The same one that makes you do it to the whole world.’\n\nSECTION 24\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\n[…] all […] Wisdom tells us to increase our power, expand our wealth, extend our borders (after all, how could that praise carved on the monuments of the greatest generals—“He extended the empire’s borders”—have arisen unless something belonging to someone else had been added?), rule over as many people as possible, enjoy pleasures, be powerful, reign as kings, and act as masters. Justice, on the other hand, tells us to spare everyone, look out for the human race, give everyone what belongs to them, and leave sacred property, public property, and other people’s property alone. So what do you get if you follow wisdom? Wealth, authority, power, honors, commands, and kingdoms, for individuals or whole peoples. But since we’re talking about the state, actions taken by states stand out more. And since the principle of justice is the same in both cases, I think we should talk about a people’s wisdom. To leave other peoples aside for now, this people of ours, whose history Africanus traced from its roots in yesterday’s discussion, and whose rule now holds the whole world—has it grown from the smallest of all to the greatest through justice or wisdom? […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 25\n\n[…] except the Arcadians and Athenians, who, I suppose, feared that justice might someday issue this prohibition. So they made up the story that they had sprung from the earth, like these little mice from the fields.\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\nThe first answer usually given to this comes from people who are far from bad at arguing. Their authority in this case is all the greater because, when discussing a good man, whom we want to be open and straightforward, they don’t argue with cunning, trickery, or bad faith. They say that a wise man isn’t good because goodness and justice please him of their own accord and for their own sake, but because good men live free of fear, worry, anxiety, and danger. Bad men, by contrast, always have some prick of conscience lodged in their minds; trials and punishments are always before their eyes. No advantage, no reward gained through injustice is great enough to make it worth always being afraid, always thinking some punishment is close at hand, always thinking it’s hanging over you, losses […]\n\n[…]\n\nSECTION 27fr\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 5.12.5) “I ask you to suppose there are two men. One is an excellent man, perfectly fair, completely just, and exceptionally trustworthy. The other is remarkably wicked and shameless. Suppose the community is so mistaken that it thinks the good man is wicked, criminal, and evil, but considers the thoroughly bad man perfectly honest and trustworthy. Because all the citizens hold this opinion, the good man is harassed, seized, and finally physically attacked; his eyes are gouged out; he is convicted, chained, burned, driven into exile, and left in need,”\n\nSECTION 27\n\nfinally he seems to everyone, with very good reason, the most miserable of men, while that wicked man, by contrast, is praised, respected, and loved by everyone; every honor, every command, all wealth, and every kind of resource from every quarter are handed to him. In short, everyone judges him the best of men and the one who most deserves every blessing. Who, then, would be so crazy as to hesitate over which of the two he’d rather be?\n\nSECTION 28\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\nWhat’s true of individuals is also true of peoples: no state is so foolish that it wouldn’t rather rule unjustly than be enslaved justly. And I don’t need to look far for an example. When I was consul, I investigated the treaty with Numantia, with you sitting on my council. Who didn’t know that Q. Pompeius had made a treaty, and that Mancinus was in the same position? One, a very good man, even spoke in favor of the bill I brought forward on the Senate’s instructions; the other defended himself fiercely. If we’re looking for decency, honesty, and good faith, Mancinus showed them. If we’re looking for calculation, judgment, and shrewdness, Pompeius comes out ahead. Which […] […]\n\nSECTION 32\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\n(Gel. N.A. 1.22.8) I wouldn’t object, Laelius, except that I think these men want you to take some part in this discussion of ours, and I’m eager for that myself, especially since you said yourself yesterday that you’d even give us more than we needed. But that really can’t happen. We all ask you not to let us down.\n\n(Non. 323M, 324M) but our young people certainly shouldn’t listen to him. If he really thinks what he says, he’s a foul man; if he thinks something else, as I’d prefer, his speech is still monstrous.\n\nSECTION 33\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 6.8.6) True law is sound reason in line with nature, reaching everyone, consistent and everlasting. Its commands call us to duty, and its prohibitions keep us from wrongdoing. Its commands and prohibitions are never wasted on good people, but they don’t move bad people. It’s wrong to pass a law that overrides this one. No part of it may be repealed, and it can’t be abolished altogether. Neither the Senate nor the people can release us from this law, and we don’t need to look for anyone else to explain or interpret it. There won’t be one law in Rome and another in Athens, one now and another in the future. Instead, one everlasting, unchanging law will bind all peoples at all times. There will be one god who is, so to speak, the teacher and ruler we all share. He is this law’s author, judge, and lawgiver. Anyone who doesn’t obey him will be running away from himself. By rejecting human nature, he’ll suffer the worst penalties in that very act, even if he escapes all the other things people call punishments.\n\nSECTION 34fr\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\n(August. C.D. 22.6) “that the best state undertakes no war except to keep faith or protect its safety.”\n\nSECTION 34\n\nBut individuals often escape the penalties that even the greatest fools can feel—poverty, exile, imprisonment, beatings—when death comes quickly. For states, though, death itself is a punishment, even though it seems to free individuals from punishment. A state ought to be set up so that it lasts forever. So no state’s destruction is natural, as a human being’s death is: for a person, death is not only unavoidable but very often something to wish for. But when a state is wiped out, destroyed, and extinguished, it’s rather like—to compare small things with great ones—this whole universe dying and collapsing.\n\nSECTION 35afr\n\n(Isid. Orig. 18.1.2sq.) Unjust wars are those begun without a reason. No war can be just unless it’s fought to avenge a wrong or drive back enemies.\n\n(Isid. Orig. 18.1.2sq.) No war is considered just unless notice has been given, war has been declared, and a demand has been made for the return of what’s been taken.\n\nSECTION 35bfr\n\n(Non. 498M) “Our people, however, have now gained control of the entire world by defending their allies.”\n\nSECTION 36\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\n(August. C.D. 19.21) “Why, then, does a god command a human being, the mind the body, and reason desire and the other faulty parts of the soul?”\n\nSECTION 37\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\n(August. c. Iul. 4.12.61) Don't we see that nature itself has given the best people authority, to the great benefit of the weak? Why, then, does God rule human beings, the mind rule the body, and reason rule desire, anger, and the other flawed parts of that same mind?\n\n(August. c. Iul. 4.12.61) But we need to recognize differences in both ruling and serving. The mind is said to rule the body, and it's also said to rule desire. But it rules the body as a king rules his citizens or a parent his children, while it rules desire as a master rules slaves, restraining and breaking it. In the same way, kings, commanders, officials, fathers, and peoples exercise authority over citizens and allies as the mind does over the body. Masters, on the other hand, drive their slaves hard, just as the best part of the mind—that is, wisdom—does the flawed and weak parts of that same mind: desires, bursts of anger, and other emotional disturbances.\n\n(August. C.D. 14.23) that the body's limbs are ruled like sons because they obey so readily, while the flawed parts of the mind are restrained like slaves under a harsher rule?\n\n(Non. 109M) There is a kind of unjust slavery, when people belong to someone else even though they could belong to themselves. But when people serve […]\n\nSECTION 39\n\nCHAPTER 27\n\n(Prisc. GL 2.399K) “In these cases I agree that a justice full of anxiety and danger is not for a wise person.”\n\nSECTION 40\n\nCHAPTER 28\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 5.18.4) “Goodness certainly wants honor, and goodness has no other reward […]. Yet it accepts honor readily and does not demand it harshly […]. What wealth will you put before a man like this? What commands? What kingdoms? He thinks those things belong to the human sphere, but considers his own good qualities divine […]. But if everyone is ungrateful, or many are envious, or powerful enemies rob goodness of its rewards, it certainly finds comfort in many things. Above all, its own worth sustains it.\n\n(August. C.D. 22.4) “Their bodies were not raised into heaven. Nature would not allow something made of earth to remain anywhere but on earth.\n\n(Non. 125M) “Never did the bravest men, of courage, of tireless effort, of endurance […]\n\n(Non. 132M) “Of course Fabricius lacked the chance to enjoy Pyrrhus’s generosity, or Curius the Samnites’ riches!\n\n(Non. 522M,68M) “Our friend Cato used to visit Curius’s hearth when he came to his own place in Sabine territory, as he himself used to tell us. Sitting beside that hearth, Curius had refused gifts from the Samnites, once his enemies and by then his clients.”\n\nSECTION 41\n\nCHAPTER 29\n\n“[…] Asia, Tiberius Gracchus, persisted in the case of citizens, but ignored the rights and treaties of our allies and the Latin peoples. If this practice and this disregard for restraint begin to spread more widely, and turn our rule from justice to force, those who so far obey us willingly will be held in check by fear. Although we at our age have almost finished our watch, I still worry about our descendants and about the lasting life of our republic. It could have continued forever if people had lived by our ancestors’ institutions and customs.”\n\nSECTION 42\n\nCHAPTER 30\n\nWhen Laelius had said this, everyone present showed that they'd thoroughly enjoyed what he'd said. But Scipio, more than anyone, seemed swept up in joy. “You've often argued many cases so well, Laelius,” he said, “that in my eyes, beside you, not only Servius Galba, our colleague, whom you ranked above everyone else as long as he lived, but not even any of the Athenian speakers, whether for charm […].”\n\n[…]\n\n(Non. 262M) that he'd lacked two things needed to speak to the public and in court: confidence and a voice […]\n\n(Sch. Iuvenal. Sat. 6.480) The bull bellowed with the groans of the men shut inside it.\n\nSECTION 43\n\nCHAPTER 31\n\n“[…] bring back. So who would call that the people's business—that is, a state—when everyone was crushed by one man's cruelty, and there was no common bond of law and no group united by agreement and partnership, which is what a people is? The same goes for Syracuse. That famous city, which Timaeus calls the largest of the Greek cities and the most beautiful of all, had a citadel worth seeing, harbors extending into the town's bays and right up to the city's edges, wide streets, colonnades, temples, and walls. But none of that made it a state while Dionysius controlled it. Nothing belonged to the people, and the people themselves belonged to one man. So where there's a tyrant, we must say there's not a defective state, as I was saying yesterday, but—as our reasoning now forces us to say—simply no state at all.”\n\nSECTION 44\n\nCHAPTER 32\n\n“That's very well put,” Laelius said. “Now I can see where your argument is going.” Scipio: “So you see that a state entirely under a faction's control can't truly be called a state either.” Laelius: “That's exactly what I think.” Scipio: “And you're absolutely right. What kind of state did the Athenians have when those thirty men ruled their city so unjustly after that great Peloponnesian War? Did the city's old glory, the town's splendid appearance, its theater, gymnasiums, colonnades, famous gateways, citadel, the wonderful works of Phidias, or that magnificent Piraeus make it a state?” “Not at all,” Laelius said, “since it didn't belong to the people.” Scipio: “What about when the ten commissioners at Rome ruled without any right of appeal in that third year, when freedom itself had lost its legal claim?” Laelius: “Nothing belonged to the people. In fact, the people acted to recover what was theirs.”\n\nSECTION 45\n\nCHAPTER 33\n\nScipio: “I now come to the third kind, where there may seem to be difficulties. Everything is said to be done through the people and to be under their control. The crowd executes anyone it wants. People do, seize, hold, and squander whatever they like. Can you then deny, Laelius, that this is a republic? Everything belongs to the people, and our definition of a republic is the people’s common concern.” Then Laelius said, “In fact, there is no state I would more readily deny is a republic than one wholly […] It was not accepted that there was a republic at Syracuse, Agrigentum, or Athens when tyrants ruled, or here when the ten commissioners ruled. I cannot see why the name ‘republic’ should apply any more when a crowd rules. First of all, Scipio, as you defined it so well, I do not consider a group a people unless it is held together by agreement about law. That gathering is just as much a tyrant as a single person would be. It is even more repulsive, because no beast is more savage than this crowd that imitates the appearance and name of a people. And it is surely inconsistent, when the law places mad people’s property under their relatives’ control, because their own already […]”\n\nSECTION 46\n\nCHAPTER 34\n\n“[…] can be said, why that should be a republic and the people’s common concern, as was said about kingship.” “Much more so, in fact,” said Mummius. “A king is more like a slave owner, because he is just one man. But nothing could be happier than a republic in which several good men hold power. Still, I prefer even kingship to a people free to rule itself. That is the third and most defective kind of republic you still have left.”\n\nSECTION 47\n\nCHAPTER 35\n\nHere Scipio said, “I recognize that familiar attitude of yours, Spurius, opposed to popular government. And although one can put up with it more calmly than you usually do, I agree that none of these three forms deserves less support. But I don't agree with you that rule by the best men is better than a king. If wisdom is what runs the state, what difference does it make whether it's in one person or several? But this way of arguing leads us into a mistake. When people are called ‘the best men,’ nothing can seem preferable. What could anyone imagine that's better than the best? But when a king is mentioned, an unjust king also comes to mind. Yet right now, as we examine government under a king in itself, we're not talking about an unjust king. So think of King Romulus, or Pompilius, or Tullius. Perhaps you won't feel so dissatisfied with that kind of government.”\n\nSECTION 48\n\nMummius: “Then what praise do you leave for a republic governed by the people?” Scipio: “Well, Spurius, do you think the Rhodians have no republic? We were there together recently.” Mummius: “I certainly think they do, and it deserves very little criticism.” Scipio: “You are right. But if you remember, the same men all served at one time as ordinary citizens, at another as senators. They took turns, with specified months for doing the people’s work and others for doing the senate’s. They were paid to attend in both roles. Both in the theater and in the senate house, the same men judged capital cases and all the others. The senate had as much power and standing as the mass of the people […] […]”\n\n### Book 3 — Fragments of Uncertain Position\n\nSECTION 1\n\n(Non. 301M) So there is something restless in each person that either jumps with pleasure or breaks down under distress.\n\nSECTION 2\n\n(Non. 364M) But as they themselves †or if test the mind—I am—they see what they think they will do.\n\nSECTION 3\n\n(Non. 431M) The Carthaginians were the first to bring greed, extravagant spending, and an endless appetite for everything into Greece through their trade and merchandise.\n\nSECTION 4\n\n(Sch. Iuvenal. Sat. 10.362) That Sardanapallus, whose faults were far uglier than his very name.\n\nSECTION 5\n\n(Prisc. GL 2.255K) unless someone wants to turn the whole of Athos into a monument. For what Athos or Olympus is big enough?\n\n### Book 4 — Surviving Fragments\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n(Non. 500M) And the very same mind that sees what's coming remembers what's past.\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 5.11.2) After all, everyone would rather die than be changed into the shape of some animal, even if they'd keep a human mind. So how much more miserable it is to have a savage mind in a human shape! To me, at least, it's worse by as much as the mind is better than the body.\n\n(August. c. Iul. 5.12.59) that he didn't think what was good for a ram was the same as what was good for P. Africanus.\n\n(Non. 234M) and that, by getting in the way, it too creates shadow and night, suited both to counting days and to resting from work.\n\n(Non. 343M) And when the earth has opened itself up in the fall to conceive crops, relaxed in winter to †conceive them, and in summer's ripeness softened some things and scorched others.\n\n(Non. 159M) when they put shepherds in charge of the flocks.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n“[…] favor. How conveniently the orders, age groups, property classes, and cavalry have been arranged! Senators also have votes in the cavalry. Far too many people now foolishly want to take away this advantage. They are looking for a new handout through some decree of the people requiring the return of the horses.”\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n“Now consider how wisely everything else has been provided for that partnership among citizens in living happily and honorably. That is the main reason for coming together. A republic should secure it for people, partly through institutions and in other ways through laws. First, they did not want the education of freeborn children to have any fixed system laid down by law, publicly prescribed, or uniform for everyone. The Greeks spent much effort on this without success. It is the only point on which our guest-friend Polybius criticizes our institutions for neglect. For […]\n\nSECTION 3(fr1)\n\n(Serv. A. 5.546) “that young men entering military service used to be given supervisors to guide them during their first year.\n\nSECTION 3(fr2)\n\n(Non. 20M) “not just as at Sparta, where boys learn to rob and steal.\n\nSECTION 3(fr3)\n\n(Serv. A. 10.325) “that young men were disgraced if they had no lovers.”\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n[…] a boy who's reached puberty to be stripped naked. So they've traced what you might call the foundations of modesty far back. But how misguided the training of young people in the gymnasiums is! How undisciplined that military service of the young recruits! How loose and unchecked the fondling and love affairs! I'll leave aside the people of Elis and Thebes, where lust in relationships with freeborn boys is openly permitted and given free rein. Even the Spartans, who allow everything in love with young men except actual intercourse, put a very thin wall around what they forbid. They allow embracing and lying in bed together, with cloaks between them. Here Laelius said, “I see perfectly well, Scipio, that in these Greek practices you criticize, you'd rather wrestle with the most famous peoples than with your own Plato, whom you don't even lay a hand on, especially since […]”\n\nSECTION 5\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\n(Non. 362M) “And our Plato even more than Lycurgus: he orders absolutely everything to be shared, so that no citizen can call anything his own or his private property.\n\n(Non. 308M) “For my part, to the very same place where he sends Homer, crowned with garlands and soaked in perfumes, out of that city he imagines for himself.”\n\nSECTION 6\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\n(Non. 24M) A censor's judgment brings the person condemned little more than a blush. So, since this whole judgment concerns only a person's name, that censure was called ignominia, “disgrace.”\n\n(Non. 423M) It's said that the state at first shuddered †at their severity.\n\n(Non. 499M) Nor should an overseer be put in charge of women, as is commonly done among the Greeks. Instead, there should be a censor who teaches men to control their wives.\n\n(Non. 5M) Training people to feel shame has such great power: all women go without wine.\n\n(Non. 306M) And if any woman had a bad reputation, her relatives wouldn't offer her a kiss.\n\n(Non. 23M) So petulantia, “pushiness,” gets its name from petere, “going after something,” and procacitas, “insolence,” from procari, that is, “demanding.”\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n(Non. 24M) I don't want the same people to be both the world's commander and its customs collector. I think thrift is the best source of income, both in private households and in the state. Even the word fides, “good faith,” seems to me to get its name from doing what you say.\n\n(Non. 194M) that in a prominent citizen, a man of noble birth, flattery, fawning, courting favor—†my—to be signs of a shallow character.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n(Non. 430Msq.) I admire the elegance not just of the ideas but of the words too. “If they quarrel,” it says. A dispute between people who mean each other well, not a lawsuit between enemies, is called a quarrel […]. So the law treats neighbors as quarreling with one another, not as going to court.\n\n(Non. 174M) the same limits for people's concerns and their lives; so, under the pontiffs' law, the sacredness of burial.\n\n(Non. 293M) that they put innocent men to death for leaving unburied people they hadn't been able to recover from the sea because the storm was so violent.\n\n(Non. 519M) and in this dispute I didn't take the people's side, but the side of good men.\n\n(Prisc. GL 3.76K) It's not easy to stand up to a strong people if you give them no rights, or too few.\n\n(Non. 469M) For whom indeed I wish I had predicted truly, faithfully, †abounding.\n\nSECTION 9\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n(August. C.D. 2.14ext.) When these men are joined by the people's shouting and approval, as though from some great and wise teacher, what darkness they spread, what fears they bring on, what desires they set on fire!\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\n(August. C.D. 2.13) Since they considered acting and the whole theater disgraceful, they wanted that class of people not only to lack the standing of other citizens but also to be removed from their tribe by a censor's mark of disgrace.\n\nSECTION 11\n\n(August. C.D. 2.9) Comedies could never have won approval in theaters for their shameful acts if everyday behavior hadn't allowed it. […] Who did comedy not touch—or rather, who didn't it harass? Who did it spare? Granted, it attacked bad popular leaders who stirred up unrest in the state: Cleon, Cleophon, Hyperbolus. Let's allow that, though it's better for a censor than a poet to brand such citizens. But Pericles had already led his state for many years with the greatest authority, at home and at war. Having him attacked in verse and having those verses performed onstage was no more fitting than if our own Plautus or Naevius had wanted to insult Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius had wanted to insult Marcus Cato […]\n\nSECTION 12\n\n() Our Twelve Tables, by contrast, made very few acts punishable by death, but they thought this one too should carry that penalty: if anyone chanted abuse or composed a song that brought disgrace or shame on someone else. Quite right: our lives should be open to the judgments of magistrates and to hearings under the law, not to poets' inventions. And we shouldn't have to listen to abuse unless we're allowed to reply and defend ourselves in court. […] that the ancient Romans disapproved of any living person being either praised or criticized onstage.\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\n(August. C.D. 2.11)\n\n“The Athenian Aeschines, an extremely eloquent man, entered politics after regularly acting in tragedies as a young man. The Athenians also often sent Aristodemus, another tragic actor, as their envoy to Philip on the most important matters of peace and war.”\n\n### Book 5 — Surviving Fragments\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n(August. C.D. 2.21,Non. 417M)\n\n(Ennius)\nThe Roman state stands on ancient customs and men,\n\nThat line, both for its brevity and for its truth, seems to me like something he spoke as an oracle. For neither the men, unless the state had had those customs, nor the customs, unless those men had led it, could have founded or held together for so long a state so great and ruling so far and wide. So before our time, our ancestors' way of life itself called on outstanding men, and outstanding men kept up the old way of life and our ancestors' institutions.\n\nSECTION 2(fr)\n\nBut our generation inherited the state like a wonderful painting that was already fading with age. It not only failed to renew it with the same colors it had had, but (August. C.D. 2.21, Non. 417M) didn't even take care to preserve at least its shape and, so to speak, its outer outlines. What's left of the ancient customs on which he said the Roman state stood? We see they've faded so completely from memory that they're not only no longer followed; they're no longer even known. And what can I say about the men? The customs themselves died out for lack of men. For this terrible evil we must not only give an account; in a way, we must also plead our case like defendants facing the death penalty. Because of our own faults, not some accident, we keep the state in name, but in reality we've long since lost it.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nthat nothing suits a king so well as explaining what's fair, which included interpreting the law. Private citizens used to ask kings for legal rulings. For these reasons, broad, rich crop fields, orchards, and pastures were marked out as royal property to be farmed without any work or effort from the kings, so that no worries about their private business would draw them away from the people's affairs. Nor did any private citizen decide disputes or serve as an arbitrator in a lawsuit: everything was settled by royal judgments. And I think our Numa followed this old practice of the Greek kings most closely. The others, though they also carried out this duty, spent much of their time fighting wars and dealing with the laws of war. But Numa's long peace was the mother of law and religion in this city. He had also written laws, which you know still exist—something characteristic of the citizen we're talking about […]\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n(Non. 497M)\n\nbut still, just as a good head of a household needs some practical experience of farming, building, and keeping accounts.\n\nSECTION 5\n\n“[…] will it bother you to learn about roots and seeds?” Speaker M: “Not at all, as long as there's work to show for it.” Speaker S: “Do you think that's a farm manager's field of study?” Speaker M: “Certainly not, since farming so often runs short of labor.” Speaker S: “So, just as a farm manager knows the nature of the soil and an accountant knows how to read and write, while both turn from enjoying knowledge to getting useful work done, our leader here should certainly have studied law and legislation. Above all, he should have looked closely at their sources. But he shouldn't tie himself up constantly giving legal opinions, reading, and writing. That way he can, so to speak, keep the state's accounts and, in a sense, manage its farm. He should know the highest principles of justice inside out—no one can be just without that—and know civil law too, but as a ship's pilot knows the stars and a doctor knows natural science. Both use that knowledge in their own work without letting it get in the way of their duties. But this man will see to this […]”\n\nSECTION 6\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n[…] states, where the best people seek praise and honor and avoid shame and disgrace. What frightens them isn't so much fear and the punishment laid down by law as the sense of shame that nature has given people—a kind of fear of criticism they deserve. That leader of states strengthened this through people's beliefs and developed it fully through institutions and education, so that shame would keep citizens from wrongdoing no less than fear. These points concern praise, and they could have been discussed more broadly and fully.\n\nSECTION 7\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\n“As for life and the practice of living, the system has been arranged through lawful marriage, legitimate children, and the sacred homes of the household gods and family Lares. Everyone was to enjoy both shared benefits and their own. Without a good republic, people could not live well, and nothing could be happier than a well-organized state. So I often find it very strange what such a great […] could be”\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\n(Cic. Att. 8.11.1) “Just as the helmsman’s goal is a successful voyage, the doctor’s health, and the commander’s victory, so the goal set for this governor of the republic is a happy life for the citizens: secure in resources, rich in supplies, great in glory, and honorable through goodness. I want him to accomplish this work, the greatest and best among human beings.\n\n(August. epist. 104.7) “And what about the fact that your own writings praise a ruler of his country who looks after the people’s interests rather than their wishes?”\n\nSECTION 9\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n(August. C.D. 5.13) “that he should be sustained by glory […] that their ancestors had done many wonderful and distinguished things through their desire for glory.\n\n(P.Pictav. Bibl. Lugd. 22.824) “that the state’s leading man should be sustained by glory, and that the republic would stand as long as everyone showed honor to its leading man.\n\n(Non. 233M) “Then through goodness, hard work, and diligence he would maintain the character of a very great man, unless his excessively bold and headstrong nature carried him in some direction I cannot say […]\n\n(Non. 201M) “that quality is called courage, which includes greatness of spirit and a great disregard for death and pain.”\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n(Non. 337M) “Marcellus as energetic and combative, Maximus as thoughtful and slow to act.\n\n(Char. GL 1.139K) “contained within the world […]\n\n(Non. 37M) “so that he could share the troubles of his old age with your families.”\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n(Gel. N.A. 12.2.6sq.) just as Menelaus the Spartan had a certain charm in his pleasant way of speaking […] he should make a habit of keeping his speeches short.\n\n(Amm. Marc. 30.4.10) Since nothing in the state ought to be as free from corruption as a vote or a verdict, I don't understand why someone who corrupts them with money deserves punishment, while someone who does it through eloquence even wins praise. It seems to me that someone who corrupts a judge with a speech does more harm than someone who does it with money. No one can corrupt a judge who has a sense of shame with money, but they can by speaking.\n\n(Non. 521M) When Scipio had said this, Mummius strongly approving; for he was steeped in hatred †of which orators […]\n\n(C. anon. Verg. G. I, 2.348 Bandin.) then excellent seeds had been scattered in the best crop.\n\n### Book 6 — Surviving Fragments\n\nSECTION 1\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n(Non. 42M) So you expect this leader's full practical wisdom. Its very name comes from looking ahead.\n\n(Non. 256M) That's why this citizen must prepare himself. He must always be armed against whatever threatens the state's stability.\n\n(Non. 25M, Serv. A. 1.149) This split among citizens is called “sedition,” because people go off into separate groups.\n\n(Non. 519M) In civil conflict, good citizens count for more than large numbers. So I think citizens should be weighed, not counted.\n\n(Non. 424M) Desires are harsh masters of our thoughts, forcing and ordering us to pursue things without limit. They can never be fulfilled or satisfied in any way. So they drive people they've set alight with their temptations into every kind of crime.\n\n(Non. 492M) who has crushed his violence and that wild, unbridled savagery.\n\nSECTION 2\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n(Gel. N.A. 7.16.11,Non. 290M) That was greater still because the two colleagues were in the same situation. Yet people didn't hate them equally. Their love for Gracchus even softened their hatred of Claudius.\n\n(Non. 409M) Who †number of the nobles and leaders offered, he with words and of his own gravity left that stern sound, full of dignity.\n\n(Non. 501M) so that, as that writer says, a thousand men went down to the forum daily wearing cloaks dyed with shellfish purple.\n\n(Non. 517M) among these, as you remember, a crowd of utterly fickle people gathered and pooled their money, and a funeral was suddenly arranged.\n\n(Non. 512M,Prisc. GL 3.70K) Our ancestors wanted marriages to be firmly established.\n\n(Non. 398M) Laelius's speech, which we all have at hand: how much the immortal gods like the priests' ladles and, as he writes, Samian cups.\n\nSECTION 3\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n(Eulog. somn. Scip. 401Or.) […] who had come back to life after being placed on a funeral pyre, and had told many secrets about the underworld […] these things said about the soul's immortality and heaven were *not* inventions of dreaming philosophers. Nor were they unbelievable stories that the Epicureans laugh at. They were the conjectures of thoughtful people.\n\nSECTION 4\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\n(August. C.D. 22.28) that he had been joking rather than having meant to say †that someone affirms this to be true.\n\nSECTION 8\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\n(Macr. Sat. 1.4.2sq.) “But although, for the wise, the very awareness of their outstanding deeds is the greatest reward for goodness, that godlike goodness still seeks more lasting and fresher rewards than statues fixed in lead or triumphs with withering laurels.” “What exactly are those rewards?” said Laelius. Then Scipio said, “Allow me, since we are now in our third day of holiday […]”\n\n### Book 6 — Dream of Scipio\n\nSECTION 9\n\n#### Dream\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n“When I came to Africa as a military tribune in the fourth legion under the consul Manius Manilius, as you know, nothing mattered more to me than meeting King Masinissa. With good reason, he was a very close friend of our family. When I came to him, the old man embraced me and wept. After a while he looked up at the sky and said, ‘I thank you, supreme Sun, and you other heavenly beings, because before I leave this life I see Publius Cornelius Scipio in my kingdom and under this roof. His very name gives me new life. The memory of that best and most invincible of men never leaves my mind.’ Then I asked him about his kingdom, and he asked me about our republic. We spent the rest of the day in a long exchange of conversation.”\n\nSECTION 10\n\nCHAPTER 10\n\nAfterward, we were entertained in royal style and talked late into the night. The old man talked about nothing but Africanus. He remembered everything Africanus had done, and everything he'd said. Then we went off to bed. I was tired from traveling and had stayed awake late into the night. Sleep took hold of me more deeply than usual. Then Africanus appeared to me. I think this came from our conversation. Our thoughts and conversations often produce something similar in our sleep. Ennius writes of such a dream about Homer. Clearly, he'd very often thought and talked about Homer while awake. Africanus's appearance was more familiar to me from his portrait than from the man himself. When I recognized him, I shuddered. But he said, “Be brave, Scipio, and stop being afraid. Remember what I'm going to say.”\n\nSECTION 11\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\nCHAPTER 11\n\n“‘Do you see that city? I forced it to obey the Roman people, but it is renewing its old wars and cannot keep quiet.’ He was pointing out Carthage from a high place full of stars, bright and clear. ‘You are now coming to attack it as almost an ordinary soldier. Within these two years, you will destroy it as consul. Then you will earn for yourself the name you so far have inherited from us. After destroying Carthage, celebrating a triumph, serving as censor, and visiting Egypt, Syria, Asia, and Greece as an envoy, you will be elected consul again in your absence. You will finish a very great war and wipe out Numantia. But when you have ridden in your chariot up to the Capitol, you will find the republic thrown into disorder by the plans of my grandson.’”\n\nSECTION 12\n\nCHAPTER 12\n\n“At that point, Africanus, you must show your country the light of your courage, talent, and judgment. But I see fate's road branching in two at that time. Your life will complete eight times seven turns and returns of the sun. Each of these two numbers is considered perfect, for different reasons. Together, through nature's cycle, they'll reach the total fate has set for you. Then the whole state will turn to you alone and to your name. The senate will look to you. All good men will look to you. The allies will look to you. The Latins will look to you. You alone will be the person the state's safety rests on. In short, you must put the state in order as dictator—if you escape your relatives' wicked hands.” At this, Laelius cried out, and the others groaned loudly. Scipio smiled gently and said, “Shh! Please don't wake me from my dream. Listen a little longer to the rest.”\n\nSECTION 13\n\nCHAPTER 13\n\nCHAPTER 3\n\n“But to make you more eager to protect the state, Africanus, know this. Everyone who has saved, helped, or enlarged their country has a fixed place set aside in heaven. There they enjoy happiness forever. Nothing done on earth pleases the supreme god who rules the whole universe more than human gatherings joined together by law. These are what we call states. Their rulers and protectors came from here and return here.”\n\nSECTION 14\n\nCHAPTER 14\n\n“At this, although I was terrified—not so much by fear of death as by the thought of a plot by my own relatives—I still asked whether he himself, my father Paulus, and the others we thought dead were alive. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘Those who have flown out of the bonds of their bodies, as if from a prison, are the ones who are alive. What you call life is really death. Look! Don’t you see your father Paulus coming toward you?’ When I saw him, I burst into tears. But he embraced and kissed me, and told me not to cry.”\n\nSECTION 15\n\nCHAPTER 15\n\nAs soon as I held back my tears and could speak, I said, “Please, my father, so holy and so good, since this is life, as I hear Africanus say, why stay on earth? Why don't I hurry to join you here?” “That's not how it works,” he said. “The god who owns this whole temple you see must release you from your body's prison. Until then, you can't enter here. People were born with this duty: to guard that globe. You see it in the middle of this temple; it's called earth. Their souls came from those everlasting fires you call constellations and stars. Round and spherical, these fires have divine minds within them. They complete their circles and orbits at an amazing speed. So you, Publius, and all dutiful people must keep your souls imprisoned in your bodies. You mustn't leave human life without permission from the one who gave you your souls. Otherwise, you may seem to have deserted the human task the god assigned you.”\n\nSECTION 16\n\nCHAPTER 16\n\n“But, Scipio, like your grandfather here, and like me, your father, practice justice and devotion. You owe great devotion to your parents and relatives, but the greatest to your country. That way of life is the road to heaven and to this gathering of those who've already lived their lives. Freed from their bodies, they live in that place you see”—it was a circle shining with dazzling whiteness among the flames—“which you call the Milky Way, a name you took from the Greeks.” As I looked out from there, everything else seemed splendid and wonderful. There were stars we've never seen from down here, and all the heavenly bodies were of sizes we'd never imagined. The smallest of them was the one farthest from heaven and closest to earth, shining with borrowed light. The globes of the stars were easily bigger than the earth. The earth itself now looked so small to me that I felt disappointed in our empire, which covers what amounts to a pinpoint on it.\n\nSECTION 17\n\nCHAPTER 17\n\nCHAPTER 4\n\nAs I looked at it more closely, Africanus said, “Tell me, how long will your mind stay fixed on the ground? Don't you see what temples you've entered? Everything is joined together in nine rings, or rather spheres. One is the outermost sphere, the heavens, which encloses all the rest. It is the supreme god himself, restraining and containing the others. Fixed in it are the stars' endless circling paths. Beneath it are seven spheres, turning backward, opposite to the heavens. One of these spheres belongs to the star people on earth call Saturn. Next is the bright light called Jupiter, which brings people help and good fortune. Then comes the red one you call Mars, which terrifies the earth. Below that, the sun occupies roughly the middle region. It leads, rules, and directs all the other lights. It is the world's mind and keeps it in balance. It is so large that its light illuminates and fills everything. The paths of Venus and Mercury follow it like companions. The moon circles in the lowest sphere, lit by the sun's rays. Below it, everything dies and passes away, except the souls the gods gave to the human race. Everything above the moon lasts forever. Earth is the ninth sphere, at the center and lowest of all. It doesn't move. All heavy things fall toward it under their own weight.”\n\nSECTION 18\n\nCHAPTER 18\n\nCHAPTER 5\n\nI stared at all this in amazement. When I recovered, I said, “What's this? What is this loud, sweet sound that fills my ears?” He said, “The push and movement of these very spheres produce it. The intervals between its notes are unequal, but fixed in exact proportion. It blends high notes with low ones to produce varied, balanced harmonies. Such great movements can't take place in silence. By nature, one extreme produces low sounds, the other high ones. So the highest, star-filled sphere of heaven spins faster and makes a high, piercing sound. This lowest sphere, the moon's, makes the deepest sound. Earth is the ninth, always still in one position, occupying the universe's center. Those eight moving spheres produce seven sounds, each separated by an interval. Two of the spheres have the same pitch. This number ties almost everything together. Learned people copied this music with strings and singing. In doing so, they opened a path back here for themselves. Others did the same by using their outstanding minds to pursue divine studies during human life.”\n\nSECTION 19\n\n“People's ears have been filled with this sound and have grown deaf to it. No sense of yours is duller. It's like the people who live where the Nile plunges from very high mountains at the places called Catadupa: the sheer volume of the sound leaves them unable to hear. The sound here, made by the extremely rapid turning of the whole universe, is so loud that human ears can't take it in. In the same way, you can't look straight at the sun: its rays overwhelm your eyesight and your power to see.” Though I was amazed by all this, I still kept turning my eyes back toward the earth.\n\nSECTION 20\n\nCHAPTER 19\n\nCHAPTER 6\n\nThen Africanus said, “I can see you're still looking at humanity's home and dwelling place. If it looks small to you, as it really is, always look at these things in heaven and look down on human affairs. How widely can people ever talk about you? What fame can you gain that's worth wanting? You see that people live only in a few small, widely scattered places on earth. Even within those inhabited patches, huge empty stretches lie between them. The people living on earth aren't just cut off from one another so that nothing can pass from one group to another. Some also stand at an angle to you, some crosswise to you, and some even directly opposite you. You certainly can't expect any fame from them.\n\nSECTION 21\n\nCHAPTER 20\n\n“You can also see that same earth ringed and surrounded by what look like bands. You see that two of them, the farthest apart from one another and lying right under the sky’s poles, one on either side, are frozen stiff with frost. But the largest band, in the middle, is scorched by the sun’s heat. Two bands can be lived in. The southern one, where people stand with their feet facing yours, has nothing to do with your part of the human race. As for this other one, which lies under the north wind and which you live in, look how small a part of it you occupy. All the land you live on, narrow at its tips and wider at its sides, is just a small island surrounded by that sea which you on earth call the Atlantic, which you call the Great Sea, which you call Ocean. Yet you can see how small it is, despite its great name.\n\nSECTION 22\n\n“‘Even from these inhabited and familiar lands, could your name or the name of any of us cross these Caucasus mountains you see, or swim across that Ganges? Who will hear your name in the other distant regions of sunrise or sunset, of north or south? Once these places are cut out, you can certainly see how cramped the space is in which your glory wants to spread. And those who do talk about us—how long will they talk?’”\n\nSECTION 23\n\nCHAPTER 21\n\nCHAPTER 7\n\n“‘Even if that succession of future generations wanted to pass on to their descendants the praises of each of us that they had received from their fathers, floods and burnings of lands must occur at fixed times. Because of these, we cannot achieve glory that is even long-lasting, much less eternal. Besides, what difference does it make that people born later will talk about you, when people born earlier never did,\n\nSECTION 24\n\nCHAPTER 22\n\nwho were no fewer and certainly better men, especially since no one can be remembered for one year, even by those who can hear our name? People commonly measure a year only by the return of the sun, that is, of a single star. But when all the stars have returned to the place they once set out from and, after long intervals, have restored the same arrangement of the whole sky, then that can truly be called the revolving year. I hardly dare say how many human generations that year contains. For just as the sun once seemed to people to fail and go out when Romulus's soul entered these very regions of the sky, so, when the sun is eclipsed again in the same part of the sky at the same time, count the year as complete, with all the constellations and stars returned to their starting point. You should know that not yet a twentieth of that year has turned.”\n\nSECTION 25\n\nCHAPTER 23\n\n“So if you’ve given up hope of returning to this place, where great and outstanding men have everything, what, after all, is that fame among people worth? It can barely last for a tiny part of a single year. So if you want to look high up and keep your eyes on this resting place and eternal home, don’t give yourself over to what the crowd says or pin your hopes for what you do on human rewards. Goodness itself must draw you toward true honor through its own appeal. What other people say about you is their concern. Still, they will talk. But all that talk is confined within the narrow boundaries of the lands you see. It has never lasted forever for anyone. It’s buried when people die and wiped out when later generations forget.”\n\nSECTION 26\n\nCHAPTER 24\n\nCHAPTER 8\n\nWhen he’d said this, I said, “Yes, Africanus. Since a kind of path to heaven’s entrance lies open to those who’ve served their country well, even though I’ve followed in my father’s footsteps and yours since childhood and haven’t fallen short of the honor you’ve earned, now that such a great reward has been set before me, I’ll work with much greater care.” And he said: “Yes, keep working. And understand this: you’re not mortal; this body is. You aren’t the person that outward shape presents. Each person is their mind, not the shape you can point to with a finger. So know that you’re a god, if a god is a being that lives, that feels, that remembers, that looks ahead, that rules and guides and moves the body it’s in charge of, just as the supreme god rules and guides and moves this universe. And just as the eternal god moves a universe that’s partly mortal, so the everlasting soul moves a frail body.\n\nSECTION 27\n\nCHAPTER 25\n\n“‘For what is always moving is eternal. But something that gives movement to another thing, and is itself moved by something else, must stop living when its movement ends. Only what moves itself never stops moving, because it never abandons itself. In fact, it is also the source and starting point of movement for everything else that moves. A starting point has no origin. Everything arises from a starting point, but it cannot itself be born from anything else. If it were produced from something else, it would not be a starting point. And if it is never born, it never dies either. If a starting point were destroyed, it could not itself be reborn from anything else or create anything else from itself, since everything must arise from a starting point. It follows that the starting point of movement is what moves itself. It cannot be born or die. Otherwise all heaven and all nature would have to collapse and come to a standstill, and never gain any force to set them moving again from an initial impulse.’”\n\nSECTION 28\n\nCHAPTER 26\n\nCHAPTER 9\n\n“So whatever moves itself clearly lasts forever. Who, then, can deny that souls have this nature? Anything moved by an outside push is lifeless. A living thing moves through its own inner motion. This is the soul's special nature and power. If, of all things, it alone moves itself, it certainly was never born and lasts forever.”\n\nSECTION 29\n\n“Exercise your soul in the best pursuits! And the best concerns are those for your country’s safety. Stirred and exercised by them, the soul will fly more quickly to this resting place, its home. And it’ll do that sooner if, while it’s still shut inside the body, it reaches beyond it and, by reflecting on what lies outside, draws itself away from the body as much as it can. For the souls of those who’ve given themselves over to bodily pleasures and made themselves their servants, as it were, and who’ve broken the laws of gods and humans at the urging of desires that obey those pleasures, tumble around the earth itself after slipping free of their bodies. They don’t return to this place until they’ve been driven about for many ages.” He left; I woke up.\n\n### Fragments of Uncertain Book\n\nSECTION 1\n\n(Non. 321M) and nature itself would not merely invite this but compel it.\n\nSECTION 2\n\n(Diom. GL 1.339K) strive\n\nSECTION 3\n\n(Diom. GL 1.374K) they excel\n\nSECTION 5\n\n(Serv. A. 6.877) “Fannius, praising a boy is a difficult task. What is to be praised is not his achievement but his promise.”\n\nSECTION 6\n\n(Lactant. Div. Inst. 1.18.11)\n“If anyone is allowed to rise to the regions of the heavenly beings,\n\nHeaven’s greatest gate stands open to me alone,”\n[…] “It certainly does, Africanus, for that same gate also stood open to Hercules.”\n\nSECTION 7\n\n(Sen. Ep. 108.32sq.) in fact […] himself […] Since his interruption has called us back just as we were reaching the end […].\nFor whom no citizen or enemy\n\nCould offer an equal return for his deeds.\n\nSECTION 8\n\n(Anon. Parad. Koronne,Bielowsk) Those who win people’s good opinion through feasts, dinner parties, and lavish spending plainly show that they lack the true honor that comes from goodness and dignity.\n\nSECTION 9\n\n(Cod. ms. note 458 p. 82bib. Ossol.) the strings should be shaken not with force and violence, but gently and calmly […]","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/cicero-republic/translations/trn_cicero_republic_plain.txt"}],"retex_markdown_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/cicero-republic/retex.md"}}