Gaius Laelius
historical figure · 3 works · 3 mentions · 8 anchored passages
Laelius
in the texts
On the Commonwealth
Scipio's close friend and elder statesman, prompts the shift of discussion toward the commonwealth.
for there was in their friendship a kind of law between them, that on campaign Laelius should honour Africanus as a god, for his surpassing glory in war, and that at home Scipio in turn should attend upon Laelius, who was the elder, as upon a parent.
Wherefore, that this holiday of ours may best be spent on discourses most useful to the commonwealth, let us ask Scipio to unfold what he judges to be the best constitution of a state.
"I do not dissent from you, Laelius, but I ask what you understand the greater things to be.
On the Nature of the Gods
Roman augur and statesman, praised by Cotta as a wise authority on religion whose oration he prefers to Stoic arguments
and I have Gaius Laelius, an augur and at the same time a wise man, whom I would rather hear speaking of religion in that noble speech of his than any chief of the Stoics.
For, since the discourse has led me to this place, I will show that I have learned better things about worshipping the immortal gods, by the pontifical law and the custom of our forefathers, from these little ladles which Numa left us, of which Laelius speaks in that golden little oration, than from the reasonings of the Stoics.
Tusculan Disputations
Roman statesman, held one consulship despite electoral defeat, held up as exemplar of a wise and content man
Do you think the one consulship of Gaius Laelius was like that — and that too with a repulse (if, when a wise and good man, such as he was, is passed over by the votes, it is the people rather than he that bears the repulse) — but yet, which would you rather, if it were in your power, to be once consul, like Laelius, or four times, like Cinna?
Which, at last, was the happier — Gaius Marius then, when he shared the glory of the Cimbrian victory with his colleague Catulus, almost a second Laelius (for I count this man most like him) — or, when, victor in the civil war, angry, to Catulus' kinsmen deprecating, he answered not once but often:
Laelius, if he had touched anyone with his finger, would have paid the penalty;