Book 5

[Augustine, City of God, 2.21; Nonius, 417M] "On ancient manners and on men the Roman state stands," says Ennius—a verse which, whether for its brevity or for its truth, seems to me to have been uttered by him as though from some oracle. For neither would the men, had not the state been so charactered, nor the manners, had not these men presided, have been able either to found or so long to maintain a commonwealth so great and ruling so far and wide. And so, before our own memory, both the ancestral custom itself supplied excellent men, and excellent men kept the old custom and the institutions of their forefathers. But our own age, having received the commonwealth like a splendid picture now fading with age, has not only neglected to renew it with the same colours it had, but has not even taken care to preserve at least its outline and, as it were, its last lineaments. For what remains of those ancient manners on which he said the Roman state stood? which we see so worn away by oblivion that they are not only not cultivated, but already unknown. And what shall I say of the men? For the manners themselves have perished through the want of men, of which so great an evil we must not only render account, but in some sort plead our cause as though on a capital charge. For it is by our own vices, not by any chance, that we retain the commonwealth in word, but in fact have long since lost it.

. . . that nothing is so kingly as the unfolding of fairness, in which lay the interpretation of right—the right which private men were wont to seek from kings; and for these causes wide and fertile lands of plough-land and orchard and pasture were marked out, to be the king's and to be cultivated without the king's toil and labour, that no care of private business might draw him away from the affairs of the peoples. Nor indeed was any private man an arbiter or judge of a suit, but all things were settled by the king's judgments. And to me at least our Numa seems most of all to have kept this old custom of the kings of Greece. For the rest, although they too discharged this office, yet for a great part waged wars and tended the rights of war; but that long peace of Numa was the mother of right and of religion to this city—he who was even a writer of laws, which you know are extant, a thing indeed proper to that citizen of whom we are treating . . .

[Nonius, 497M] But yet, as a good father of a family must have some practice of cultivating, of building, of reckoning . . .

. . . to come to know roots and seeds—will that offend you?" Manilius: "Not at all, if only there be need of it." Scipio: "Do you think this is the bailiff's business?" Manilius: "By no means; since the tilling of the field very often lacks labour." Scipio: "Then, as the bailiff knows the nature of the field, the steward knows letters, but each turns himself from the delight of knowledge to the usefulness of accomplishing—so let this our director have studied, by all means, the knowledge of right and of the laws, and have at least looked through into their springs, but let him not hinder himself by answering questions and reading and writing, that he may be able, as it were, to manage the commonwealth and in it to act as a kind of bailiff—a man most skilled in the highest law, without which no one can be just, not unacquainted with the civil law, but only so far as the steersman is acquainted with the stars, the physician with natural things; for each uses those to his own art, yet does not hinder himself from his own office. But this man will see . . .

. . . in those states in which the best men seek praise and honour and flee disgrace and dishonour. Nor indeed are they so much terrified by fear and the penalty which is appointed by the laws, as by that sense of shame which nature has given to man, as it were a kind of dread of a censure not unjust. This the director of commonwealths increased by men's opinions, and perfected by institutions and disciplines, so that shame should keep the citizen from misdeeds no less than fear. And these things indeed pertain to praise, which could have been said more widely and more fully.

But for the life and the conduct of living, that principle has been ordained in lawful marriages, in legitimate children, in the holy abodes of the household gods and of the family Lares, that all might use both the common advantages and their own; nor can one live well without a good commonwealth, nor can anything be happier than a well-constituted state. Wherefore it is wont to seem most strange to me, what is the so great learning . . .

[Cicero, Letters to Atticus, 8.11.1] For as to the steersman a prosperous voyage, to the physician health, to the commander victory, so to this guide of the commonwealth the happy life of the citizens is set as his goal—that it be firm in resources, rich in means, ample in glory, honourable in virtue; for of this work, the greatest and best among men, I wish him to be the accomplisher.

[Augustine, City of God, 5.13] . . . that he must be nourished by glory . . . that their ancestors did many wondrous and splendid things through the desire of glory.

[Nonius, 337M] Marcellus, as keen and warlike; Maximus, as deliberate and slow.

[Gellius, Attic Nights, 12.2.6sq.] . . . as Menelaus the Laconian had a certain sweet-spoken pleasantness . . . let him cultivate brevity in speaking.