Book 4

1.pr. ON MODERATION. I shall pass over to the most wholesome part of the soul, moderation, which does not allow our minds to be carried astray by the onset of unrestraint and rashness. Whence it comes that it is free from the bite of censure and most richly endowed with the gaining of praise. Let it therefore recognize its own effects in illustrious men.

1.1. And, to begin from the cradles of the highest honour, Publius Valerius, who by his reverence for the people's majesty gained the name of Publicola, when, the kings having been driven out, he saw the whole force of their power and all its insignia transferred to himself under the title of the consulship, by moderation reduced the invidious eminence of the magistracy to a tolerable condition by emptying the fasces of their axes and lowering them before the people in the assembly. He also diminished their number by half, of his own accord taking Spurius Lucretius as colleague, to whom, because he was older, he ordered the fasces to be carried first. He also passed a law in the centuriate assembly that no magistrate should be willing to scourge or put to death a Roman citizen against the right of appeal. Thus, that the condition of the state might be more free, he gradually demolished his own power. And what of the fact that he pulled down his own house, because, set in a higher place, it seemed to have the appearance of a citadel—did he not come off as much higher in glory as he was lower in his dwelling?

1.2. It is hard to leave Publicola, but I am glad to come to Furius Camillus, whose passage from great disgrace to the highest command was so moderate that, when the citizens, the city being captured by the Gauls, sought his help while he was an exile at Ardea, he would not go to Veii to receive the army before he had learned that everything concerning his dictatorship had been transacted by solemn law. Glorious was the Veientine triumph of Camillus, distinguished his Gallic victory, but far more admirable that delay: for it is much, much more laborious to conquer oneself than the enemy, neither in adversity fleeing by over-hasty haste, nor in prosperity grasping it with unrestrained joy.

1.3. Equal to Furius in moderation was Marcius Rutilus Censorinus: for, having been created censor a second time, he summoned the people to an assembly and rebuked them in the gravest speech he could, because they had twice conferred upon him that power whose duration their ancestors, because it seemed too great, had judged should be shortened. Each acted rightly, both Censorinus and the people: the one taught them to entrust honours with moderation, the other entrusted them to a moderate man.

1.4. Come, what a consul was Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus! When the conscript fathers wished to continue him in his office, not only on account of his outstanding deeds, but also because the people were attempting to create the same tribunes for the next year—neither of which could lawfully be done—the senate dispelled both, at once by checking the eagerness of the people and by compelling the tribunes to follow the example of his own modesty; and he alone was the cause that the most ample order and the people were safe from the reproach of an unlawful deed.

1.5. But Fabius Maximus, when he perceived that the consulship had been held five times by himself, and again and again by his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and ancestors, at the elections in which his son was being created consul with the highest agreement, dealt with the people as steadfastly as he could, that they should at last give the Fabian house a respite from this honour—not that he distrusted his son's virtues, for he was illustrious, but lest the highest command should be continued in a single family. What is more effective or more powerful than this moderation, which overcame even fatherly affection, which is held the most potent?

1.6. The grateful mind of our ancestors was not lacking to render rewards to the elder Africanus, since indeed they tried to adorn his greatest merits with equal honours. They wished to set up statues to him in the comitium, on the rostra, in the senate-house, and finally in the very chapel of Jupiter Best and Greatest; they wished to place his image, clad in triumphal dress, upon the couches of the Capitol; they wished to grant him a continuous consulship through all the years of his life and a perpetual dictatorship: by suffering none of these to be given him either by plebiscite or decreed by senatorial decree, he bore himself in refusing honours almost as greatly as he had borne himself in earning them. With the same strength of mind he protected the cause of Hannibal in the senate, when his own fellow-citizens, sending envoys, accused him as one stirring up seditions among them. He added too that the conscript fathers ought not to interfere in the affairs of the Carthaginian commonwealth, and with the deepest moderation consulted the safety of the one and the dignity of the other, content to have treated each as an enemy only as far as victory.

1.7. But Marcus Marcellus, who first taught that both Hannibal could be conquered and Syracuse captured, when in his consulship the Sicilians had come into the city to complain about him, neither held a meeting of the senate on that matter, because his colleague Valerius Laevinus happened to be absent—lest on that account the Sicilians should be more timid in complaining—and, when Laevinus returned, of his own accord brought forward the question of admitting them, and patiently endured those complaining against him. He also compelled those whom Laevinus had ordered to withdraw to remain, that they might be present at his own defence, and then, both parties having pleaded, he followed them as they left the senate-house, that the senate might more freely give its opinions. And when their complaints were rejected, he kindly received them as suppliants begging to be taken into his patronage. Besides this, having drawn Sicily by lot as his province, he yielded it to his colleague. The praise of Marcellus cannot be varied as often as he himself used new degrees of moderation towards the allies.

1.8. How admirable too Tiberius Gracchus showed himself! For as tribune of the plebs, when he waged avowed enmity with the Scipios, Africanus and Asiaticus, and Asiaticus could not give security for the money adjudged against him and therefore had been ordered by the consul to be led into the public prison, and had appealed to the college of tribunes, when none was willing to interpose his veto, Gracchus withdrew from his colleagues and composed a decree. Nor did anyone doubt that in writing it he would use words steeped in anger against Asiaticus. But he first swore that he had not been reconciled with the Scipios, then read out this decree: that, since Lucius Cornelius Scipio on the day of his triumph had cast into prison the enemy leaders led before his chariot, it seemed unworthy and alien to the majesty of the commonwealth that he himself should be led to the same place: therefore he would not allow it to be done. Gladly then did the Roman people learn that their opinion had been deceived by Gracchus, and they pursued his moderation with due praise.

1.9. Gaius Claudius Nero too must be numbered among the rest as an example of remarkable moderation. He had been a sharer in the glory of Livius Salinator in crushing Hasdrubal. Yet he chose to follow Salinator triumphing on horseback rather than to use the triumph which the senate had equally decreed to him, because the action had been done in Salinator's province. And so he triumphed without a chariot—the more gloriously indeed, because the other's victory alone was praised, but this man's moderation also.

1.10. Not even the later Africanus suffers us to keep silent about him. He, as censor, when he was closing the lustrum, and in the sacrifice of the suovetaurilia the clerk recited before him from the public records the solemn formula of prayer in which the immortal gods were asked to make the affairs of the Roman people better and greater, said: 'They are good and great enough: therefore I pray that they may keep them forever unharmed,' and at once ordered the formula in the public records to be amended in this manner. This modesty of vows the censors thereafter used in closing the lustra: for he prudently perceived that increase had then to be sought for the Roman empire when triumphs were sought within the seventh milestone, but that for one possessing the greater part of the whole world it was greedy to desire anything beyond, while he was abundantly fortunate if he lost nothing of what he held. Nor did any other moderation of his in the censorship appear before the tribunal. Reviewing the centuries of the knights, when he noticed that Gaius Licinius Sacerdos, being summoned, had come forward, he said that he knew the man had committed deliberate perjury: therefore, if anyone wished to accuse him, he would use his own testimony. But, no one coming forward for that business, he said: 'Lead your horse across, Sacerdos, and gain by way of profit the censor's mark, lest I be seen to have acted in your case the parts of accuser, witness, and judge.'

1.11. This temperance of spirit was noted also in Quintus Scaevola, a most eminent man: for, brought forward as a witness against a defendant, when he had answered what seemed greatly likely to harm the safety of the man in peril, as he departed he added that he ought so to be believed only if others also affirmed the same, since for anyone to fall by the testimony of one man would be of the worst example. Thus he rendered both the faith due to his oath and wholesome counsel to the common good.

1.12. I feel what citizens, and what deeds and sayings of theirs, and with how . . . a compass of speech I am embracing. But since . . . many things must be said briefly, surrounded by an infinite number of persons and things excelling in renown, to furnish both . . . the plan of our purpose too has taken upon itself not to praise everything, but to recall. Wherefore, with kind indulgence, the two Metelli, Macedonicus and Numidicus, the greatest ornaments of their country, will suffer themselves to be told in brief. Most keenly had Metellus Macedonicus disagreed with Scipio Africanus, and their conflict, sprung from a rivalry of virtue, had advanced to grave and attested enmities; but yet, when he heard the death of Scipio cried aloud, he burst forth into the open and, with mournful countenance and confused voice, said: 'Run, run together, citizens! The walls of our city are overthrown: for unlawful violence has been brought upon Scipio Africanus, resting within his own household gods.' O commonwealth, at once wretched in the death of Africanus and happy in so humane and so civil a lamentation of Macedonicus! For at the same time he recognized both how great a leader he had lost and what kind of one he still had. The same man advised his sons to put their shoulders under Scipio's funeral bier, and to this honour of the obsequies he added that utterance, that it would not be that afterwards this office could be rendered by them to a greater man. Where are those so many quarrels in the senate-house? Where so many altercations before the rostra? Where the all-but-togaed battles of the greatest citizens and leaders? All those things, assuredly, his moderation, to be pursued with special veneration, blotted out.

1.13. But Metellus Numidicus, driven from his country by a popular faction, withdrew into Asia. In which, when by chance a letter was handed to him as he was watching games at Tralles, in which it was written that his return into the city had been granted him with the greatest agreement of the senate and people, he did not leave the theatre before the spectacle was performed, nor in any part revealed his joy to those sitting nearest, but contained his utmost gladness within himself. It is agreed that the same man wore the same countenance both as an exile and when restored. So much, by the benefit of moderation, did he always keep a middle course between prosperity and adversity with firmness of spirit.

1.14. So many families having been enumerated in a single kind of praise, the later Cato denies that the Porcian name, as though void of this glory, ought to be passed over in silence, relying on no small token of the highest moderation. He had brought into the city the Cyprian money with the greatest diligence and integrity. On account of this service the senate was ordering a motion to be introduced, that at the praetorian elections his candidacy should be considered out of the regular order. But he himself did not allow this to be done, declaring it unjust that something should be decreed to him that was granted to no one else, and, lest anything be made new in his own person, he judged it better to try the rashness of the Campus than to use the benefit of the senate-house.

1.15. As I am now attempting to pass to foreign examples, Marcus Bibulus, a man of the highest dignity and one who had held the highest offices, lays his hand upon me. He, when he was tarrying in the province of Syria, learned that his two sons of excellent disposition had been killed by the soldiers of Gabinius in Egypt. Their slayers Queen Cleopatra sent to him in chains, that he might exact vengeance for the most grievous loss by his own decision. But he, when this benefit was offered him—than which none greater could be granted to one in grief—compelled his grief to yield to moderation, and ordered the butchers of his own blood to be led back, untouched, on the spot to Cleopatra, saying that the power of this vengeance ought to belong not to himself, but to the senate.

1e.1. Archytas of Tarentum, while at Metapontum he plunged himself deeply into the precepts of Pythagoras, having with great labour and over a long time grasped the solid work of learning, after he returned to his country and began to revisit his lands, perceived that they had been spoiled and ruined by the negligence of his bailiff, and, gazing upon the ill-deserving man, said: 'I should have taken punishment of you, were I not angry with you': for he preferred to let him go unpunished rather than, on account of anger, to punish more grievously than was just.

1e.2. Too liberal was the moderation of Archytas, more tempered that of Plato: for when he had blazed up too vehemently against the fault of a slave, fearing lest he himself might not be able to discern the measure of punishment, he entrusted the arbitration of the chastisement to his friend Speusippus, thinking it would be disgraceful to himself if he allowed it that the fault of the slave and the punishment of Plato should deserve an equal censure. Wherefore I marvel the less that he was so steadfastly moderate towards his pupil Xenocrates. He had heard that Xenocrates had spoken many impious things about him: without any hesitation he rejected the accusation. The informer pressed him with a steady countenance, asking why he was not believed: Plato added that it was not credible that one whom he so greatly loved should not in turn be loved by him. At last, when the malice of the one sowing enmities had taken refuge in an oath, that he might not dispute about his perjury, he affirmed that Xenocrates would never have said those things, unless he had judged it expedient for himself to say them. You would think that his spirit had passed its life's station not in a mortal body, but in a heavenly citadel, and indeed armed, repelling from itself by an unconquered fight the assaults of human vices, and keeping all the numbers of virtue shut within the bosom of its own loftiness.

1e.3. By no means equal to Plato in the recommendation of letters was the Syracusan Dio, but, as concerns the displaying of moderation, of a more vehement trial. Driven from his country by the tyrant Dionysius, he had sought Megara, where, when he wished to meet Theodorus, the chief man of that city, at his house, and was not admitted, having been long and much detained before the doors, he said to his companion: 'This must be borne patiently: for perhaps we too, when we were in the grade of our dignity, did something of the sort.' By this tranquillity of mind he rendered the condition of his exile more placid to himself.

1e.4. Thrasybulus too must be laid hold of in this place, who led back into their country the Athenian people, compelled by the savagery of the Thirty Tyrants to leave their homes and wretchedly passing a scattered and wandering life, strengthened in spirit and in arms alike. He then made a victory remarkable for the restoration of liberty somewhat more glorious by the praise of moderation: for he interposed a plebiscite that no mention should be made of past matters. This oblivion, which the Athenians call amnesty, recalled the shaken and falling condition of the state to its former state.

1e.5. Of no less admiration is the following. Stasippus of Tegea, when his friends urged him to remove or thrust aside, by any means whatever, a rival grievous in the administration of the commonwealth, but otherwise an upright and accomplished man, said that he would not do it, lest, in the place which a good citizen held in the guardianship of his country, a bad and wicked one should seize it, and he preferred that he himself should be vehemently pressed by his adversary rather than that his country should lack an excellent advocate.

1e.6. The breast of Pittacus too was equipped with moderation. He, having gained the tyranny conferred by his fellow-citizens, only reminded Alcaeus the poet—who had used against him most obstinately both the bitterness of hatred and the powers of his genius—of what he could do in crushing him.

1e.7. The mention of this man prompts me to relate the moderation of the seven sages. Someone had bought a cast from fishermen drawing a net in the Milesian region. Then, a golden Delphic table of great weight having been drawn up, a controversy arose, they affirming that they had sold the catch of fish, he saying that he had bought the chance of the haul. This case, on account of the novelty of the thing and the magnitude of the money, having been brought before the whole people of that state, it was resolved to consult Delphic Apollo as to whom the table ought to be adjudged. The god answered that it should be given to him who surpassed the rest in wisdom, in these words: 'Who first of all in wisdom? To him I assign the tripod.' Then the Milesians by common consent gave the table to Thales. He yielded it to Bias, Bias to Pittacus, he at once to another, and so on through the whole circle of the seven sages it came at last to Solon, who transferred both the title of the highest prudence and the prize to Apollo himself.

1e.8. And, that we may render testimony of moderation to Theopompus too, king of the Spartans, when he had first instituted that ephors should be created at Lacedaemon, set thus against the royal power to come—just as at Rome the tribunes of the plebs are set against the consular authority—and his wife had told him that he had done this so as to leave his sons a lesser power, he said: 'I shall leave it, but a more lasting one.' Excellently indeed: for that power alone is safe which sets a measure upon its own strength. Therefore Theopompus, by binding the kingdom with lawful bonds, the further he drew it back from license, the nearer he brought it to the goodwill of his citizens.

1e.9. But Antiochus, when by Lucius Scipio the boundaries of his empire had been pushed back beyond Mount Taurus, having lost the province of Asia and the neighbouring nations, undissemblingly bore thanks to the Roman people, because, freed from too great an administration, he now enjoyed moderate bounds of his kingdom. And indeed nothing is so glorious or so magnificent that it does not require to be tempered by moderation.

2.pr. ON THOSE WHO, OUT OF ENMITY, WERE JOINED IN FRIENDSHIP OR KINSHIP. Since this matter has been illustrated by many and distinguished authors, let us pass over to the distinguished bending of the human soul from hatred to favour, and let us indeed pursue it with a glad pen: for if a calm sea after a rough one, and a clear sky after a cloudy one, are felt with cheerful aspect, if war changed into peace brings the greatest joy, so the bitterness of offences laid aside is to be celebrated with a bright narrative.

2.1. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, twice consul and pontifex maximus, and with a gravity of life equal to the splendour of his honours, waged long and vehement enmities with Fulvius Flaccus, a man of the same eminence. These, as soon as they were declared censors together, he laid aside in the Campus, thinking that those ought not to be at variance through private enmities who were publicly joined in the highest power. This judgement of his spirit both the present age approved and the ancient writers of annals have handed down to us to be praised,

2.2. as they also did not wish the illustrious counsel of Livius Salinator in ending feuds to be unknown to posterity: for he, although, burning with hatred of Nero, he had gone into exile, chiefly afflicted by his testimony, yet, after the citizens recalled Nero thence and gave him as colleague in the consulship, commanded himself to forget both his own genius, which was most keen, and the injury, which he had received in its gravest form, lest, if with a disagreeing spirit he should be willing to share the command, by showing himself an obstinate enemy he should prove a bad consul. And indeed this inclination of mind to a more tranquil disposition, at a harsh and difficult crisis of the times, brought the greatest safety to the city and to Italy, because, striving with an equal onset of valour, they crushed the terrible Punic forces.

2.3. There is also a famous example in the elder Africanus and Tiberius Gracchus of enmities laid aside, since indeed, from whose table's sacred rite they had come parted by hatred, from it they departed joined both in friendship and in kinship: for Scipio, not content to have shared concord with Gracchus at the feast of Jupiter on the Capitol on the authority of the senate, also at once there betrothed his daughter Cornelia to him.

2.4. But humanity of this kind appeared remarkable also in Marcus Cicero: for with the greatest zeal he defended Aulus Gabinius, a defendant on a charge of extortion, who had driven him from the city in his consulship; and the same man protected, in two public trials, Publius Vatinius, always hostile to his dignity—doing this without any reproach of fickleness, and indeed with some praise, because it is somewhat more glorious that injuries should be overcome by benefits than that they should be requited by the obstinacy of mutual hatred.

2.5. But Cicero's deed seemed so worthy of approval that not even his bitterest enemy, Publius Pulcher, hesitated to imitate it. He, accused on a charge of incest by the three Lentuli, protected one of them, a defendant on a charge of bribery, with his patronage, and brought himself, looking upon the judges and the praetor and the temple of Vesta, to act as a friend to Lentulus, amid which the other, desiring to overwhelm his safety with a foul charge, had pleaded with a hostile voice.

2.6. But Caninius Gallus acted admirably as both defendant and accuser, both by leading into matrimony the daughter of Gaius Antonius, whom he had condemned, and by holding Marcus Colonius, by whom he had been condemned, as the manager of his affairs.

2.7. But of Caelius Rufus, as his life was tainted, so the mercy which he showed to Quintus Pompeius is to be approved. When this man had been laid low by Caelius in a public trial, and his mother Cornelia would not give back the estates entrusted to her, and Pompeius had implored his help by letter, Caelius most persistently stood by him in his absence: he even read out in court a letter of his, the token of his utmost necessity, by which he overthrew the impious avarice of Cornelia. A deed which, on account of its surpassing humanity, is not to be repudiated even with Caelius as its author.

3.pr. ON ABSTINENCE AND SELF-CONTROL. With great care and special zeal it must be related how greatly the onset, like to the frenzy of lust and avarice, has been removed by counsel and reason from the breasts of illustrious men, because that household, that state, that kingdom alone will easily stand in an everlasting grade where the desire of love and of money claims for itself the least strength: for wherever those most certain plagues of the human race have penetrated, injustice rules, infamy blazes, violence dwells, wars are begotten. With propitious tongues, then, let us commemorate characters opposed to these so dire vices.

3.1. In his twenty-fourth year, Scipio, when in Spain, Carthage being overthrown, he had taken the auspices for capturing greater Carthage, and had brought into his power many hostages whom the Carthaginians had held shut up in that city, a maiden among them of surpassing beauty and of grown age—he being a young man, unmarried, and victor—after he learned that she had been born in an illustrious place among the Celtiberians and was betrothed to Indibilis, the noblest of that nation, having summoned her parents and her betrothed, handed her over inviolate. The gold too, which had been brought for the ransom of the girl, he added to the sum of her dowry. By this self-control and munificence Indibilis, being put under obligation, repaid the gratitude due to his merits by attaching the spirits of the Celtiberians to the Romans.

3.2. But as Spain is the witness of this man's abstinence, so Epirus, Achaea, the Cyclades islands, the maritime part of Asia, and the province of Cyprus are witnesses of Marcus Cato's. Whence, when he undertook the office of conveying the money, he had a spirit as averse from all love as from gain, though engaged in the greatest material for both kinds of intemperance: for he had royal riches within his own power, and the most fertile cities of so much of Greece, full of delights, were the necessary stopping-places of his whole voyage. And this Munatius Rufus, the faithful companion of his Cyprian expedition, signifies in his writings. His testimony I do not embrace: for that praise rests upon its own proper proof, since from the same womb of nature both self-control and Cato were born.

3.3. Drusus Germanicus too—the surpassing glory of the Claudian family and a rare ornament of his country, and, what is above all, answering wonderfully, by the greatness of his deeds for the measure of his age, to his stepfather and brother, the two Augusti, the divine eyes of the commonwealth—it is agreed kept the practice of love shut within love of his wife. Antonia too, a woman who surpassed by her praises the manly renown of her family, repaid her husband's love with excellent fidelity, who, after his death, flourishing in beauty and age, held the companionship of her mother-in-law in place of a marriage; and in the same bed the vigour of one youth was extinguished, the experience of the other's widowhood grew old. Let this chamber set the highest crown upon such proofs.

3.4. Next let us be free for these too, whose spirit was never free at any moment . . . of laying aside money. Gnaeus Marcius, a young man of patrician stock, the famous offspring of King Ancus, to whom the captured Volscian town of Corioli added a surname, when, having performed deeds of conspicuous courage, he was praised by the consul Postumius Cominius in a careful speech before the soldiers and was being given all the military gifts, and a hundred iugera of land, and the choice of ten captives and as many adorned horses, a herd of a hundred oxen, and as much silver as he could carry, wished to accept nothing of these except the safety of a single captive who was his guest-friend, and a horse to use in battle. By this so circumspect moderation of spirit you would not know whether he chose his rewards or rejected them with the greater praise.

3.5. But Manius Curius, the most exact rule of Roman frugality and likewise the most perfect specimen of courage, presented himself to the Samnite envoys to be gazed upon, seated on a rustic stool by his hearth and dining from a wooden bowl—what kind of feast the equipment indicates: for he despised the riches of the Samnites, while the Samnites marvelled at his poverty: for when they had brought to him a great weight of gold sent by the state, and he was invited with kind words to be willing to use it, he relaxed his countenance with a laugh and at once said: 'Ministers of a superfluous, not to say silly, embassy, tell the Samnites that Manius Curius prefers to rule over the rich rather than to become rich himself, and take back that gift, precious indeed, yet devised for the harm of men, and remember that I can neither be conquered in battle nor corrupted with money.' The same man, when he had driven King Pyrrhus out of Italy, touched nothing at all of the royal booty with which he had enriched the army and the city. And when seven iugera of land apiece were decreed by the senate to the people, and to himself fifty, he did not exceed the measure of the popular assignment, thinking him an unfit citizen for the commonwealth who was not content with that which was granted to the rest.

3.6. The same was the feeling of Fabricius Luscinus, greater than the whole state of his times in honours and authority, equal in property to every poorest man, who sent back into Samnium ten pounds of bronze and five pounds of silver and ten slaves sent to him by the Samnites, all of whom he held in his patronage—by the benefit of his self-control most rich without money, abundantly attended without the service of a household, because not the possessing of much but the desiring of little made him wealthy. Therefore his house, just as it was empty of the bronze and silver and slaves of the Samnites, so was filled with the glory won from them. Consonant with the rejected gifts were the prayers of Fabricius: for, setting out as envoy to Pyrrhus, when he heard, in his presence, the Thessalian Cineas relating that there was a certain man at Athens, famous for wisdom, who persuaded that men should be willing to do nothing else than for the sake of pleasure, he received that utterance as a portent, and at once prayed Pyrrhus and the Samnites to embrace that wisdom. Though Athens may glory in her learning, yet a prudent man would prefer the execration of Fabricius to the precepts of Epicurus. Which the outcome too declared: for the city that gave most to pleasure lost the greatest empire, the one that delighted in toil seized it, and the former could not protect its liberty, the latter could even bestow it.

3.7. One might rightly judge that Quintus Tubero, surnamed Catus, was a pupil of Curius and Fabricius. When he was holding the consulship and the whole nation of the Aetolians had sent to him through envoys silver vessels of great weight and fashioned with exquisite art—the same who at an earlier time, having gone to him to offer congratulations, had reported that they had seen earthenware on his table—he ordered them to depart with their own baggage, warned not to think that his self-control, as though it were poverty, needed to be relieved. How well he had preferred his own household goods to the Aetolian, if a later age had been willing to follow the example of his frugality! Now to what point has it come? It can scarcely be obtained even from slaves that they not disdain the furniture which a consul then did not blush to use.

3.8. But when King Perseus had been conquered, Paulus, though with the Macedonian wealth he had so far satisfied the old and hereditary poverty of our city that at that time for the first time the Roman people freed itself from the burden of paying tribute, made his own household goods richer in no part, thinking it gloriously done by him that from that victory others should seize the money, he himself the glory.

3.9. And to this judgement of his spirit subscribed Quintus Fabius Gurges, Numerius Fabius Pictor, and Quintus Ogulnius. These, sent as envoys to King Ptolemy, brought into the treasury the gifts which they had received from him privately, and indeed before they reported their embassy to the senate, judging evidently that from a public service nothing ought to accrue to anyone except the praise of a duty well administered. Now that is a token of the humanity of the senate and of the careful discipline of our ancestors: for what they had laid up in the treasury was given to the envoys, not only by the decree of the conscript fathers, but also by the permission of the people . . . and the quaestors distributed to each what had been bequeathed. Thus in the same matter the liberality of Ptolemy, the abstinence of the envoys, and the equity of the senate and people obtained the due portion of a praiseworthy deed.

3.10. That Calpurnius Piso was a rival, in a like kind of praise, of the self-control of the Fabii and Ogulnius, the thing itself is proof. As consul, Sicily having been freed by him from a grievous war of fugitives, he was honouring with gifts, in the manner of a commander, those whose special service he had used. Among them he adorned his own son, who had fought most bravely in several places, with the title of a golden crown of three pounds, prefacing that it was not fitting for a magistrate to disburse from the public money what would return into his own house, and he promised that he would bequeath to the young man by his will so much weight, so that he should receive the honour publicly from a general, the price privately from a father.

3.11. Come, if any illustrious man in this age were to use kidskins for coverlets, and, attended by three slaves, were to govern Spain, and were to make for an overseas province at a cost of five hundred asses, and were content with the same food and the same wine as the sailors, would he not be thought pitiable? And yet the elder Cato endured these things most patiently, because the pleasing habit of frugality kept him in this kind of life with the highest sweetness.

3.12. Far from the ancient self-control, by the space of years, does the later Cato stand, born indeed in a state now rich and rejoicing in luxury. Yet he, when he took part in the civil wars, dragging his son with him, had twelve slaves—more in number than the elder, fewer by reason of the differing manners of the times.

3.13. The mind exults in running over the memory of the greatest men. Scipio Aemilianus, after two famous consulships and as many triumphs of his own special glory, performed the duty of an embassy with seven slaves following. And, I think, he could have procured more from the spoils of Carthage and Numantia, had he not preferred that the praise of his deeds should redound to himself, the spoils to his country. And so, when he made his journey through allies and foreign nations, not his slaves but his victories were counted, nor how much weight of gold and silver, but how much of greatness he bore with him, was reckoned.

3.14. But self-control has often been recognized even in the spirits of the whole plebs; yet it will be enough to have related two examples of these, of ages widely distant from one another. Pyrrhus, the terror of his onset broken and his Epirote arms now languishing, desiring to buy the goodwill of the Roman people because he had not been able to weaken its valour, had transferred to our city almost the whole apparatus of his royal wealth. But when gifts both of great price and of various kinds, fitted for the use of men as much as of women, were carried about by his envoys among the houses, no one's door was opened to anyone's gift, and the bold rather than effective defender of Tarentine wantonness was, I know not with how much the greater glory of this city's manners, repulsed. In that storm too, which Gaius Marius and Lucius Cinna had inflicted upon the commonwealth, the wonderful abstinence of the Roman people was beheld: for when they had thrown the household goods of the proscribed to the hands of the crowd to be plundered, no one could be found who would seek booty amid the public mourning: each one held himself back from these just as if from sacred temples. And indeed this so merciful self-control of the plebs was a silent reproach to the cruel victors.

3e.1. And, that we may not begrudge to foreigners the commemoration of the same praise, Pericles, the chief man of the Athenians, when he had as colleague in the praetorship Sophocles, the writer of tragedies, and the latter, while engaged together in the public office, had praised in too lavish words the beauty of a freeborn boy passing by, rebuking his intemperance said that a praetor ought to keep not only his hands free from the gain of money, but also his eyes from a lustful gaze.

3e.2. But Sophocles, now advanced in age, when someone asked him whether he still made use of the pleasures of love, said: 'Heaven forbid! For I have gladly fled from that, as from some raging tyranny.'

3e.3. We have heard that Xenocrates was of an equally abstinent old age. Of which opinion the narrative that follows will be no small proof. At an all-night festival, Phryne, a noble harlot at Athens, lay down beside him, heavy with wine, having laid a wager with some young men whether she could corrupt his temperance. Spurning her neither in touch nor in word, having suffered her to stay in his bosom as long as she had wished, he sent her away baffled in her purpose. A deed abstinent of a soul steeped in wisdom, but the saying of the little harlot too was exceedingly witty: for when the young men mocked her, because she had not been able to entice with her allurements the spirit of a drowsy old man, so beautiful and so elegant as she was, and demanded the agreed price of victory, she answered that she had laid the wager with them about a man, not about a statue. Can this self-control of Xenocrates be more truly and more properly shown by anyone than it was expressed by the little harlot herself? Phryne by her beauty in no part shook his most steadfast abstinence: what then? Could King Alexander shake it with riches? You would think that by him too a statue, and indeed an equally vain one, had been attempted. He had sent envoys to him with several talents. These, led into the Academy, he received with his usual—that is, moderate—equipment and very small means. On the next day, when they asked to whom he wished the money to be counted out, he said: 'What? Did you not understand from yesterday's dinner that I do not need it?' Thus the king wished to buy the friendship of the philosopher, the philosopher was unwilling to sell his own to the king.

3e.4. But Alexander, having gained the surname of Invincible, could not conquer the self-control of Diogenes the Cynic. When he had approached him as he sat in the sun, and was urging him to indicate if there were anything he wished done for him, the man, as he was placed in the bank of the road, of squalid title but of robust eminence, said: 'Presently of other things; in the meantime I should wish you not to stand between me and the sun.' In which words, assuredly, this sentiment was contained: Alexander tries to drive Diogenes from his post with riches more swiftly than Darius with arms. The same man at Syracuse, when, as he was washing his greens, Aristippus said to him, 'If you were willing to flatter Dionysius, you would not be eating these things,' said: 'Nay rather, if you were willing to eat these things, you would not be flattering Dionysius.'

4.pr. ON POVERTY. That children are the greatest ornaments of matrons, we find thus in the book of the collections of Pomponius Rufus . . . : Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, when a Campanian matron who was a guest with her showed her her own ornaments, the most beautiful of that age, drew her on in conversation until her children should return from school, and said: 'These are my ornaments.' Assuredly he has everything who desires nothing, and indeed more surely than he who possesses all things, because the ownership of things is wont to collapse, but the enjoyment of a good mind admits no assault of sadder fortune. And so to what purpose is it to set either riches in the first part of happiness or poverty in the lowest state of miseries, when both the cheerful face of the former is stuffed within with many bitternesses, and the more rugged aspect of the latter abounds in solid and certain goods? Which will be better represented by persons than by words.

4.1. The royal command being ended on account of the excessive pride of Tarquinius, Valerius Publicola, with Junius Brutus, inaugurated the beginning of the consulship, and the same man afterwards held three consulships most acceptable to the Roman people, and by the bordered toga of very many and very great deeds enlarged the title of his own images; while meanwhile that pillar of the calendar departed with a patrimony not even sufficient for the cost of his funeral, and therefore his obsequies were conducted at public expense. It is not to the purpose to scrutinize the poverty of so great a man with further disputation: for it is abundantly clear what he possessed while alive, who, when dead, lacked a funeral couch and a pyre.

4.2. Of how great eminence must we judge Menenius Agrippa to have been, whom the senate and the plebs chose as the author of making peace between them? Of how great, indeed, ought the arbiter of the public safety to have been. He, had he not been buried by the people, who contributed sextants per head—so destitute of money did he die—would have lacked the honour of burial. But for this reason did the state, divided by a destructive sedition, wish to be drawn together into one by the hands of Agrippa, because it had perceived them poor indeed, but holy. Of whom, while he lived, there was nothing that could be entered in the census, so, since he died, the harmony of Rome is to this day a most ample patrimony.

4.3. But in the houses of Gaius Fabricius and Quintus Aemilius Papus, the chief men of their age, I must confess there was silver: for each had a dish for the gods and a saltcellar, but Fabricius the more elegantly, in that he wished his dish to be supported by a little horn foot. Papus too acted spiritedly enough, who, since he had received these by way of inheritance, did not think they should be alienated for reasons of religion.

4.4. Were those most wealthy men, who were summoned from the plough to become consuls, turning over the barren and most parching soil of Pupinia for the sake of pleasure, and scattering its vastest clods with much sweat for the sake of delight? Nay rather, those whom the dangers of the commonwealth claimed as generals, the straits of their private estate—why do I delay to render its proper name to truth?—compelled to become ploughmen.

4.5. But Atilius, those whom the senate had sent to summon him to take up the command of the Roman people, saw scattering seed. But those hands, worn by rustic toil, established the public safety, brought low vast forces of the enemy, and those which had just guided the yoke of ploughing oxen held the reins of a triumphal chariot, nor was it a blush to them, the ivory staff laid aside, to take up again the rustic ploughtail. Atilius can console the poor, but much more can he teach the wealthy how unnecessary to the desire of solid praise is the anxious gathering of riches.

4.6. Of the same name and blood was Atilius Regulus, of the First Punic War the greatest glory as he was the greatest disaster, who, when in Africa he was crushing the most insolent power of Carthage by frequent victories, and had learned that his command, on account of his deeds well done, had been prolonged for him into the next year, wrote to the consuls that the bailiff on the little farm of seven iugera which he had in Pupinia was dead, and that the hired man, having found his chance, had departed thence, having carried off the rustic implements, and therefore he asked that a successor be sent to him, lest, the field being deserted, there should be nothing whence his wife and children might be fed. When the senate had received this from the consuls, it ordered both that Atilius' field should at once be let out to be cultivated, and that sustenance be furnished to his wife and children, and that the things he had lost be redeemed at public expense. At so great a price stood to our treasury that example of Atilian virtue, in which every Roman age shall glory.

4.7. Equally great were the broad estates of Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus: for he possessed seven iugera of land, and of these he lost three, which he had pledged to the treasury on behalf of a friend, by way of a fine. The penalty too on behalf of his son Caeso, because he had not appeared to plead his cause, he paid from the revenue of this little farm. And yet to him, ploughing four iugera, there was constituted not only the dignity of head of a family, but the dictatorship too was conferred. He now thinks himself cramped in his dwelling, whose house spreads out as much as the lands of Cincinnatus spread.

4.8. What of the Aelian family, how wealthy! Sixteen Aeli there were at the same time, who had one little house in the same place where now are the monuments of Marius, and one farm in the Veientine territory requiring fewer cultivators than it had owners, and a place for spectacles in the Circus Maximus and the Flaminian. Which places indeed they possessed, given to them publicly on account of their valour.

4.9. The same family had not a scruple of silver before Paulus, when Perseus had been conquered, gave to Quintus Aelius Tubero, his son-in-law, five pounds of silver from the booty: for I pass over the fact that the chief man of the state gave his daughter in marriage to him whose money he saw of so meagre a household. He himself too departed so destitute that, unless the farm, the one thing he had left, had been sold, there would have been nothing whence his wife might recover her dowry. The spirits of men and women flourished in the state, and the estimation of dignity was weighed by their goods in all matters. These conciliated commands, these joined alliances, these availed most both in the forum and within private walls: for each one hastened to increase the wealth of his country, not his own, and the poor man preferred to be engaged in command over the rich rather than the rich over the poor. And to this so glorious purpose that reward was rendered, that none of the things owed to virtue could be bought with money, and that the want of illustrious men was relieved at public expense.

4.10. And so, when in the Second Punic War Gnaeus Scipio had written to the senate from Spain, asking that a successor be sent to him, because he had a maiden daughter now of grown age, and a dowry could not be provided for her without him, the senate, lest the commonwealth should lack a good leader, took upon itself the parts of a father, and, the dowry having been settled by the counsel of Scipio's wife and kinsmen, disbursed the sum of it from the treasury and gave the girl in marriage. The amount of the dowry was forty thousand asses, from which can be known not only the humanity of the conscript fathers, but also the condition of the old patrimonies: for they were so straitened that Tuccia, daughter of Caeso, was thought to have brought the greatest dowry to her husband, ten thousand asses, and Megullia, because she entered her husband's house with fifty thousand asses, gained the surname of the Dowered. The same senate freed the daughters of Fabricius Luscinus and of Scipio from undowered marriages by its liberality, since to their paternal inheritance there was nothing they could enter as received except a rich glory.

4.11. But how small an inheritance Marcus Scaurus received from his father, he relates in the first book of the three which he wrote about his own life: for he says that to him there were left only six slaves and a whole estate of thirty-five thousand sesterces. On this money was nourished the spirit of one who would be the chief man of the senate. These examples, therefore, we ought to regard, in these consolations to find rest, who never allow our scanty fortunes to be free of complaints. We behold no silver, or of very small weight, few slaves, seven iugera of dry land, funerals in want of household expense, daughters destitute of dowries—but distinguished consulships, wonderful dictatorships, innumerable triumphs. Why then do we tear at a moderate fortune, as though it were the chief evil of the human race, with reproaches by day and by night, which, with breasts not overflowing but trustworthy, nourished Publicolas, Aemilii, Fabricii, Curii, Scipios, Scauri, and strengths of valour equal to these? Let us rather rise in spirit, and let us refresh, by the memory of the former time, our spirits weakened by the sight of money: for, by the hut of Romulus, and by the humble roofs of the old Capitol, and by the eternal hearths of Vesta, content even now with earthenware vessels, I swear that no riches can be preferred to the poverty of such men.

5.pr. ON SENSE OF SHAME. From which the transition to modesty seems timely: for it has taught the most just men to neglect their private means and to desire that the public ones should be as ample as possible—worthy that temples be raised and altars consecrated to it, as to a heavenly divinity, because it is the parent of every honourable counsel, the guardian of solemn duties, the mistress of innocence, dear to those nearest, acceptable to strangers, bearing before it in every place, at every time, a favourable countenance.

5.1. But, that we may come from its praises to deeds, from the foundation of the city down to the consuls Africanus and Tiberius Longus, the place for watching the games was common to senate and people. Yet never did anyone of the plebs endure to watch in the theatre before the conscript fathers: so circumspect was the sense of shame of our state. Which indeed gave the surest proof of itself even on that day on which Lucius Flamininus took his stand in the farthest part of the theatre, because he had been removed from the senate by the censors Marcus Cato and Lucius Flaccus, though he had already discharged the honour of the consulship, and was the brother too of Titus Flamininus, the conqueror of Macedonia and Philip: for all compelled him to pass over into the place due to his dignity.

5.2. Terentius Varro shattered the commonwealth by his rash entry into the battle of Cannae. The same man, by not enduring to accept the dictatorship offered by the whole senate and people, out of shame redeemed his fault in the greatest disaster, and brought it about that the battle-line should be imputed to the wrath of the gods, his own modesty to his own character. And so it can more gloriously be entered in the inscription of his image that the dictatorship was not accepted than that those of others were held.

5.3. But let us pass over to the distinguished work of modesty. With great unpopularity Fortune had led down into the Campus, at the praetorian elections, Gnaeus Scipio, son of the elder Africanus, and the clerk Gaius Cicereius, and, as one too unrestrained, it was carped at in the talk of the crowd, because it had confounded the blood and clientship of so great a man in the contest of an election. But Cicereius turned his fault into his own praise: for, as soon as he saw himself preferred to Scipio in all the centuries, he came down from the place of augury, and, throwing aside his white toga, began to act as a canvasser for his competitor, that he might evidently yield the praetorship the better to the memory of Africanus than claim it for himself. And the price of modesty was not the greatest: Scipio then obtained the honour, but men the rather congratulated Cicereius.

5.4. And, that we may not at once depart from the elections, Lucius Crassus, seeking the consulship, when in the manner of all candidates he was compelled to go round the forum as a suppliant to the people, could never be brought to do it in the presence of Quintus Scaevola, a most weighty and most wise man, his father-in-law. And so he begged him to withdraw from him while he attended to that foolish business, paying greater regard to the modesty due to his dignity than to his own white toga.

5.5. But Pompey the Great, conquered at the battle of Pharsalus by Caesar, when on the next day he entered Larisa, and the whole people of that town had come out to meet him, said: 'Go and render that office to the victor'—I should say, not worthy to be conquered, had he not been overcome by Caesar; certainly modest in calamity: for, because he could no longer use his own dignity, he used modesty.

5.6. That this modesty was special in Gaius Caesar too both often appeared and his last day signified: for, wounded by the daggers of many parricides, even at that very moment in which the divine spirit was being separated from the mortal body, not even by three-and-twenty wounds could he be deterred from obeying modesty, since indeed with both hands he let down his toga, that the lower part of his body, covered, might collapse. In this manner men do not breathe their last, but the immortal gods seek again their own abodes.

5e.1. What follows I shall append to foreign matters, because it was done before the citizenship was given to Etruria. A young man of surpassing beauty in that region, named Spurinna, when by his wonderful appearance he was disturbing the eyes of very many illustrious women, and therefore felt himself to be suspected by their husbands and parents, marred the grace of his face with wounds, and preferred that his deformity should be a proof of his own purity rather than that his beauty should be an incitement to another's lust.

5e.2. At Athens, a certain man of extreme old age, when he had come into the theatre to watch the games, and none of the citizens received him to a seat, came by chance to the envoys of the Lacedaemonians. They, moved by the man's age, venerating his grey hairs and his years by the office of rising, gave him a seat among themselves in a most honoured place. When the people saw this done, with the greatest applause they approved the modesty of a foreign city. They report that then one of the Lacedaemonians said: 'So the Athenians know what is right, but neglect to do it.'

6.pr. ON CONJUGAL LOVE. From a placid and gentle affection I shall proceed to one equally honourable, but somewhat more ardent and more impetuous, and shall set before the eyes of the reader, to be contemplated not without the greatest veneration, certain images, as it were, of lawful love, running over the deeds of fidelity firmly established between spouses, hard to imitate, but useful to be known, because for one observing the most excellent it ought to be a blush not to furnish even moderate ones.

6.1. Tiberius Gracchus, when a male and female snake had been caught in his house, being informed by a soothsayer that, if the male were let go, a swift death threatened his wife, if the female, himself, choosing the part of the augury salutary to his wife rather than to himself, ordered the male to be killed, the female let go, and endured to be himself slain in his own sight by the death of the serpent. And so I should not know whether to call Cornelia the more fortunate, in that she had such a husband, or the more wretched, in that she lost him. O you, Admetus, king of Thessaly, condemned under a great judge for the charge of a cruel and harsh deed, who suffered the fate of your wife to be exchanged for your own, and, when she was consumed by a voluntary death, that you might not be extinguished, were able to look upon the light—and indeed you had first tried the indulgence of your parents!

6.2. A cheaper victim than Gracchus to unjust fortune, although a man of senatorial rank, was Gaius Plautius Numida, but in a like love an equal example: for, hearing of the death of his wife, unable to restrain his grief, he struck his breast with a sword. Then, prevented by the intervention of his household from carrying out what he had begun, and bound, as soon as the chance was given, his bandages torn and his wound rent open, with steadfast right hand he drained out from his very heart and entrails the spirit mingled with the bitterness of grief, attesting by so violent a death how much of the marital flame he had held shut within that breast.

6.3. Of the same name, and likewise of the same love, was Marcus Plautius: for when by command of the senate he was leading back into Asia the fleet of the allies, sixty ships, and had put in at Tarentum, and there his wife Orestilla, who had accompanied him thither, was overcome by sickness and died, after she was buried and placed upon the pyre, amid the office of anointing and kissing he fell upon a drawn sword. His friends joined him, just as he was, in toga and shoes, to the body of his wife, and then, applying torches, burned them both together. There their tomb was made—at Tarentum it is to this day seen—which is called 'the tomb of the two lovers.' Nor do I doubt that, if there be any sense at all in the dead, Plautius and Orestilla, rejoicing in the partnership of their fate, bore glad countenances into the darkness. And assuredly, where the same love is both greatest and most honourable, it is somewhat better to be joined by death than parted by life.

6.4. A like affection was noted in Julia, daughter of Gaius Caesar. She, when at the aedilician elections she had seen the garment of her husband Pompey the Great, sprinkled with blood, carried back home from the Campus, terrified with fear lest some violence had been done him, fell down lifeless, and was forced by the sudden consternation of her spirit and the grievous pain of her body to cast forth the child she had conceived in her womb—and indeed with great loss to the whole world, whose tranquillity would not have been disturbed by the most savage frenzy of so many civil wars, had the concord of Caesar and Pompey, bound by the tie of common blood, remained.

6.5. Your most chaste fires too, Porcia, daughter of Marcus Cato, all ages shall pursue with due admiration. You, when you learned that your husband Brutus had been conquered and slain at Philippi, because steel was not given you, did not hesitate to swallow burning coals with your mouth, imitating with a woman's spirit the manly end of your father. But I know not whether this be the braver, that he was consumed by a usual, you by a new kind of death.

6e.1. There are foreign loves too, lawful, not overwhelmed by the obscurity of ignorance, of which it will be enough to have touched a few. How greatly Artemisia, queen of the nation of Caria, longed for her husband Mausolus, taken away by fate, it is a slight thing to argue from the magnificence of honours of every kind sought out, and of a monument advanced even to the seven wonders: for what should one either collect those things or speak of that famous mound, when she herself desired to become the living and breathing sepulchre of Mausolus, on the testimony of those who relate that she drank the bones of the dead man sprinkled in a drink?

6e.2. Queen Hypsicratea too loved her husband Mithridates with the reins of affection let loose, on whose account she counted it for a pleasure to change the special grace of her beauty into a manly guise: for, her hair cut, she accustomed herself to horse and arms, that she might the more easily share in his toils and dangers. Nay more, when he was conquered by Gnaeus Pompey and was fleeing through savage nations, she followed him with spirit and body alike untiring. Her so great fidelity, in harsh and difficult circumstances, was to Mithridates the greatest comfort and the most pleasant solace: for he believed himself to be wandering with home and household gods, his wife being in exile along with him.

6e.3. But why do I search Asia, why the immense solitudes of barbarian lands, why the lurking-places of the Pontic gulf, when Lacedaemon, the most splendid glory of all Greece, all but displays before our very eyes a special specimen of wifely fidelity, to be compared, by the admiration of the deed, with the very many and very great praises of its country? The Minyae, whose origin, conceived from the famous number of Jason's allies on the island of the Lemnians, had through the changes of several ages remained in a fixed abode, driven out by the Pelasgian . . . , in need of another's help, occupied the lofty ridges of the Taygetus mountains as suppliants. These the Spartan state, out of regard for the sons of Tyndareus—for in that ship of noble fame the pair of brothers, destined for the stars, had shone forth—led down thence and admitted to its laws and privileges. But this so great benefit they turned into an injury to the well-deserving city by aspiring to the kingship. Therefore, shut up in the public prison, they were kept for capital punishment. And when, by the old custom of the Lacedaemonians, they were to suffer it by night, their wives, of illustrious blood there, as though to speak with their husbands who were about to perish, having obtained access from the guards, entered the prison, and, their clothing exchanged under the pretence of grief, their heads veiled, suffered them to depart. In this place what else should I add than that they were worthy that the Minyae should wed them?

7.pr. ON FRIENDSHIP. Let us now contemplate the bond of friendship, powerful and most strong and in no part inferior to the strength of blood—even surer and more proven than it, in that the latter is contracted by the lot of birth, a work of chance, the former by a will begun upon each man's own solid judgement. And so you would more swiftly, without reproach, turn away a kinsman than a friend, because the one severance is not necessarily subject to the charge of injustice, the other necessarily to that of fickleness: for, since the future life of a man encircled by the protection of no friendship is destined to be desolate, so necessary an aid ought not to be rashly taken up, but, once rightly grasped, it is not fitting that it be spurned. But friends of sincere fidelity are recognized chiefly in adversity, in which whatever is rendered proceeds wholly from steadfast goodwill. The cultivation of prosperity is for the greater part paid out from flattery rather than affection, and certainly is suspect, as one always seeking more than it spends. To this is added that men of broken fortune the more desire the zeal of friends, whether for protection or for solace: for joyful and prosperous affairs, since they are cherished by divine support, less need human aid. The memory of posterity, therefore, more tenaciously lays hold of the names of those who did not desert the adverse chances of their friends than of those who accompanied the prosperous course of life. No one speaks of the intimates of Sardanapalus; Orestes is almost better known by his friend Pylades than by his father Agamemnon, since indeed the friendship of those wasted away in the partnership of delights and luxury, while the comradeship of these, of a hard and harsh condition, shone forth by the very trial of their miseries. But why do I touch foreign matters, when domestic ones may first be used?

7.1. Tiberius Gracchus was thought to have been an enemy of his country, and not without desert, because he had preferred his own power to its safety. Yet how steadfast a friend, even in this so depraved purpose, he had in Gaius Blossius of Cumae, is worth knowing. Judged a public enemy, visited with the utmost punishment, despoiled of the honour of burial, he yet did not lack his goodwill: for when the senate had charged the consuls Rupilius and Laenas to punish, according to the custom of the ancestors, those who had agreed with Gracchus, and Blossius had come to Laelius—by whose counsel the consuls chiefly used—to entreat on his own behalf, and was using the excuse of his friendship, and Laelius had said: 'What? If Gracchus had ordered you to set fire to the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest, would you, on account of that friendship which you boast, have obeyed his will?' he said: 'Gracchus would never have ordered that.' Enough, nay even too much: for he dared to defend the character of one condemned by the agreement of the whole senate. But what follows is much bolder and much more perilous: for, pressed by the persistent questioning of Laelius, he stood in the same grade of steadfastness, and answered that he would do even this, if only Gracchus had assented. Who would have thought him to have been wicked, had he kept silent? Who would not have thought him even wise, had he spoken according to the necessity of the time? But Blossius would protect his safety neither by an honourable silence nor by a prudent speech, lest in any part he should desert the memory of an unfortunate friendship.

7.2. In the same house arise equally robust examples of steadfast friendship: for when the counsels and affairs of Gaius Gracchus were now laid low and ruined, and his whole conspiracy was being sought far and wide, only two friends, Pomponius and Laetorius, sheltered him, deserted of all help, by the opposition of their own bodies to the hostile weapons rushing from every side. Of these Pomponius, that he might the more easily escape, checked for some while the roused column of pursuers at the Trigeminal Gate in a most fierce fight, nor could be driven back alive, but, finished by many wounds, gave them passage over his own corpse—unwilling, I believe, even after death. But Laetorius took his stand on the Sublician bridge and fenced it with the ardour of his spirit until Gracchus crossed, and, now overwhelmed by the force of the multitude, turning his sword upon himself, with a swift leap sought the depth of the Tiber, and the affection which Horatius Cocles had displayed on that bridge towards his whole country, he rendered, with voluntary death added, to a single friendship. How good soldiers Gracchus could have had, had they been willing to enter upon the way of life either of his father or of his maternal grandfather! For with what onset, with what perseverance of spirit Blossius and Pomponius and Laetorius would have aided their trophies and triumphs—the comrades, so strenuous, of frenzied attempts, having followed, with sinister auspices indeed, the condition of friendship, but the more wretched, the surer examples of friendship faithfully cultivated.

7.3. But Lucius Reginus, if he be examined for the sincerity due to a public office, is to be torn by the reproach of posterity; if he be appraised by the faithful pledge of friendship, is to be left in the best harbour of a praiseworthy conscience: for as tribune of the plebs he freed from public custody Caepio, who had been cast into prison because by his fault our army was thought to have been destroyed by the Cimbri and Teutones, mindful of an old and close friendship; nor, content to have acted thus as a friend, he became too the companion of his flight. O great and unconquerable divinity, friendship! When on the one side the commonwealth laid its hand upon him, on the other your right hand drew him, and it demanded that he should be willing to be sacrosanct, while you proclaimed exile—so winning is the command you use—he preferred punishment to honour.

7.4. Admirable is this work of yours, but what follows is somewhat more praiseworthy: for recognize to what point you carried the steadfast affection of Volumnius towards his friend, without any injury to the commonwealth. He, of equestrian birth, when he had familiarly cultivated Marcus Lucullus, and Marcus Antonius had killed him because he had followed the party of Brutus and Cassius, amid great license to flee clung to his lifeless friend, poured out so far in tears and groans that by his excessive devotion he brought upon himself the cause of death: for on account of his special and persevering lamentation he was dragged to Antonius. After he stood in his sight, he said: 'Order me, commander, to be led straightway to the body of Lucullus and slain: for I ought not to survive him, now that he is consumed, since I was the author to him of his unfortunate service.' What is more faithful than this goodwill? He lightened the death of his friend by the hatred of an enemy, bound his own life by the charge of his counsel, and, that he might render the other more pitiable, made himself more hated. Nor did he find the ears of Antonius difficult, and, led whither he had wished, having eagerly kissed the right hand of Lucullus, he took up the head, which lay severed, and pressed it to his breast, and then offered his bent neck to the sword of the victor. Let Greece say that Theseus, abetting the wicked loves of Pirithous, committed himself to the realms of Father Dis: that is the telling of a vain man, the believing of a fool. To see the mingled blood of friends, and wounds interwoven with wounds, and death clinging to death—these are the true tokens of Roman friendship; those are lies, like to a portent, of a nation ready to invent.

7.5. Lucius Petronius too rightly claims a share of this praise: for to one who has dared a deed equal in the cultivation of friendship an equal portion of glory is to be assigned. Born in a very humble station, he had come, by the benefit of Publius Caelius, to the equestrian order and the pay of a splendid service. To him he showed a grateful spirit, with much fidelity, in that which fortune willed to be unhappy, because it had not befallen him to show it in a joyful matter. Caelius had been set in charge of Placentia under the consul Octavius. When it was captured by Cinna's army, and he, now elderly and afflicted with grave ill health, that he might not come into the power of the enemy, fled for help to the right hand of Petronius. He, having vainly tried to draw him from his begun resolve, killed him as he persevered in the same entreaties, and joined his own death to his slaying, lest, with him dead through whom he had obtained all the increase of his dignity, he should survive him. Thus the modesty of the one, the devotion of the other, furnished the cause.

7.6. To Petronius is to be joined Servius Terentius, although it did not befall him, as he had wished, to perish on behalf of his friend: for he ought to be appraised by his distinguished undertaking, not by the unsuccessful outcome, because, as far as lay in him, both he himself was slain and Decimus Brutus escaped the danger of death. Brutus, fleeing from Mutina, when he learned that horsemen sent by Antonius to kill him had arrived, was trying in a certain place to steal away from the darkness the breath owed to just punishment, and, an irruption having already been made there, Terentius, by a faithful falsehood, the very obscurity aiding him, pretended that he was Brutus, and offered his own body to the horsemen to be slaughtered. But, recognized by Furius, to whom the office of Brutus' avenging had been entrusted, by his own death he could not avert his friend's punishment. Thus, against his will, fortune compelling, he lived.

7.7. From this rough and sad face of obstinate friendship let us pass over to the glad and serene one, and, calling it forth thence, where all had been filled with tears, groaning, and slaughter, let us place it in that dwelling of happiness of which it is the more worthy, shining with favour, honour, and most abundant wealth. Arise therefore from that seat which is believed to be dedicated to the shades of the holy—on this side you, Decimus Laelius, on that, Marcus Agrippa, the one of men, the other of gods, having drawn by sure judgement and prosperous omens the greatest friend—and the whole flock of the blessed throng, which under your leadership accomplished the venerable service of sincere fidelity, laden with praises and rewards, draw forth with you into the light: for your steadfast spirits, your strenuous services, your unconquerable silence, and, on behalf of the dignity and safety of friends, your perpetual watch and station of goodwill, and again the most plentiful fruits of these things, a later age, beholding, will the more gladly and the more religiously labour in the cultivation of the right of friendship.

7e.1. The mind clings to domestic matters, but the candour of the Roman city urges us to relate the good deeds of foreigners too. Damon and Phintias, initiated in the mysteries of Pythagorean wisdom, had joined between themselves so faithful a friendship that, when Dionysius of Syracuse wished to kill one of them, and he had obtained from him time, that before he perished he might go home and set his affairs in order, the other did not hesitate to give himself as surety to the tyrant for his return. He was freed from the peril of death who but lately had had his neck set beneath the sword: to the same had bared his own head one to whom it was permitted to live secure. Therefore all, and chiefly Dionysius, watched for the outcome of the new and doubtful affair. Then, the appointed day drawing near, and the man not returning, each one condemned for folly so rash a sponsor. But he kept declaring that he feared nothing concerning the steadfastness of his friend. At that same moment and hour appointed by Dionysius, the man who had accepted came up. The tyrant, marvelling at the spirit of both, remitted the punishment of fidelity, and besides asked them to receive him into the partnership of their friendship as a third grade of the comradeship, to be cherished with mutual goodwill. Such are the powers of friendship: they could engender contempt of death, extinguish the sweetness of life, soften cruelty, turn hatred into love, and requite punishment with a benefit. To which almost as much veneration is owed as to the rites of the immortal gods: for in those is contained the public safety, in these the private, and as the temples of those are sacred dwellings, so the faithful breasts of these men are, as it were, certain shrines filled with a holy spirit.

7e.2. That it is so, King Alexander felt. Having gained the camp of Darius, in which were all his kinsfolk, with Hephaestion, his most dear, guarding his side, he came to address them. At his arrival the mother of Darius, restored, raised her head, prostrate on the ground, and, paying homage to Hephaestion, because he excelled both in stature and in beauty, after the manner of the Persians saluted him as Alexander. Then, warned of her error, in the utmost trepidation she sought words of excuse. To her Alexander said: 'There is no reason why you should be confounded at this name: for this man too is Alexander.' Whom should we first congratulate? Him who was willing to say this, or him to whom it befell to hear it? For a king of the greatest spirit, who now embraced the whole world either by his victories or by his hope, shared himself with his companion in so few words. O gift of a famous voice, glorious alike to the giver and to the receiver! Which privately too I deservedly venerate, having experienced the most ready goodwill towards me of a most illustrious and most eloquent man. Nor do I fear that it ill suits me that my Pompey should be the equal of Alexander, when to him his Hephaestion was a second Alexander. But I should indeed be liable to a most grave charge, had I passed over the examples of steadfast and kind friendship without any mention of him, in whose spirit, as in the breast of most loving parents, the gladder state of my life flourished, the sadder found rest; from whom I received the increases of all advantages, freely offered; through whom I stood the safer against misfortunes; who rendered our studies, by his leadership and auspices, more bright and more eager. And so I fed the envy of certain men by the loss of the best of friends, evidently because I had tormented—not, indeed, by my own desert—their . . . , having shared my favour, however great it was, with those who wished to use it. But no happiness is so modest that it can escape the teeth of malice. And into what retreat would you flee from certain men, or with what fillets of pity would you soften them, that they should not rejoice and exult at others' evils as at their own goods? They are rich by others' losses, wealthy by calamities, immortal by funerals. But to what extent they may, themselves as yet without experience of their own misfortunes, insult at others' troubles, let the best avenger of insolence, the variety of the human condition, see to it.

8.1. ON GENEROSITY. Let our work, carried by a dutiful digression to a grief of my own, be recalled to its own order, and let us be free for the commemoration of generosity. Of which there are two especially approved springs, true judgement and honourable goodwill: for when it arises from these, then at last is its reckoning sound. But to a gift itself its very magnitude indeed wins favour, yet opportunity wins it somewhat more effectively: for to the price of the thing the moment of occasion adds an inestimable weight. Which made a small sum of money disbursed by Fabius Maximus, so many ages ago, praiseworthy down to this very time. He had received captives from Hannibal, a bargain of money having been struck. When these were not furnished by the senate, having sent his son into the city, he sold the farm, the only one he possessed, and at once paid out its price to Hannibal—small, if it be reckoned upon the counters, since indeed it came to seven iugera, and these too pledged in Pupinia; but, if it be reckoned by the spirit of one giving freely, greater than all money: for he preferred that he himself should be destitute of patrimony rather than his country of good faith, and indeed with the greater commendation, because it is a surer token of ready zeal to strive beyond one's powers than to use one's powers with ease: for the one furnishes what he can, the other even more than he can.

8.2. And so a woman of the same time, Busa by name, the richest of the Apulian region, may indeed deservedly receive testimony of generosity, but would not compare her surpassing wealth with the straits of the Fabian estate: for although she most kindly sustained with food, within the walls of Canusium, about ten thousand of our citizens, the remnants of the battle of Cannae, yet, the condition of her fortunes being safe, she showed herself munificent to the Roman people; Fabius, in honour of his country, changed poverty into destitution.

8.3. In Quintus Considius too generosity of the most wholesome example, and not without no small fruit to himself, has been noted. He, when the commonwealth had been so thrown into confusion by the frenzy of Catiline that not even by the wealthy could the moneys owed be paid to creditors, on account of the tumult, the prices of possessions being diminished, when he had a sum of fifteen million sesterces out at interest, suffered none of his debtors to be dunned by his agents either for the principal or for the interest, and, as far as lay in himself, mitigated the bitterness of the public confusion by his private tranquillity, attesting opportunely and wonderfully that he was a lender of his own money, not of the citizens' blood: for those who now especially delight in money-dealing, when they have brought home bloody money, will learn with what wicked joy they exult, if they do not disdain to read diligently the senatorial decree by which thanks were given to Considius.

8.4. The Roman people now seems to me to have long been complaining that, while I pursue the munificence of individuals, I keep silent about its own: for it pertains to its highest praise that there be recognized what spirit it showed towards kings and cities and nations, because every glory of a distinguished deed grows green again in itself by frequent memory. Asia, taken in war, it handed over to King Attalus to be possessed by way of a gift, believing that the empire would be the more lofty and the more glorious for our city if it had preferred to lay up the richest and most pleasant part of the world among its benefits rather than its profits. The victory itself was a more fortunate gift, because to have seized much could have had envy, to have bestowed so much could not lack glory.

8.5. But the heavenly spirit of that Roman generosity no writings will pursue with sufficiently worthy praises: for, Philip, king of Macedonia, having been overcome, when all Greece had assembled at the Isthmian spectacle, Titus Quintius Flamininus, silence having been made at the signal of the trumpet, ordered these words to be recited by a herald: 'The Senate and People of Rome, and Titus Quintius Flamininus the commander, order that all the cities of Greece which were under the sway of King Philip be free and exempt from tribute.' When these things were heard, men, struck with the greatest and most unexpected joy, at first kept silent, believing as it were that they had not heard what they had heard. Then, at the repeated proclamation of the herald, they filled the heavens with so great an eagerness of shouting that it is certainly agreed that the birds which were flying overhead, astonished and terrified, fell down. It would have been the deed of a great spirit to have stripped servitude from the persons of as many captives as the Roman people then bestowed liberty upon noblest and most opulent cities. And it pertains to its majesty that there be commemorated not only what it kindly bestowed, but also what it felt when another bestowed: for as there is the commendation of deserved praise, so here of praise repaid.

8e.1. Hiero, king of Syracuse, hearing of the disaster by which the Romans had been afflicted at Lake Trasimene, sent as a gift to our city three hundred thousand pecks of wheat and two hundred thousand of barley and two hundred and forty pounds of gold. And, not ignorant of the modesty of our ancestors, lest they should be unwilling to accept the gold, he fashioned it into the shape of Victory, that, moved by religion, he might compel them to use his munificence—liberal first in the willingness of sending, again in the foresight of providing against its being sent back.

8e.2. I shall append to this man Gillias of Acragas, who, it is agreed, possessed almost the very heart of generosity itself. He was eminent in wealth, but much richer in spirit even than in riches, and always occupied in disbursing rather than in gathering money, so much so that his house was believed to be, as it were, a certain workshop of munificence: for from there were built monuments fitted for public uses, from there spectacles pleasing to the eyes of the people were exhibited, from there magnificent provisions of banquets and aids for the failing grain-supply arose. And when these things were disbursed to all in common, privately there were disbursed sustenance to those labouring under want, dowries to maidens pressed by poverty, aids to those shattered by the onset of losses. Guests too, whether in his city dwelling or in his rustic roofs, were most kindly received and, adorned with various gifts, sent away. At one time indeed he fed and clothed five hundred horsemen of the Geloans, driven by the force of a storm into his possessions. Why say more? You would call it not some mortal, but the kindly bosom of propitious Fortune. Therefore what Gillias possessed was, as it were, the common patrimony of all. For whose safety and increase both the Acragantine state and the neighbouring regions watched in their prayers. Set on the contrary side chests barred with inexorable locks: would you not think that expenditure somewhat more eminent than this hoarding?