[22]
and it is not strange that while he is
surveying at the same time both the things which are past, and those which seem to be
impending; when he alone has, the authority to establish peace, and the power of
carrying on war; when all are looking to him alone, and he alone is directing all
things; when he is occupied incessantly by such numerous and such important affairs that
he cannot breathe freely, it is not strange, I say, if he fails to notice some things;
especially when so many men are watching his, busy condition, and catch their
opportunity of doing something of this sort the moment he looks away. To this is added,
that although he is fortunate, as indeed he is, yet no man can have such good fortune,
as in a vast household to have no one, whether slave or freedman, of worthless
character.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.