[23]
Being a
very learned man, he used to praise philosophers,—I don't know
which, and indeed he could not tell their names himself;—but still
he used to praise those above all others who were said to be beyond all the
rest the admirers and panegyrists of pleasures: of what sort of
pleasure,—of pleasure enjoyed at what times and in what manner he
never inquired but the name itself he devoured with all the energy of his
mind and body. And he used to say that those same philosophers were right
when they said that wise men do everything for the sake of themselves, that
no man in his senses has any business to trouble himself about the
government of the republic; that nothing is better than a life of ease, full
of, and loaded with, all sorts of pleasures and he used to say that those
men who said that men ought to regard their own dignity, and to consult the
interests of the republic, and to have a regard in every action of life to
duty and not to advantage, that men ought to undergo dangers on behalf of
their country, and to encounter wounds and to seek even death for its sake,
were crazy and mad.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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