[13]
Who was ever more acceptable at one time to most illustrious men? who was
more intimate with the very basest? What citizen was there at times who took
a better part than he did? who was there at other times a fouler enemy to
this state? Who was more debased in his pleasures? who was more patient in
undergoing labours? who was more covetous as regards his rapacity? who more
prodigal in squandering? And besides all this, there were, O judges, these
marvellous qualities in that man, that he was able to embrace many men in
his friendship, to preserve their regard by attention, to share with every
one what he had, to assist all his friends in their necessities with money,
with influence, with his personal toil, even with his own crimes and
audacity, if need were; to keep his nature under restraint and to guide it
according to the requirements of the time, and to turn and twist it hither
and thither; to live strictly when in company with the morose, merrily with
the cheerful, seriously with the old, courteously with the young,
audaciously with the criminal, and luxuriously with the profligate.
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, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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.