[39]
Some one will say, “Is this then the discipline which you enforce?
Is this the way you train up young men? Was this the object with which a
parent recommended his son to you and delivered him to you, that he might
devote his youth to love and pleasure, and that you might defend this manner
of life and these pursuits?”
If, O judges, any one was of such vigour of mind, and of a natural
disposition so formed for virtue and continence as to reject all pleasures,
and to dedicate the whole course of his life to labour of body and to
wholesome training of his mind, a man who took no delight in rest or
relaxation, or the pursuits of those of his own age, or games, or banquets,
who thought nothing in life worth wishing for, except what was connected
with glory and with dignity, that man I consider furnished and endowed with
good qualities which may be called godlike. Of this class I consider were
those great men, the Camilli, the Fabricii, the Curii and all those men who
have achieved such mighty exploits with inadequate means. But these examples
of virtue are not only not found in our practice, but they occur but rarely,
even in books.
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