[76]
And in order to put a violent end to the
reports which had arisen of his luxury and inactivity,—(what he
did, he did in fact greatly against my will, and in spite of my strongest
remonstrances, but still he did it,)—he instituted a prosecution
against a friend of mine for bribery and corruption. And after he is
acquitted he pursues him still, drags him back before the court, refuses to
be guided by any one of us, and is far more violent than I approve of. But I
am not speaking of wisdom,—which indeed does not belong to men of
his age,—I am speaking of his ardent spirit, of his desire for
victory, of the eagerness of his soul in the pursuit of glory. Those desires
indeed in men of our age ought to have become more limited and moderate, but
in young men, as in herbs, they show what ripeness of virtue and what great
crops are likely to reward our industry. In truth, youths of great ability
have always required rather to be restrained from the pursuit of glory, than
to be spurred on to it: more things required to be pruned away from that
age,—if indeed, it deserves distinction for ability and
genius,—than to be implanted in it.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
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.