[42]
Should I, if I were to see you and Gabinius both
nailed to a cross, feel greater rejoicing at the laceration of your bodies,
than I do at the tearing to pieces of your reputations? Surely not: for
there is no punishment imaginable, which, owing to some accident or other,
even virtuous and brave men may not have inflicted on them. And this is what
even your Greek followers of pleasure say; men whom I wish you would listen
to in the spirit in which they deserve to be listened to; you would never have immersed yourself in such a vortex of wickedness.
But you listen to them in brothels, in scenes of adultery, in reveling and
drunkenness.
But they themselves those very men who define evil by pain, and good by
pleasure say that the wise man even if he were shut up in Phalaris's bull
and roasted by fire being placed under him would still say that it was
pleasant and would not allow himself to be moved the least from his
assertion. They insist upon it that the power of virtue is so great that it
is absolutely impossible for a virtuous man ever to be otherwise than happy.
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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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