[71]
And, in that poetry, any one
who pleases can see that fellow's way of life reflected as in a mirror. And
I would recite you much of it, which many men have read or heard, if I were
not afraid that even the kind of speech which I am indulging in at this
moment is at variance with the general usages of this place; and at the same
time, I do not wish to do any injury to the character of the man who wrote
it.
For if he had had better fortune in getting a pupil, perhaps he might have
turned out a more strict and dignified man himself; but chance has led him
into a habit of writing in this manner, very unworthy of a philosopher; if
at least philosophy does, as is reported, comprehend the whole system of
virtue, and duty, and living properly; and a man who professes it appears to
me to have taken on himself a very serious and difficult character.
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.