[23]
But, nevertheless, may I not pardon this in Postumus, who is not a man of
much learning, when I see that the very wisest men have fallen
into the same error? We have heard that that; great man, beyond all
comparison the most learned man that all Greece ever produced, Plato, was in
the greatest danger, and was exposed to the most treacherous designs by the
wickedness of Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, to whom be had entrusted
himself. We know that Callisthenes, a very learned man, the companion of
Alexander the Great, was slain by Alexander. We know that
Demetrius,—he, too, being a citizen of the free republic of
Athens, the affairs of which he had conducted with the greatest ability, and
being also a man eminent for, and deeply impressed with,
learning,—the one, I mean, who was surnamed Phalereus, was
deprived of his life in that selfsame kingdom of Egypt having had an asp
applied to his body.
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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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