[38]
For there is no
action by which men make a nearer approach to the gods, than by conferring
safety on others. Fortune has no greater gifts for you than when it bestows
on you the ability—nature has no better endowment for you than
when it bestows on you the will, to save as many people us possible. The
cause of my client, perhaps, requires a longer speech than this a shorter
one would certainly be sufficient for a man of your natural disposition.
Wherefore, as I think it more desirable for you to converse, as it were,
with yourself, than for me or any one else to be speaking to you, I shall
now make an end. This only will I remind you of, that if you do grant this
protection to him who is absent, you will be giving it also to all these men
who are here present.
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.