This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[47]
For what reason can there be, O conscript
fathers, why we should not wish him to arrive at the highest honors at as early
an age as possible? For when, by the laws fixing the age at which men might be
appointed to the different magistracies, our ancestors fixed a more mature age
for the consulship, they were influenced by fears of the precipitation of youth;
Caius Caesar at his first entrance into life, has shown us that, in the case of
his eminent and unparalleled virtue, we have no need to wait for the progress of
age. Therefore our ancestors, those old men in the most ancient times, had no
laws regulating the age for the different offices; it was ambition which caused
them to be passed many years afterwards, in order that there might be among men
of the same age different steps for arriving at honors And it has often happened
that a disposition of great natural virtue has been lost before it had any
opportunity of benefiting the republic
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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.