[112]
Indeed, such diversity 1 of character carries with it so great significance
that suicide may be for one man a duty, for another
[under the same circumstances] a crime. Did
Marcus Cato find himself in one predicament, and
were the others, who surrendered to Caesar in
Africa, in another? And yet, perhaps, they would
have been condemned, if they had taken their lives;
for their mode of life had been less austere and
their characters more pliable. But Cato had been
endowed by nature with an austerity beyond belief,
and he himself had strengthened it by unswerving
consistency and had remained ever true to his purpose and fixed resolve; and it was for him to die
rather than to look upon the face of a tyrant.
1 The same course may be right for one, wrong for another.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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