[39]
do we not regard the precepts of the Seven
Wise Men as so many rules of life? If an adulteress is on her trial for poisoning, is she not already
to be regarded as condemned by the judgment of
Marcus Cato, who asserted that every adulteress
was as good as a poisoner? As for reflexions drawn
from the poets, not only speeches, but even the
works of the philosophers, are full of them; for
although the philosophers think everything inferior to their own precepts and writings, they
have not thought it beneath their dignity to
quote numbers of lines from the poets to lend
authority to their statements.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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