Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Part 32

x.x.xVI. There is therefore some unquiet feeling in individuals, which either exults in pleasure or is crushed by annoyance.

[_The next is an incomplete sentence, and, as such, unintelligible_.]

The Phoenicians were the first who by their commerce, and by the merchandise which they carried, brought avarice and magnificence and insatiable degrees of everything into Greece.

Sardanapalus, the luxurious king of a.s.syria, of whom Tully, in the third book of his treatise on the Republic, says, "The notorious Sardanapalus, far more deformed by his vices than even by his name."

What is the meaning, then, of this absurd acceptation, unless some one wishes to make the whole of Athos a monument? For what is Athos or the vast Olympus? * * *

x.x.xVII. I will endeavor in the proper place to show it, according to the definitions of Cicero himself, in which, putting forth Scipio as the speaker, he has briefly explained what a commonwealth and what a republic is; adducing also many a.s.sertions of his own, and of those whom he has represented as taking part in that discussion, to the effect that the State of Rome was not such a commonwealth, because there has never been genuine justice in it. However, according to definitions which are more reasonable, it was a commonwealth in some degree, and it was better regulated by the more ancient than by the later Romans.

It is now fitting that I should explain, as briefly and as clearly as I can, what, in the second book of this work, I promised to prove, according to the definitions which Cicero, in his books on the Commonwealth, puts into the mouth of Scipio, arguing that the Roman State was never a commonwealth; for he briefly defines a commonwealth as a state of the people; the people as an a.s.sembly of the mult.i.tude, united by a common feeling of right, and a community of interests. What he calls a common feeling of right he explains by discussion, showing in this way that a commonwealth cannot proceed without justice. Where, therefore, there is no genuine justice, there can be no right, for that which is done according to right is done justly; and what is done unjustly cannot be done according to right, for the unjust regulations of men are not to be called or thought rights; since they themselves call that right (_jus_) which flows from the source of justice: and they say that that a.s.sertion which is often made by some persons of erroneous sentiments, namely, that that is right which is advantageous to the most powerful, is false. Wherefore, where there is no true justice there can be no company of men united by a common feeling of right; therefore there can be no people (_populus_), according to that definition of Scipio or Cicero: and if there be no people, there can be no state of the people, but only of a mob such as it may be, which is not worthy of the name of a people. And thus, if a commonwealth is a state of a people, and if that is not a people which is not united by a common feeling of right, and if there is no right where there is no justice, then the undoubted inference is, that where there is no justice there is no commonwealth. Moreover, justice is that virtue which gives every one his own.

No war can be undertaken by a just and wise state unless for faith or self-defence. This self-defence of the State is enough to insure its perpetuity, and this perpetuity is what all patriots desire. Those afflictions which even the hardiest spirits smart under--poverty, exile, prison, and torment--private individuals seek to escape from by an instantaneous death. But for states, the greatest calamity of all is that of death, which to individuals appears a refuge. A state should be so const.i.tuted as to live forever. For a commonwealth there is no natural dissolution as there is for a man, to whom death not only becomes necessary, but often desirable. And when a state once decays and falls, it is so utterly revolutionized, that, if we may compare great things with small, it resembles the final wreck of the universe.

All wars undertaken without a proper motive are unjust. And no war can be reputed just unless it be duly announced and proclaimed, and if it be not preceded by a rational demand for rest.i.tution.

Our Roman Commonwealth, by defending its allies, has got possession of the world.

INTRODUCTION TO THE FOURTH BOOK,

BY THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATOR.

In this fourth book Cicero treats of morals and education, and the use and abuse of stage entertainments. We retain nothing of this important book save a few scattered fragments, the beauty of which fills us with the greater regret for the pa.s.sages we have lost.

BOOK IV.

FRAGMENTS.

I. * * * Since mention has been made of the body and of the mind, I will endeavor to explain the theory of each as well as the weakness of my understanding is able to comprehend it--a duty which I think it the more becoming in me to undertake, because Marcus Tullius, a man of singular genius, after having attempted to perform it in the fourth book of his treatise on the Commonwealth, compressed a subject of wide extent within narrow limits, only touching lightly on all the princ.i.p.al points. And that there might be no excuse alleged for his not having followed out this topic, he himself has a.s.sured us that he was not wanting either in inclination or in anxiety to do so; for, in the first book of his treatise on Laws, when he was touching briefly on the same subject, he speaks thus: "This topic Scipio, in my opinion, has sufficiently discussed in those books which you have read."

And the mind itself, which sees the future, remembers the past.

Well did Marcus Tullius say, In truth, if there is no one who would not prefer death to being changed into the form of some beast, although he were still to retain the mind of a man, how much more wretched is it to have the mind of a beast in the form of a man! To me this fate appears as much worse than the other as the mind is superior to the body.

Tullius says somewhere that he does not think the good of a ram and of Publius Africa.n.u.s identical.

And also by its being interposed, it causes shade and night, which is adapted both to the numbering of days and to rest from labor.

And as in the autumn he has opened the earth to receive seeds, in winter relaxed it that it may digest them, and by the ripening powers of summer softened some and burned up others.

When the shepherds use * * * for cattle.

Cicero, in the fourth book of his Commonwealth, uses the word "armentum," and "armentarius," derived from it.

II. The great law of just and regular subordination is the basis of political prosperity. There is much advantage in the harmonious succession of ranks and orders and cla.s.ses, in which the suffrages of the knights and the senators have their due weight. Too many have foolishly desired to destroy this inst.i.tution, in the vain hope of receiving some new largess, by a public decree, out of a distribution of the property of the n.o.bility.

III. Consider, now, how wisely the other provisions have been adopted, in order to secure to the citizens the benefits of an honest and happy life; for that is, indeed, the grand object of all political a.s.sociation, and that which every government should endeavor to procure for the people, partly by its inst.i.tutions, and partly by its laws.

Consider, in the first place, the national education of the people--a matter on which the Greeks have expended much labor in vain, and which is the only point on which Polybius, who settled among us, accuses the negligence of our inst.i.tutions. For our countrymen have thought that education ought not to be fixed, nor regulated by laws, nor be given publicly and uniformly to all cla.s.ses of society. For[347] * * *

According to Tully, who says that men going to serve in the army have guardians a.s.signed to them, by whom they are governed the first year.

IV. [In our ancient laws, young men were prohibited from appearing]

naked in the public baths, so far back were the principles of modesty traced by our ancestors. Among the Greeks, on the contrary, what an absurd system of training youth is exhibited in their gymnasia! What a frivolous preparation for the labors and hazards of war! what indecent spectacles, what impure and licentious amours are permitted! I do not speak only of the Eleans and Thebans, among whom, in all love affairs, pa.s.sion is allowed to run into shameless excesses; but the Spartans, while they permit every kind of license to their young men, save that of violation, fence off, by a very slight wall, the very exception on which they insist, besides other crimes which I will not mention.

Then Laelius said: I see, my Scipio, that on the subject of the Greek inst.i.tutions, which you censure, you prefer attacking the customs of the most renowned peoples to contending with your favorite Plato, whose name you have avoided citing, especially as * * *

V. So that Cicero, in his treatise on the Commonwealth, says that it was a reproach to young men if they had no lovers.

Not only as at Sparta, where boys learn to steal and plunder.

And our master Plato, even more than Lycurgus, who would have everything to be common, so that no one should be able to call anything his own property.

I would send him to the same place whither he sends Homer, crowned with chaplets and anointed with perfumes, banis.h.i.+ng him from the city which he is describing.

VI. The judgment of the censor inflicts scarcely anything more than a blush on the man whom he condemns. Therefore as all that adjudication turns solely on the name (_nomen_), the punishment is called ignominy.

Nor should a prefect be set over women, an officer who is created among the Greeks; but there should be a censor to teach husbands to manage their wives.

So the discipline of modesty has great power. All women abstain from wine.

And also if any woman was of bad character, her relations used not to kiss her.

So petulance is derived from asking (_petendo_); wantonness (_procacitas_) from _procando_, that is, from demanding.

VII. For I do not approve of the same nation being the ruler and the farmer of lands. But both in private families and in the affairs of the Commonwealth I look upon economy as a revenue.

Faith (_fides_) appears to me to derive its name from that being done (_fit_) which is said.

In a citizen of rank and n.o.ble birth, caressing manners, display, and ambition are marks of levity.

Examine for a while the books on the Republic, and learn that good men know no bound or limit in consulting the interests of their country. See in that treatise with what praises frugality, and continency, and fidelity to the marriage tie, and chaste, honorable, and virtuous manners are extolled.

VIII. I marvel at the elegant choice, not only of the facts, but of the language. If they dispute (_jurgant_). It is a contest between well-wishers, not a quarrel between enemies, that is called a dispute (_jurgium_),

Therefore the law considers that neighbors dispute (_jurgare_) rather than quarrel (_litigare_) with one another.

The bounds of man's care and of man's life are the same; so by the pontifical law the sanct.i.ty of burial * * *