Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
which you have remaining, and a most vicious one it is.
XXXV. Scipio replied: I am well acquainted, my Mummius, with your
decided antipathy to the democratical system. And, although, we may
speak of it with rather more indulgence than you are accustomed to
accord it, I must certainly agree with you, that of all the three
particular forms of government, none is less commendable than
democracy.
I do not agree with you, however, when you would imply that aristocracy
is preferable to royalty. If you suppose that wisdom governs the State,
is it not as well that this wisdom should reside in one monarch as in
many nobles?
But we are led away by a certain incorrectness of terms in a discussion
like the present. When we pronounce the word "aristocracy," which, in
Greek, signifies the government of the best men, what can be conceived
more excellent? For what can be thought better than the best? But when,
on the other hand, the title "king" is mentioned, we begin to imagine a
tyrant; as if a king must be necessarily unjust. But we are not
speaking of an unjust king when we are examining the true nature of
royal authority. To this name of king, therefore, do but attach the
idea of a Romulus, a Numa, a Tullus, and perhaps you will be less
severe to the monarchical form of constitution.
_Mummius_. Have you, then, no commendation at all for any kind of
democratical government?
_Scipio._ Why, I think some democratical forms less objectionable than
others; and, by way of illustration, I will ask you what you thought of
the government in the isle of Rhodes, where we were lately together;
did it appear to you a legitimate and rational constitution?
_Mummius_. It did, and not much liable to abuse.
_Scipio._ You say truly. But, if you recollect, it was a very
extraordinary experiment. All the inhabitants were alternately senators
and citizens. Some months they spent in their senatorial functions, and
some months they spent in their civil employments. In both they
exercised judicial powers; and in the theatre and the court, the same
men judged all causes, capital and not capital. And they had as much
influence, and were of as much importance as * * *
FRAGMENTS.
XXXVI. 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 Assyria, 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? * * *
XXXVII. 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 assertions 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 assembly of the
multitude, 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 assertion 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 constituted 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 restitution.
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
passages 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 principal points. And that there might be no excuse
alleged for his not having followed out this topic, he
himself has assured 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 Africanus 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 classes, in which the suffrages of
the knights and the senators have their due weight. Too many have
foolishly desired to destroy this institution, in the vain hope of
receiving some new largess, by a public decree, out of a distribution
of the property of the nobility.
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
association, and that which every government should endeavor to procure
for the people, partly by its institutions, 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 institutions. For our countrymen have thought that
education ought not to be fixed, nor regulated by laws, nor be given
publicly and uniformly to all classes of society. For[347] * * *
According to Tully, who says that men going to serve in the
army have guardians assigned 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,
passion 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
institutions, 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