On the Good Life (Penguin Classics)
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Language: English
Pages: 384
ISBN: 0140442448
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
For the great Roman orator and statesman Cicero, 'the good life' was at once a life of contentment and one of moral virtue - and the two were inescapably intertwined. This volume brings together a wide range of his reflections upon the importance of moral integrity in the search for happiness. In essays that are articulate, meditative and inspirational, Cicero presents his views upon the significance of friendship and duty to state and family, and outlines a clear system of practical ethics that is at once simple and universal. These works offer a timeless reflection upon the human condition, and a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the greatest thinkers of Ancient Rome.
40 Suetonius, 233 Sulla, see Cornelius C. Sulpicius Galba, 323 Ser. Sulpicius Galba, 250, 257, 317f., 323f., 331 C. Sulpicius Galus, 180, 187, 226, 318 Q. Sulpicius Galus, 318 P. Sulpicius Rufus, 146, 176, 231f., 244f., 259f., 270, 273, 281ff., 291, 308f., 332, 335 Ser. Sulpicius Rufus, 157 Syene (Assuan), 349 Syracuse, 48, 82ff., 86f., 105, 228, 268, 320 Syria, 105, 233, 343 Tarquinii, 109 Tarquinius Priscus, 109 Tarquinius Superbus, 46, 192, 204f., 249 Tauris (Crimea), 190
and Evil, I, 3, 10, III, 2, 5, Tusculans, II, 15, 35, III, 5, 10. 1. On Duties, I, 2, 6. 2. Tusculans, V, 11, 33. 1. Fragment 114 (G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn, 1983, p. 211 no. 250). 2. Tusculans, V, 4, 10; cf. Academics, I, 1, 3, I, 4, 15. 3. Letters to Atticus, II, 3, 3. 4. ‘Wellbeing’ or ‘welfare’ is sometimes preferred as a translation: cf. H. Sidgwick, History of Ethics, Macmillan, 6th edn, reprinted
merely to look at verbal points but should examine the substance of the matter which lies behind them. CICERO: Ah, you’re trying to refute me by quoting things I’ve said or written myself. That’s confronting me with documents that have already been sealed!1 You can reserve that method for people who only argue according to fixed rules. But I live from one day to the next! If something strikes me as probable, I say it; and that is how, unlike everyone else, I remain a free agent. * All the
opinion, why good men feel for one another the kindly inclinations which nature has made the very wellspring of friendship. And these noble feelings are found in perfectly ordinary people. There is nothing inhuman or uncooperative or stand-offish about goodness. It protects whole nations and looks after them extremely well, which it could certainly never do if it disdained the affectionate feelings of the man in the street. Anyone who wants to allege that a friendship is formed for the sake of
made a worse fool of me than all the old fools of the comic stage.’1 For in plays, too, the silliest characters are always the old men who have so little sense that they always believe everything they are told. * But somehow or other I have drifted away from my theme. What I had proposed to talk about was friendship between good men, that is to say, wise men – wise, I mean, according to practical human standards. But instead I have started discussing friendships of a more trivial nature. So let