For L. Murena (61-65)

And since we are not to address this speech either to an ignorant multitude, or to any assembly of rustics, I will speak a little boldly about the pursuits of educated men, which are both well known and agreeable to you, O judges, and to me. Learn then, O judges, that all these good qualities, divine and splendid as they are, which we behold in Marcus Cato, are his own peculiar attributes. The qualities which we sometimes wish for in him, are not all those which are implanted in a man by nature, but some of them are such as are derived from education. For there was once a man of the greatest genius, whose name was Zeno, the imitators of whose example are called Stoics. His opinions and precepts are of this sort: that a wise man is never influenced by interest; never pardons any man's fault; that no one is merciful except a fool and a trifler; that it is not the part of a man to be moved or pacified by entreaties; that wise men, let them be ever so deformed, are

All these opinions that most acute man, Marcus Cato, having been induced by learned advocates of them has embraced; and that, not for the sake of arguing about them as is the case with most men, but of living by them. Do the Publicans ask for anything? “Take care that their influence has no weight.” Do any suppliants, miserable and unhappy men, come to us? “You will be a wicked and infamous man if you do anything from being influenced by mercy.” Does any one confess that he has done wrong, and beg pardon for his wrong doing? “To pardon is a crime of the deepest dye.”—“But it is a trifling offence.” “All offences are equal.” You say something. “That is a fixed and unalterable principle.” “You are influenced not by the facts, but by your opinion.” “A wise man never forms mere opinions.” “You have made a mistake in some point.” He thinks that you are abusing him.—And in accordance with these principles of his are the following assertions: “I said in the senate, that I would prosecute one of the candidates for the consulship.” “You said that when you were angry.” “A wise man never is angry.” “But you said it for some temporary purpose.” “It is the act,” says he, “of a worthless man to deceive by a lie; it is a disgraceful act to alter one's opinion; to be moved by entreaties is wickedness; to pity any one is an enormity.”

But our philosophers, (for I confess, O Cato, that I too, in my youth, distrusting my own abilities, sought assistance from learning,) our philosophers, I say, men of the school of Plato and Aristotle, men of soberness and moderation, say that private interest does sometimes have weight even with a wise man. They say that it does become a virtuous man to feel pity; that there are different gradations of offences, and different degrees of punishment appropriate to each; that a man with every proper regard for firmness may pardon offences; that even the wise man himself has sometimes nothing more than opinion to go upon, without absolute certainty, that he is sometimes angry, that he is sometimes influenced and pacified by entreaty that he sometimes does change an opinion which he may have expressed when it is better to do so, that he sometimes abandons his previous opinions altogether, and that all his virtues are tempered by a certain moderation

If any chance, O Cato, had conducted endowed with your existing natural disposition to those tutors, you would not indeed have been a better man than you are, not a braver one, nor more temperate, nor more just than you are, (for that is not possible,) but you would have been a little more inclined to lenity; you would not when you were not induced by any enmity, or provoked by any personal injury, accuse a most virtuous man, a man of the highest rank and the greatest integrity; you would consider that as fortune had entrusted the guardianship of the same year to you [*] and to Murena, that you were connected with him by some certain political union; and the severe things which you have said in the senate you would either not have said, or you would have guarded against their being applied to him, or you would have interpreted them in the mildest sense.

And even you yourself, (at least that is my opinion and expectation,) excited as you are at present by the impetuosity of your disposition and elated as you are both by the vigour of our natural character and by your confidence in your own ability, and inflamed as you are by your recent study of all these precepts, will find practice modify them and time and increasing years soften and humanise you. In truth, those tutors and teachers of virtue, whom you think so much of appear to me themselves to have carried their definitions of duties somewhat further than is agreeable to nature, and it would be better if, when we had in theory pushed our principles to extremities, yet in practice we stopped at what was expedient. “Forgive nothing.” Say rather, forgive some things, but not everything. “Do nothing for the sake of private influence.” Certainly resist private influence when virtue and good faith require you to do so. “Do not be moved by pity.” Certainly if it is to extinguish all impartiality; nevertheless, there is some credit due to humanity. “Abide by your own opinion.”