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 the only beautiful men; if they be ever such beggars, they are the only rich men; if they be
 in slavery, they are kings. And as for all of us who are not wise men, they call away slaves,
 exiles, enemies, lunatics. They say that all offenses are equal; that every sin is an
 unpardonable crime; and that he does not commit a less crime who kills a cock if there was no
 need to do so, than the man who strangles his father. They say that a wise man never feels
 uncertain on any point never repents of anything, is never deceived in anything, and never
 alters his opinion. 
 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 Cato was tribune elect. 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.”