This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
[9]
Now as for your
saying, Fannius, that so great merit is ascribed
to me—merit such as I neither admit nor claim
—you are very kind; but it seems to me that your
estimate of Cato is scarcely high enough. For
either no man was wise—which really I think is the
better view—or, if anyone, it was he. Putting aside
all other proof, consider how he bore the death of
his son!1 remembered the case of Paulus, and I
had been a constant witness of the fortitude of
Gallus, but their sons died in boyhood, while Cato's
son died in the prime of life when his reputation was
assured.
1 Cicero admired the stoical parent (e.g. Fabius, in C.M. 12 Cato, here and in C.M. 84), but on the death of his only daughter about eighteen months before this essay was written Cicero's grief was unrestrained.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.