Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, On the Nature of the Gods, and On the Commonwealth

these studies pursued, though even then those who did display the greatest abilities in that field were not very inferior to the Greeks. Do we imagine that if it had been considered commendable in Fabius Known as Fabius Pictor, an early Roman painter., a man of the highest rank, to paint, we should not have had many Polycleti and Parrhasii Famous Greek painters and sculptors.? Honor nourishes art, and glory is the spur to all study; while those studies are always neglected in every nation which are looked upon disparagingly. The Greeks held skill in vocal and instrumental music as a very important accomplishment, and therefore it is recorded of Epaminondas A famous Theban general., who, in my opinion, was the greatest man among the Greeks, that he played excellently on the flute; and Themistocles, some years before, was deemed ignorant because at an entertainment he declined the lyre when it was offered to him. For this reason, musicians flourished in Greece; music was a general study; and whoever was unacquainted with it was not considered as fully educated. Geometry was in high esteem with them; therefore, none were more honorable than mathematicians. But we have confined this art to bare measuring and calculating.

III. But, on the contrary, we early entertained an esteem for the orator; though he was not at first a man of learning, but only quick at speaking. In subsequent times, he became learned; for it is reported that Galba, Africanus, and Laelius were men of learning, and that even Cato, who preceded them in point of time, was a studious man. Then succeeded the Lepidi, Carbo, and the Gracchi, and so many great orators after them, down to our own times, that we were very little, if at all, inferior to the Greeks. Philosophy has been at a low ebb even to this present time and has had no assistance from our own language; and so now I have undertaken to raise and illustrate it, so that, as I have been of service to my countrymen when employed on public affairs, I may, if possible, be so likewise in my retirement. In this, I must take the more pains, because there are already many books in the...