This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[25]
In like manner it is more in accord with Nature
to emulate the great Hercules and undergo the
greatest toil and trouble for the sake of aiding or
saving the world, if possible, than to live in seclusion,
[p. 293]
not only free from all care, but revelling in pleasures
and abounding in wealth, while excelling others
also in beauty and strength. Thus Hercules denied
himself and underwent toil and tribulation for the
world, and, out of gratitude for his services, popular
belief has given him a place in the council of the
gods.
The better and more noble, therefore, the character with which a man is endowed, the more does he
prefer the life of service to the life of pleasure.
Whence it follows that man, if he is obedient to
Nature, cannot do harm to his fellow-man.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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.