[16]
5. I have dwelt longer on this point than was
necessary. For who is there to whom those facts
which Panaetius narrates at great length are not
self-evident—namely, that no one, either as a
general in war or as a statesman at home, could have
accomplished great things for the benefit of the
state, without the hearty co-operation of other men?
He cites the deeds of Themistocles, Pericles, Cyrus,
Agesilaus, Alexander, who, he says, could not have
achieved so great success without the support of
other men. He calls in witnesses, whom he does
not need, to prove a fact that no one questions.
And yet, as, on the one hand, we secure great1
advantages through the sympathetic co-operation of
our fellow-men; so, on the other, there is no curse
so terrible but it is brought down by man upon
man. There is a book by Dicaearchus on “The
Destruction of Human Life.” He was a famous
[p. 185]
and eloquent Peripatetic, and he gathered together
all the other causes of destruction—floods, epidemics,
famines, and sudden incursions of wild animals in
myriads, by whose assaults, he informs us, whole
tribes of men have been wiped out. And then he
proceeds to show by way of comparison how many
more men have been destroyed by the assaults
of men—that is, by wars or revolutions—than by
any and all other sorts of calamity.
1 Man's hurtfulness to man.
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