Let not these thoughts afflict you, I shall live unhonoured and be nobody nowhere. For if want of honour
(ἀτιμία) is an evil, you cannot be in evil through the
means (fault) of another any more than you can be
involved in any thing base. Is it then your business to
obtain the rank of a magistrate, or to be received at a
banquet? By no means. How then can this be want of
honor (dishonor)? And how will you be nobody nowhere,
when you ought to be somebody in those things only
which are in your power, in which indeed it is permitted
to you to be a man of the greatest worth? But your
friends will be without assistance! What do you mean
by being without assistance? They will not receive
money from you, nor will you make them Roman citizens.
Who then told you that these are among the things which
are in our power, and not in the power of others? And
who can give to another what he has not himself? Acquire
money then, your friends say, that we also may have
something. If I can acquire money and also keep myself
modest, and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way,
and I will acquire it. But if you ask me to lose the
things which are good and my own, in order that you may
gain the things which are not good, see how unfair and
silly you are. Besides, which would you rather have,
money or a faithful and modest friend? For this end
then rather help me to be such a man, and do not ask me
to do this by which I shall lose that character. But my
country, you say, as far as it depends on me, will be
without my help. I ask again, what help do you mean?
It will not have porticoes or baths through you.1 And
what does this mean? For it is not furnished with shoes
by means of a smith, nor with arms by means of a shoemaker. But it is enough if every man fully discharges
the work that is his own: and if you provided it with
another citizen faithful and modest, would you not be
useful to it? Yes. Then you also cannot be useless to it.
What place then, you say, shall I hold in the city? Whatever you can, if you maintain at the same time your fidelity
and modesty. But if when you wish to be useful to the
state, you shall lose these qualities, what profit could you
be to it, if you were made shameless and faithless?
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