[141]
But it even among the Athenians, a nation of Greeks, far removed from the
serious wisdom of our ancestors, there were not wanting men to
defend the republic against the rashness of the people;—though
every one who ever did so was sure to be banished from the
city;—if the great Themistocles, the preserver of his country, was
not deterred from defending the republic, either by the calamity of
Miltiades, who had saved that state only a little before, or by the
banishment of Aristides, who is said to have been the greatest of all men:
and if, after his time, many illustrious men of the same state, whom it is
unnecessary for me to mention by name, in spite of the numerous instances of
the popular ill-temper and fickleness which they had before them, still
defended that republic of theirs; what ought we to do who, in the first
place, have been born in that city which appears to me to be the very
birth-place of wisdom and dignity and magnanimity; and who, in the second
place, are raised on such a pinnacle of glory that all human things may well
appear insignificant by the side of it; and who, lastly, have undertaken to
uphold that republic, which is one of such dignity, that to slay a man who
is defending it is no less a crime than to attack it and to endeavour to
seize the supreme power?
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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