[3]
I would that the government had stood fast in
the position it had begun to assume and had not
fallen into the hands of men who desired not so
much to reform as to abolish the constitution. For
then, in the first place, I should now be devoting
my energies more to public speaking than to writing, as I used to do when the republic stood; and in
the second place, I should be committing to written
form not these present essays but my public speeches,
as I often formerly did. But when the republic, to
which all my care and thought and effort used to be
devoted, was no more, then, of course, my voice was
silenced in the forum and in the senate.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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