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They offer his fullest treatment of fundamental political questions: Why should educated people have any concern for politics? Is the best form of government simple, or is it a combination of elements from such simple forms as monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy?

Can politics be free of injustice? The two works also help us to think about natural law, which many people have considered since ancient times to provide a foundation of unchanging, universal principles of justice. On the Republic features a defense of politics against those who advocated abstinence from public affairs. It defends a mixed constitution, the actual arrangement of offices in the Roman Republic, against simple forms of government.

The Republic also supplies material for students of Roman history—as does On the Laws. It is the first to appear since publication of the latest critical edition of the Latin texts. This book contains an introduction that both places Cicero in his historical context and explicates the timeless philosophical issues that he treats.

Lawyer, philosopher, statesman and defender of Rome's Republic, Cicero was a master of eloquence, and his pure literary and oratorical style and strict sense of morality have been a powerful influence on European literature and thought for over two thousand years in matters of politics, philosophy, and faith.

This selection demonstrates the diversity of his writings, and includes letters to friends and statesmen on Roman life and politics; the vitriolic Second Philippic Against Antony; and his two most famous philosophical treatises, On Duties and On Old Age - a celebration of his own declining years. Written at a time of brutal political and social change, Cicero's lucid ethical writings formed the foundation of the Western liberal tradition in political and moral thought that continues to this day.

The history of the Christian-Jewish relations is full of curious, intense, and occasionally tragic episodes. With the rise of Christianity, Judaism was progressively marginalized, since it was denied the same essence and validity of Christianity, which grew immensely in terms of spiritual and secular power. At the same time, while re-discovering Judaism, Christian scholars redefined themselves, and Christianity as well. Therefore, who would judge a man to be prudent and, may I say, clever not from his own deportment but from some external circumstance?

Virtue is fully developed reason, and this is certainly in nature—therefore, in the same way all honorableness. Now as true and false things are judged on their own terms, not by other terms, and the same with logical and illogical things, so also a constant and continual manner of life, which is virtue, and also inconstancy, which is vice, will be tested according to their nature.

If it were not so, men would also be happy by opinion. What more foolish thing can be said than that? Therefore, since good and bad are judged by nature, and these things are elements of nature, certainly also honorable and disgraceful things must be distinguished in a similar manner and measured according to nature.

And because the same thing does not hold for the senses, we think they are certain by nature; and those things that appear one way to some persons and another way to others, and not always one way to the same persons, we say are false. That is far off the mark.

No parent, nurse, teacher, poet, or stage perverts our senses; nor does the agreement of the multitude distract them from the truth. All [sorts of] plots are directed against our minds, either by those I just listed, who have taken them when they were delicate and unrefined and who stain and bend them as they want, or by that which occupies a place entangled within our every sensation, pleasure, that imitator of the good and that mother of all bad things.

Those who are corrupted by her flatteries do not sufficiently notice what things are good by nature, because they lack this sweetness and itch. And indeed all good men love fairness itself and right itself, and it is not for a good man to err and to cherish what should not be cherished for itself; therefore, right should be sought and cultivated for itself.

Now if that is true for right, so also for justice; and if for that, then the remaining virtues should also be cultivated for themselves. What about liberality? Is it disinterested or mercenary? If a good man is benevolent without a reward, it is disinterested; if for payment, it is hired. There is no doubt that he who is called liberal or benevolent is following duty, not profit. Therefore, justice also elicits no reward, no repayment; therefore, it is desired for itself, and the same motive and sense exist for all virtues.

Insofar as each man judges what to do according to his own convenience, so little is he a good man, so that those who measure virtue by reward consider nothing to be a virtue except badness. Where is the grateful man if even those who are grateful do not respect the person to whom they return a service? Where is sacred friendship if not even the friend himself is loved for himself, with whole heart, as it is said? Even he should be deserted and cast aside when hope of gains and profits has been lost.

What more monstrous thing can be said than that? But if friendship should be cultivated for itself, human fellowship, equality, and justice should also be desired for themselves. But if that is not so, there is no justice at all. For the most unjust thing of all is to seek payment for justice. Are we not to be impudent for fear of infamy, or of laws and courts of law? Are persons innocent and shameful in order to hear good things [about themselves], and do they blush in order to collect good hearsay?

I am ashamed to speak of chastity at this point, and I am ashamed of those philosophers who think it is [ a word cannot be translated ] to avoid any judgment without avoiding the vice itself.

Can we say that those persons are chaste who are kept from defilement by fear of infamy, although infamy itself follows from the disgrace of the matter? What can be rightly praised or disparaged if you separate from its nature what you think should be praised or disparaged? Will irregularities of the body, if they are very remarkable, give some offense, and deformity of the mind give none? The disgrace of the latter can be very easily perceived from its vices?

What can be called fouler than avarice, what more monstrous than lust, what more scorned than cowardice, what more despicable than dullness and foolishness? What then? Do we say about those who are conspicuous for their individual vices, or even many vices, that they are wretched because of losses or damages or tortures, or because of the significance and the disgrace of their vices?

That can be said again in the opposite [direction] as praise of virtue. Is it then property or honors or beauty or strength? When these are present, they are very small, and it is in no way possible to know for certain how long they are going to be present. Or is it—what is most disgraceful to say—pleasure? But indeed virtue is most noticed in spurning and rejecting that. But do you see what a series of matters and thoughts this is, how some things are woven out of another?

I would slide further if I did not hold myself back. Q: In what direction? I would gladly slide forward with you, brother, where you are leading with that speech. M: Toward the end of good things, by which all things are judged and for the sake of obtaining which all things should be done—a disputed matter and one full of disagreement among highly educated men, but it must nevertheless be judged at some time. It so happens that [text missing] the mother of all good things, wisdom from the love of which philosophy found its name in a Greek word.

Nothing given to human life by the immortal gods is richer, nothing is more illustrious, nothing is preferable. This alone has taught us, along with all the other things it has taught us, what is most difficult: we should know ourselves.

There are such force and thought behind this precept that it was credited not to a human being but to the Delphic god. And he will always do and feel something worthy of such a great gift of the gods. And when he has examined and completely tested himself, he will understand how he has come into life equipped by nature and how great are the furnishings he has for obtaining and securing wisdom, since in the beginning he conceived the first, so to speak, sketchy conceptions of all things in his soul and mind.

When they have been made lucid, with wisdom as leader, he discerns that he is a good man and that for this very reason he is going to be happy. And when he senses that he has been born for political fellowship, he will think that he must use not only precise argument but also speech that is continuous and extended more broadly, through which he may rule peoples, stabilize laws, chastise the wicked, protect the good, praise famous men, issue precepts for health and fame suitable for persuading his fellow citizens, be able to urge to honor, be able to turn back others from shame, be able to console the stricken, and be able to hand down in everlasting memorials the deeds and resolutions of the courageous and the wise with the ignominy of the wicked.

So many and so great are the things that are clearly seen to be present in a human being by those who want to know themselves. Their parent and educator is wisdom.

Quintus is speaking initially in this excerpt. M: You exact [payment for a debt] splendidly, Quintus but I thought I had escaped! M: We also must now take the beginnings of our discussion from the same [Jupiter] and from the other immortal gods. M: Therefore, I see that this has been the opinion of very wise men: Law was not thought out by human intellects; it is not some resolution of peoples, but something eternal that rules the whole universe through the wisdom of commanding and prohibiting.

So, they said, the chief and ultimate law is the mind of god compelling or forbidding all things by reason. As a result of that, the law that the gods gave to the human race has been correctly praised: it is the reason and mind of a wise being, suitable for ordering and deterring. But before you come to laws concerning the organization of the people, please explain the significance of that law of heaven, so that the tide of habit may not swallow us and drag us according to the usual manner of conversation.

This edition offers Richard Regan's new, clear readable English translation, based on the Leonine Commission's authoritative edition of the Latin text. Brian Davies has provided an extensive introduction and notes. Please note: this edition does not include the Latin text.

The appendix consists of additions to the text, the catalog of Aquinas's works, and the chronology.