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Updated: May 15, 2025
Although, however, mercantile pursuits were thus underrated and despised by the warlike portion of the nation, as well as by the philosophers, yet they were followed by those who regarded gain as the principal object of life. In the passage quoted from Cicero de Officiis, he expressly mentions the merchant who imports; but he does not once allude to exportation.
Other philosophical works now lost are the Exhortationes, the De Officiis, an essay on premature death, one on superstition, in which he derided the popular faith, one on friendship, some books on moral philosophy, on remedies for chance casualties, on poverty and compassion.
His preceptor, a man of learning and merit, who was called "the honorable John", tried to mitigate this excessive ardor of temperament by a course of Cicero de Officiis, which he read to him daily. Neither the eloquence of Tully, however, nor the precepts of the honorable John made the least impression upon this very savage nature. As he grew older he did not grow wiser nor more gentle.
In the latter he has borrowed largely from the eighth and ninth books of Aristotle's Ethics. His treatise De Officiis was finished about the time he wrote his second Philippic, a circumstance which illustrates the great versatility of his mental powers. Of a work so extensively celebrated, it is enough to have mentioned the name.
The treatise 'De Officiis', known as Cicero's 'Offices, to which we pass next, is addressed by the author to his son, while studying at Athens under Cratippus; possibly in imitation of Aristotle, who inscribed his Ethics to his son Nicomachus.
See also, beside others, Cyprian, book 1, epist. 11; that Dionysius, the author of The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chap. 3, part. 3; Basil., Epist. to Amphilochius, can. 4; Ambrose, De Officiis, lib. 2, chap. 27; Augustine, in his book against the Donatists after the Conference, cap. 4; Chrysostom, hom. 83, in Matt.; Gregor. the Great, Epist., lib. 2, chap. 65, 66; Walafridus Strabo, Of Ecclesiastical Matters, chap. 17.
'Will you kindly take from the shelf that volume of Cicero "De Officiis," he said, pointing to a copy of an Elzevir variorum edition, not the small duodecimo Elzevir, 'remove the paper you will find there, and burn it in the fire on the hearth. "'Certainly I will do as you say, but will you reward me by explaining the reason of your request?
He mentions one as written, and then another; but at last this latter appears before the former. They were all composed in the same year, the year before his death the most active year of his life, as far as his written works are concerned and I shall here treat De Senectute first, then De Amicitia, and the De Officiis last, believing them to have been published in that order.
Here are some of the plans which, year by year, he laid down for the regulation of his studies: "Translate every day ten lines of the De Officiis, and re-translate into Latin. Five chapters of Greek Testament. Theological studies. Plato's Apology for Socrates; Horace's Epodes, Epistles, Satires, and Ars Poetica." "Write sermons and reviews, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Conscience is the most enlightened philosopher; to be an honest man we need not read Cicero's De Officiis, and the most virtuous woman in the world is probably she who knows least about virtue.
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