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From what we know of Panaetius' ethical teaching, and in the first two books of Cicero's work, de Officiis, we have a fairly complete view of it, we do not find the old doctrine that absolute wisdom and justice are the only ends to pursue, and everything else indifferent; a doctrine which put the old-fashioned Stoic out of court in public life.
Take Cicero's book de Officiís, or the Divina Commedia of Dante, and you will find that to them the earth is the center of creation, that the infinite stars circle around it, and that man is the king of animals: a geocentric and anthropocentric illusion inspired by immeasurable conceit.
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.
IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered IV. I. The New Organization of Spain IV. VII. Second Year of the War III. XIII. Irreligious Spirit A delightful specimen may be found in Cicero de Officiis, iii. 12, 13. IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the Administration of the Provinces; IV. IX. Siege of Praeneste
Pagan antiquity has bequeathed us few nobler treatises of morals than the "De Officiis" of Cicero, which was avowedly an expansion of a work of Panaetius.
Then, as if realising that his true work in life was to mould his native language into a vehicle of abstract thought, he sets to work with amazing swiftness and copiousness to reproduce a whole series of Greek philosophical treatises, in a style which, for flexibility and grace, recalls the Greek of the best period the De Finibus, the Academics, the Tusculans, the De Natura Deorum, the De Divinatione, the De Officiis.
I regard the De Officiis as one of the most perfect treatises on morals which the world possesses, whether for the truth of the lessons given, for their universality, or for the beauty and lightness of the language. It is on a subject generally heavy, but is treated with so much art and grace as to make it a delight to have read it, and an important part of education to know it.
"Caelicolae, mea membra, dei, quos nostra potestas Officiis, diversa facit." These fragments show an extraordinary power of condensed expression, as well as a clear grasp on the unity of the Supreme Being, for which reason they are quoted.
IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered IV. I. The New Organization of Spain IV. VII. Second Year of the War III. XIII. Irreligious Spirit A delightful specimen may be found in Cicero de Officiis, iii. 12, 13. IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the Administration of the Provinces; IV. IX. Siege of Praeneste
He took an interest in me, and it is to him that I to-day owe it that I am a veritable man of letters, who knows Latin from the de Officiis of Cicero to the mortuology of the Celestine Fathers, and a barbarian neither in scholastics, nor in politics, nor in rhythmics, that sophism of sophisms.
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