Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, by Marcus Tullius Cicero
The greater portion of the Republic was previously translated by
Francis Barham, Esq., and published in 1841. Although ably performed,
it was not sufficiently close for the purpose of the "CLASSICAL
LIBRARY," and was therefore placed in the hands of the present editor
for revision, as well as for collation with recent texts. This has
occasioned material alterations and additions.
The treatise "On the Nature of the Gods" is a revision of that usually
ascribed to the celebrated Benjamin Franklin.
CONTENTS.
_Tusculan Disputations_
_On the Nature of the Gods_
_On the Commonwealth_
THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.
INTRODUCTION.
In the year A.U.C. 708, and the sixty-second year of Cicero's age, his
daughter, Tullia, died in childbed; and her loss afflicted Cicero to
such a degree that he abandoned all public business, and, leaving the
city, retired to Asterra, which was a country house that he had near
Antium; where, after a while, he devoted himself to philosophical
studies, and, besides other works, he published his Treatise de
Finibus, and also this treatise called the Tusculan Disputations, of
which Middleton gives this concise description:
"The first book teaches us how to contemn the terrors of death, and to
look upon it as a blessing rather than an evil;
"The second, to support pain and affliction with a manly fortitude;
"The third, to appease all our complaints and uneasinesses under the
accidents of life;
"The fourth, to moderate all our other passions;
"And the fifth explains the sufficiency of virtue to make men happy."
It was his custom in the opportunities of his leisure to take some
friends with him into the country, where, instead of amusing themselves
with idle sports or feasts, their diversions were wholly speculative,
tending to improve the mind and enlarge the understanding. In this
manner he now spent five days at his Tusculan villa in discussing with
his friends the several questions just mentioned. For, after employing
the mornings in declaiming and rhetorical exercises, they used to
retire in the afternoon into a gallery, called the Academy, which he
had built for the purpose of philosophical conferences, where, after
the manner of the Greeks, he held a school, as they called it, and
invited the company to call for any subject that they desired to hear
explained, which being proposed accordingly by some of the audience
