"Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. ... Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious."
--Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
I don't think this needs any explanation, right?
The Gunslinger
It doesn't need an explanation, but it does require an education.
ReplyDeleteFully agree.
They could have at least named a salad dressing after him.
ReplyDeleteI used your quote in my latest post("♫ ♪ ♬ You say you want a Constitution ... wellll ya know, we all want to change the world ♬ ♪ ♫ "), but something was bugging me about it... although I'd read the general substance of it in much of Cicero's writings, I couldn't think of actually reading that one before.
ReplyDeleteI hunted around, and scanned and googled, but couldn't find it anywhere. The earliest source for it I found, and I'm really glad I did, was from an article from 1965, by a Florida Supreme Court Justice, Millard Caldwell, called "Cicero's Prognosis", and it looks like he might have either translated it himself, or rephrased the gist of a larger passage into that quote, IOW while I think it's an accurate summation, it's not a literal quote.
But so what, it's dead on, isn't it. The section of the article the quote comes from is:
"We implore you, Cicero, do not disturb us with your lamentations of disaster. Rome is on the march to the mighty society, for all Romans."
Does that sound like 1965 and some of the people you know and meet in your day-to-day walks of life?
Cicero was in despair. He began to write his book De Legibus but Atticus, his publisher, asked, "But who will read it? Romans care nothing for law any longer, their bellies are too full."
And then, later, Brutus, the long-time sycophant of the ambitious Caesar, came to his senses and went to Cicero with his plea that something be done to save the nation. He confessed his error, he said he had believed in Caesar, he had believed he would restore the public, but that he has betrayed his trust.
Cicero's bitter reply was "Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions and laughed delightedly at his licentiousness and thought it very superior of him to acquire vast amounts of gold illicitly. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.' Julius was always an ambitious villain, but he is only one man."
Does that talk of a "wonderful good society" remind you of 1965 and its "Great Society"?
I am not sure just where this country is going nor what life in America will be like five, ten, or fifty years from now. But it's clear that the old ideas of obedience to law, public thrift and common honesty, the old laws of supply and demand, and the old concepts of local self-government and individual responsibility have been discarded.
And it staggers the imagination to contemplate the changes which have occurred in the last thirty years. Our manner of government and our way of life are, for the United States, new and novel, with little in common with what has gone before. Our forefathers would be astounded by the insidious encroachments of centralized government in our everyday life... "
It's an excellent article, I highly recommend it - he would have loved the Tea Parties.
Great article, thanks for the link. I'll put it in a post to make sure people read it...
ReplyDeleteOkay, what's the best translation of Cicero?
Apparently I have to read him.
Hard to overstate Cicero's importance to the thinking of the Founders, and his 'Republic' & 'Laws' were one of the first and best (and shortest and most readable) summations of the principles of Natural Law - and for the bonehead leftists that like to deride Natural Law as "Christian Theocracy", you can point out that Cicero wrote B.C.
ReplyDeleteThis is my favorite translation (best footnotes and comments) of his "Republic" and "The Laws" (which is what the judge is referring to as "no one cares anymore"), but nothing wrong with the one's online here.
His books on Ethics, Morals, Friendship, and his letters... are just great reads, and in the Founders time, if you wanted to call yourself a lawyer, without being laughed out of court, you had to know your Cicero.
Period.
The times he lived through, and shaped... phenomenal. To get an idea of them and try and put it into our timeframe, it'd be like living through, fighting and affecting, the administrations of Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, being Reagan, Churchill & Bush 41, thinking he'd saved the Republic and then having to watch and deal with a Clinton & Obamao (complete with the our absolute worst fears of him coming true) as well as battling against a post Obamao struggle for dictatorship.
And he wasn't a particularly gutsy, marble cut-out hero type. He worried, slipped, wasn't above a few goof ups and attempts at basking in the limelight, but through it all, scared or not, he forced himself to do what was right, even opposing Mark Antony which ended, as he knew it would, with having his head cut off and his hands nailed to the rostrum (picture the next 'president' giving his state of the union speech with Newt's hands nailed to the Great Seal on his podium, and you get the picture.
A really good, readable, book on him is "Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician."