De Officiis

[V] From the death of Pericles on.

[W] Such as the conspiracy of Catiline.

[X] The civil wars of Marius and Sulla, Caesar and Pompey.

[Y] The quality elsewhere expressed by Cicero with βαθύτης—'depth,' 'reserve,' the art of concealing and controlling one's feelings under an outward serenity of manner.

[Z]§ 70.

[AA]Decorum Cicero's attempt to translate πρέπον, means an appreciation of the fitness of things, propriety in inward feeling or outward appearance, in speech, behaviour, dress, etc. Decorum is as difficult to translate into English as πρέπον is to reproduce in Latin; as an adjective, it is here rendered by 'proper,' as a noun, by 'propriety.'

[AB] The universal and the individual; § 107.

[AC] The Greek palaestra, a public school of wrestling and athletics, adopted by the Romans became a place of exercise where the youth were trained in gestures and attitudes, a nursery of foppish manners.

[AD] Like Pyrgopolinices in the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, or Thraso in the Eunuchus of Terence.

[AE] Members of Caesar's party were now occupying the houses that had been the homes of Pompey's friends. Antony, for example, lived in Pompey's house.

[AF] The ludus talarius was a kind of low variety show, with loose songs and dances and bad music.

[AG] Cicero is guilty of a curious fallacy. If it follows from his premises, (1) some one virtue is the highest virtue, and (2) the duties derived from the highest virtue are the highest duties, and if (3) wisdom is the highest virtue, then it can only follow that the duties derived from wisdom are the highest duties. But Cicero throws in a fourth premise that the "bonds of union between gods and men and the relations of man to man" are derived from wisdom, and therewith sidetracks wisdom and gives the duties derived from the social instinct the place from which wisdom has been shunted.

Cicero could not refrain from introducing a bit of theoretical speculation that has no value for his practical position—it actually prejudices it and confuses the reader.

[AH] Such as Pompey, Cato, Hortensius, and Piso.

[AI] Aristotle and Theophrastus.

[AJ] That is, they make a false distinction between (1) moral rectitude that is at the same time expedient; (2) moral rectitude that is (apparently) not expedient; and (3) the expedient that is (apparently) not morally right.

[AK] Julius Caesar.

[AL] The Romans were accustomed to set up a spear as a sign of an auction-sale—a symbol derived from the sale of booty taken in war.

[AM] Now lost, though they were still known to Petrarch.

[AN] Cicero means by "kind services" the services of the lawyer; he was forbidden by law to accept a fee; his services, if he contributed them, were "acts of kindness."

[AO] At the age of 21 Crassus conducted the case against Gaius Papirius Carbo, a former supporter of the Gracchi. The prosecution was so ably conducted that Carbo committed suicide to escape certain condemnation.

[AP] A "capital charge" meant to the Roman a charge endangering a person's caput, or civil status. A conviction on such a charge resulted in his civil degradation and the loss of his privileges as a Roman citizen.

[AQ] Julius Caesar was a striking example of this.

[AR] Cicero evidently had in mind such instances as Sulla, Caesar, Antony, and Catiline—alieni appetens, sui profusus (Sall., Cat. V).

[AS] The as was a copper coin worth somewhat less than a penny. Selling grain to the people at such a price was practically giving it away to purchase their good-will.

[AT] The saving clause is added, because Cicero never filled the office of Censor.

[AU] Acts of kindness and personal service mean to Cicero throughout this discussion the services of the lawyer, which were voluntary and gratis.

[AV] This eminent jurist was Servius Sulpicius Lemonia Rufus, a close friend of Cicero, author of the well-known letter of condolence to Cicero on the death of his daughter Tullia.

[AW] The Italian or Social War, b.c. 100-88.

[AX] During the dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar.

[AY] Nearly two million pounds sterling.

[AZ] An assumed appeal to one of Caesar's edicts.

[BA] Caesar, it seems, had had some part in the schemes of Catiline in b.c. 63 and possibly in the plot of b.c. 66-65. When his conquests in Gaul had freed him from his debts and made him rich, his party, with his consent, passed (b.c. 49) the obnoxious legislation here referred to—that all interest in arrears should be remitted, and that that which had been paid should be deducted from the principal.

[BB] See note on I, 8.

[BC] I.e., fills all the requirements of absolute perfection—an allusion to the Pythagorean doctrine that specific numbers stand for perfection of specific kinds; "absolute duty" combines them all.

[BD] I.e., there are no circumstances of loss or gain that can warrant a violation of justice.

[BE] As a Peripatetic, Cratippus insisted that there was natural good as well as moral good; thus health, honour, etc., were good and worth seeking for their own sake, though in less degree than virtue. But the Stoics (and Cicero is now speaking as a Stoic) called all those other blessings not "good" nor "worth seeking for their own sake," but "indifferent."

[BF] With this he waves aside, without even the honour of mentioning them, the Epicureans, Cyrenaics, etc.

[BG] Because he was a Stoic.

[BH] Romulus.