War, however, should be undertaken in such a way as to make it evident that it has no other object than to secure peace.
Cicero: “War, however, should be undertaken in such a way as to make it evident that it has no other object than to secure peace.”
Editor's note · Context
In his treatise on moral duties, Cicero outlines the ethical principle that war should only be waged with the ultimate goal of achieving peace.
Share
More from Cicero
For they secure one sort of justice, to be sure, in that they do no positive wrong to anyone, but they fall into the opposite injustice; for hampered by their pursuit of learning they leave to their fate those whom they ought to defend.
Further than this, who fails to see that those promises are not binding which are extorted by intimidation or which we make when misled by false pretences?
To this passion for discovering truth there is added a hungering, as it were, for independence, so that a mind well-moulded by Nature is unwilling to be subject to anybody save one who gives rules of conduct or is a teacher of truth or…
For self-control is the foe of the passions, and the passions are the handmaids of pleasure.





