For we contend, for example, with a fellow-citizen in one way, if he is a personal enemy, in another, if he is a rival: with the rival it is a struggle for office and position, with the enemy for life and honour.
Cicero, in his work on moral duties, differentiates between the nature of rivalry and enmity among citizens.
Share
More from Cicero
Now, those who care for the interests of a part of the citizens and neglect another part, introduce into the civil service a dangerous element--dissension and party strife.
But for the most part, people are led to wrong-doing in order to secure some personal end; in this vice, avarice is generally the controlling motive.
And so, when we have leisure from the demands of business cares, we are eager to see, to hear, to learn something new, and we esteem a desire to know the secrets or wonders of creation as indispensable to a happy life.
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…
Other voices in this conversation
