If that accomplishes nothing, he will take him to task; he will even threaten; and in the end, if things point to the destruction of the state, he will sacrifice his father to the safety of his country.
From his philosophical treatise on moral duties, Cicero discusses the extreme case where civic duty to the state overrides familial loyalty.
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Nay, if some god should grant me to renew my childhood from my present age and once more to be crying in my cradle, I would firmly refuse; nor should I in truth be willing, after having, as it were, run the full course, to be recalled from…
Now, old age is as it were the playing out of the drama, the full fatigue of which we should shun, especially when we also feel that we have had more than enough of it.
Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least?
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