Moral essays. With an English translation by J.W. Basore

. had——ON FIRMNESS, i. 2-n. 2he an unbroken steep since the distance deceives the: then, as you draw nearer, these same places,oh by a trick of the eyes had merged into one,'! en up gradually, and what seemed from a distanceIv/ccipitous is now reduced to a gentle slope.Recently, when there happened to be someuitntion of Marcus Cato, you, \\iih. your impatience01 injustice, grew indignant because Cato's o^\-n agehad failed to understand him, because it had ratedliim lower than any \'atinius though he towered>e any Pompey and Caesar ; and it seemed to, shameful that when he was about to speakinst some law in the forum, his toga was torn from-houlders, and that, after he had been hustledI lawless mob all the way from the rostrum to theh of Fabius, he had to endure \ile language, andtie. and all the other insults of a maddenedvd.Vnd then I made answer that on behalf of the stategood reason to be stirred—the state whichlius Clodius on the one hand, Vatinius and allgreatest rascals on the other, were putting upsale, and, carried away by bhnd cupidity, didrealize that, while they were selhng, they tooe being sold. For Cato himself I bade you have•oncem, for no wise man can receive either injuryinsult. I said, too, that in Cato the immortal Lgods had given to us a truer exemplar of the wise 'man than earher ages had in Ulysses and Hercules.For we Stoics have declared that these were wisemen, because they were unconquered by struggles,were despisers of pleasure, and \ictors over allterrors. Cato did not grapple with wild beastsUie pursuit of these is for the huntsman and the51"