Page:Cicero (Collins 1871).djvu/185

Rh making the real happiness imperfect after all. Men differ in their views of life. As in the great Olympic games, the throng are attracted, some by desire of gain, some by the crown of wild olive, some merely by the spectacle; so, in the race of life, we are all slaves to some ruling idea, it may be glory, or money, or wisdom. But they alone can be pronounced happy whose minds are like some tranquil sea—"alarmed by no fears, wasted by no griefs, inflamed by no lusts, enervated by no relaxing pleasures,—and such serenity virtue alone can produce."

These 'Disputations' have always been highly admired. But their popularity was greater in times when Cicero's Greek originals were less read or understood. Erasmus carried his admiration of this treatise to enthusiasm. "I cannot doubt," he says, "but that the mind from which such teaching flowed was inspired in some sort by divinity."

The treatise 'De Officiis,' known as Cicero's 'Offices,' to which we pass next, is addressed by the author to his son, while studying at Athens under Cratippus; possibly in imitation of Aristotle, who inscribed his Ethics to his son Nicomachus. It is a treatise on the duties of a gentleman—"the noblest present," says a modern writer, "ever made by parent to a child." Written in a far higher tone than Lord Chesterfield's letters, though treating of the same sub-