Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/92

 with him on the merits of the case itself. But if you give in to him, I shall not be greatly surprised; for I recollect that Antiochus himself, after he had entertained such opinions for many years, abandoned them as soon as he thought it desirable. When Catulus had said this, they all began to fix their eyes on me.

XX. Then I, being no less agitated than I usually am when pleading important causes, began to speak something after this fashion:—

The discourse of Lucullus, O Catulus, on the matter itself, moved me a good deal, being the discourse of a learned and ingenious and quick-witted man, and of one who passes over nothing which can be said for his side; but still I am not afraid but that I may be able to answer him. But no doubt such authority as his would have influenced me a good deal, if you had not opposed your own to it, which is of equal weight. I will endeavour, therefore, to reply to him after I have said a few words in defence of my own reputation, as it were.

If it is by any desire of display, or any zeal for contentious disputes, that I have been chiefly led to rank myself as an adherent of this school of philosophy, I should think not only my folly, but also my disposition and nature deserving of severe censure; for if obstinacy is found fault with in the most trifling matters, and if also calumny is repressed, should I choose to contend with others in a quarrelsome manner about the general condition and conduct of my whole life, or to deceive others and also my own self? Therefore, if I did not think it foolish in such a discussion to do what, when one is discussing affairs of state, is sometimes done, I would swear by Jupiter and my household gods, that I am inflamed with a desire of discovering the truth, and that I do truly feel what I say. For how can I avoid wishing to discover the truth, when I rejoice if I have discovered anything resembling the truth? But although I consider to see the truth a most beautiful thing, so also do I think it a most disgraceful one to approve of what is false as if it were true. Not, indeed, that I am myself a man who never approve of anything false, who never give assent to any such thing, and am never guided by opinion; but we are speaking of a wise man. But I myself am very apt to adopt opinions, for I am not a