wonderful camp yours must be! What would you have done if I had sent you
to Tarentum[699] instead of Samobriva? I was already a little doubtful
about you, when I found you supporting the same doctrine as my friend
Selius![700] But on what ground will you support the principles of civil
law, if you act always in your own interest and not in that of your
fellow citizens? What, too, is to become of the legal formula in cases
of trust, "as should be done among honest men"? For who can be called
honest who does nothing except on his own behalf? What principle will
you lay down "in dividing a common property," when nothing can be
"common" among men who measure all things by their own pleasure?[701]
How, again, can you ever think it right to swear by _Iupiter lapis_,
when you know that Iupiter cannot be angry with anyone?[702] What is to
become of the people of Ulubrae,[703] if you have decided that it is not
right to take part in civic business? Wherefore, if you are really and
truly a pervert from our faith, I am much annoyed; but if you merely
find it convenient to humour Pansa, I forgive you. Only _do_ write and
tell us how you are, and what you want me to do or to look after for
you.

[Footnote 698: C. Vibius Pansa had been in Gaul, and was now home to
stand for the tribuneship, which he obtained for B.C. 52-51.]

[Footnote 699: Where he would have been in luxury.]

[Footnote 700: A follower of the new academy, with which Cicero was more
in sympathy than with the Epicurean ethics, but apparently only partly
so. The leading doctrine was the denial of the possibility of knowledge,
and, applied to ethics, this might destroy all virtue.]

[Footnote 701: All these jesting objections to a lawyer being an
Epicurean are founded on the Epicurean doctrine that individual feeling
is the standard of morals, and the _summum bonum_ is the good of the
individual. The logical deduction that a man should therefore hold aloof
from politics and social life, as involving social obligations and
standards, was, of course, evaded in practice.]

[Footnote 702: For the Epicureans believed the gods to exist, but not to
trouble themselves with the affairs of men. In taking an oath by
_Iupiter lapis_ the swearer took a stone in his hand and said, "If I
abide by this oath may he bless me: but if I do otherwise in thought or
deed, may all others be kept safe, each in his own country, under his
own laws, in enjoyment of his own goods, household god