any service, he
should show gratitude that the others may be encouraged to do right.
The steward must not be a gadder or a diner-out, but must give all his
attention to working the slaves, and considering how best to carry out
his master's instructions....

It is at times worth while to gain wealth by commerce, were it not so
perilous; or by usury, were it equally honorable. Our ancestors,
however, held, and fixt by law, that a thief should be condemned to
restore double, a usurer quadruple. We thus see how much worse they
thought it for a citizen to be a money-lender than a thief. Again,
when they praised a good man, they praised him as a good farmer or a
good husbandman. Men so praised were held to have received the highest
praise. For myself, I think well of a merchant as a man of energy and
studious of gain; but it is a career, as I have said, that leads to
danger and ruin. However, farming makes the bravest men and the
sturdiest soldiers, and of all sources of gain is the surest, the most
natural, and the least invidious, and those who are busy with it have
the fewest bad thoughts.[3]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Cato was Rome's first thoroughly national author. He is
usually classed as the creator of Latin prose. Other Roman authors of
his time wrote in Greek. Cato bitterly opposed Greek learning,
declaring that, when Greece should give Rome her literature, she would
"corrupt everything." On Cato's mind no outside literary influence
ever prevailed. He has been called "the most original writer that Rome
ever produced."]

[Footnote 2: From "De Re Rustica." Translated for this work by Dr.
Epiphanius Wilson.]

[Footnote 3: The translation of this paragraph is taken from
Cruttwell's "History of Roman Literature."]

CICERO

Born in 106 B.C., assassinated in 43; celebrated as orator,
philosopher, statesman, and man of letters; served in the
social war in 89; traveled in Greece and Asia in 79-77;
questor in Sicily in 75; accused Verres in 70; praetor in 60;
as Consul supprest Catiline's conspiracy in 63; banished in
58; recalled in 57; proconsul in Cicilia in 51-50; joined
Pompey in 49; pronounced orations against Mark Antony in
44-43; proscribed by the Second Triumvirate in 43; of his
orations fifty-seven are extant, with fragments of twenty
others; other extant works include "De Oratore," "De
Republica," "Cato Major," "De Officiis," and four
col