s
concerning him, or to mine, when I said that he had done nothing for his
own sake, but everything for that of the republic; and you, on the
contrary, affirm that he did nothing except with a view to his own
advantage? But if you were to wish to explain yourself further, and were
to say openly that he did nothing except for the sake of pleasure, how do
you think that he would bear such an assertion?

Be it so. Let Torquatus, if you will, have acted solely with a view to his
own advantage, for I would rather employ that expression than pleasure,
especially when speaking of so eminent a man,--did his colleague too,
Publius Decius, the first man who ever was consul in that family, did he,
I say, when he was devoting himself, and rushing at the full speed of his
horse into the middle of the army of the Latins, think at all of his own
pleasures? For where or when was he to find any, when he knew that he
should perish immediately, and when he was seeking that death with more
eager zeal than Epicurus thinks even pleasure deserving to be sought with?
And unless this exploit of his had been deservedly extolled, his son would
not have imitated it in his fourth consulship; nor, again, would his son,
when fighting against Pyrrhus, have fallen in battle when he was consul,
and so offered himself up for the sake of the republic as a third victim
in an uninterrupted succession from the same family. I will forbear giving
any more examples. I might get a few from the Greeks, such as Leonidas,
Epaminondas, and three or four more perhaps. And if I were to begin
hunting up our own annals for such instances, I should soon establish my
point, and compel Pleasure to give herself up, bound hand and foot, to
virtue. But the day would be too short for me. And as Aulus Varius, who
was considered a rather severe judge, was in the habit of saying to his
colleague, when, after some witnesses had been produced, others were still
being summoned, "Either we have had witnesses enough, or I do not know
what is enough;" so I think that I have now brought forward witnesses
enough.

For, what will you say? Was it pleasure that worked upon you, a man
thoroughly worthy of your ancestors, while still a young man, to rob
Publius Sylla of the consulship? And when you had succeeded in procuring
it for your father, a most gallant man, what a consul did he prove, and
what a citizen at all times, and most especially after his consulship!
And, indeed, it was by his