Cicero (on the Stoics) · 106–43 BCE
On Duties 2.5 — Cicero (on the Stoics)
Translation by Walter Miller (1913)
Cicero (on the Stoics), On Duties 2.5
Therefore, amid all the present most awful calamities I yet flatter myself that I have won this good out of evil—that I may commit to written form matters not at all familiar to our countrymen but still very much worth their knowing. For what, in the name of heaven, is more to be desired than wisdom? What is more to be prized? What is better for a man, what more worthy of his nature? Those who seek after it are called philosophers; and philosophy is nothing else, if one will translate the word into our idiom, than "the love of wisdom." Wisdom, moreover, as the word has been defined by the philosophers of old, is "the knowledge of things human and divine and of the causes by which those things are controlled." And if the man lives who would belittle the study of philosophy, I quite fail to see what in the world he would see fit to praise.
Cite this passage
Cicero (on the Stoics), On Duties 2.5, tr. Walter Miller (1913)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/on-duties/2.5
Cicero, On Duties (De Officiis), tr. Walter Miller (Loeb, 1913). Text: Perseus Digital Library (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesEven amid terrible public disasters, the author claims one good has come out of the evil: the chance to write philosophy for readers who need it. Nothing is more worth wanting than wisdom, the knowledge of human and divine matters and their causes, and anyone who sneers at philosophy has little left worth praising.
Older wording
- “calamities”
- — disasters
- “idiom”
- — a language or way of speaking
- “belittle”
- — treat as unimportant
Themes and situations
- Adversity and hardship
- Learning and progress
- Virtue and character
- Resilience and endurance
- A career setback
- Searching for meaning
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