On Duties 3.82 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), On Duties 3.82

Is there, then, any object of such value or any advantage so worth the winning that, to gain it, one should sacrifice the name of a "good man" and the lustre of his reputation? What is there that your so-called expediency can bring to you that will compensate for what it can take away, if it steals from you the name of a "good man" and causes you to lose your sense of honour and justice? For what difference does it make whether a man is actually transformed into a beast or whether, keeping the outward appearance of a man, he has the savage nature of a beast within? Again, when people disregard everything that is morally right and true, if only they may secure power thereby, are they not pursuing the same course as he who wished to have as a father-inlaw the man by whose effrontery he might gain power for himself? He thought it advantageous to secure supreme power while the odium of it fell upon another; and he failed to see how unjust to his country this was, and how wrong morally. But the father-in-law himself used to have continually upon his lips the Greek verses from the Phoenissae, which I will reproduce as well as I can—awkwardly, it may be, but still so that the meaning can be understood: "If wrong may e'er be right, for a throne's sake Were wrong most right:—be God in all else feared!" Our tyrant deserved his death for having made an exception of the one thing that was the blackest crime of all.