famy on a fellow-citizen. And they have decided wisely; for our life and character should, if suspected, be submitted to the sentence of judicial tribunals and the legal investigations of our magistrates, and not to the whims and fancies of poets. Nor should we be exposed to any charge of disgrace which we cannot meet by legal process, and openly refute at the bar.
In our laws, I admire the justice of their expressions, as well as their decisions. Thus the word pleading signifies rather an amicable suit between friends than a quarrel between enemies.
It is not easy to resist a powerful people, if you allow them no rights, or next to none.
The old Romans would not allow any living man to be either praised or blamed on the stage.
XI. Cicero says that comedy is an imitation of life; a mirror of customs, an image of truth.
Since, as is mentioned in that book on the Commonwealth, not only did Æschines the Athenian, a man of the greatest eloquence, who, when a young man, had been an actor of tragedies, concern himself in public affirs, but the Athenians often sent Aristodemus, who was also a tragic actor, to Philip as an ambassador, to treat of the most important affairs of peace and war.
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIFTH BOOK,
BY THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATOR.
BOOK V.
FRAGMENTS.
I. Ennius has told us—
Of men and customs mighty Rome consists;
which verse, both for its precision and its verity, appears to me as if it had issued from an oracle; for neither the
