the gods who protect and govern all this beautiful universe, will keep my memory in pious and inviolate regard."[1]
XXIII. Such were the last words of Cyrus. Let me now, if it seem good to you, express my own opinion and feeling. No one will ever convince me, Scipio, that your father Paullus, or your two grandfathers, Paullus and Africanus, or the father or the uncle of Africanus, or many men of surpassing excellence whom I need not name, undertook such noble enterprises which were to belong to the grateful remembrance of posterity, without a clear perception that posterity belonged to them. Or think you,—if after the manner of old men I may boast a little on my own account,—think you that I would have taken upon myself such a vast amount of labor, by day and by night, at home and in military service, if I had been going to put the same limits to my fame that belong to my earthly life? Would it not have been much better to pass my time in leisure and quiet, remote from toil and strife? But somehow my soul, raising itself[2] above the present, was always looking onward to posterity, as if, when it departed from life, then at length it would truly live. But unless
- ↑ This is not a literal translation from Xenophon, nor can it have been intended for one. Cicero meant to give it in the form in which Cato might have been supposed to quote it from memory.
- ↑ Latin, sese erigens . . . . prospiciebat. The figure implies standing, as it were, on tiptoe, to get a clearer distant view.
