r--and all
fault in gesture and in motion which is like to it. The manners of the
wrestling-ground and of the stage are sometimes odious; but let us see
the actor or the wrestler walking simple and upright, and we praise him.
Let him use a befitting neatness, not verging toward the effeminate, but
just avoiding a rustic harshness. The same measure is to be taken with
your clothes as with other matters in which a middle course is
best."[323]

Then he tells his son what pursuits are to be regarded as sordid. "Those
sources of gain are to be regarded as mean in the pursuit of which men
are apt to be offended, as are the business of tax-gathers and usurers.
All those are to be regarded as illiberal to which men bring their work
but not their art." As for instance, the painter of a picture shall be
held to follow a liberal occupation--but not so the picture dealer.
"They are sordid who buy from merchants that they may sell again: they
have to lie like the mischief or they cannot make their living. All mere
workmen are engaged in ignoble employment: what of grandeur can the mere
workshop produce? Least of all can those trades be said to be good
which administer only to our pleasures--such as fish-mongers, butchers,
cooks, and poulterers."[324] He adds at the end of his list that of all
employment none is better than agriculture, or more worthy of the care
of a freeman. In all of this it is necessary that we should receive what
he says with some little allowance for the difference in time; but there
is nothing, if we look closely into it, in which we cannot see the
source of noble ideas, and the reason for many notions which are now
departing from us--whether for good or evil who shall say?

In the beginning of the second book he apologizes for his love of
philosophy, as he calls it, saying that he knew how it had been misliked
among those round him. "But when the Republic," he says, "had ceased to
be--that Republic which had been all my care--my employment ceased both
in the Forum and the Senate. But when my mind absolutely refused to be
inactive, I thought that I might best live down the misery of the time
if I devoted myself to philosophy."[325] From this we may see how his
mind had worked when the old occupation of his life was gone. "Nihil
agere autem quum animus non posset!" How piteous was his position, and
yet how proud! There was nothing for him to do--but there was nothing
because hitherto there had been so much tha