seem not to have been of so much service in the actual business of men
as of amusement for their leisure.

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND BOOK,

BY THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATOR.

In this second book of his Commonwealth, Cicero gives us a
spirited and eloquent review of the history and successive
developments of the Roman constitution. He bestows the
warmest praises on its early kings, points out the great
advantages which had resulted from its primitive monarchical
system, and explains how that system had been gradually
broken up. In order to prove the importance of reviving it,
he gives a glowing picture of the evils and disasters that
had befallen the Roman State in consequence of that
overcharge of democratic folly and violence which had
gradually gained an alarming preponderance, and describes,
with a kind of prophetic sagacity, the fruit of his political
experience, the subsequent revolutions of the Roman State,
which such a state of things would necessarily bring about.

BOOK II.

I. [When, therefore, he observed all his friends kindled with the
de]sire of hearing him, Scipio thus opened the discussion. I will
commence, said Scipio, with a sentiment of old Cato, whom, as you know,
I singularly loved and exceedingly admired, and to whom, in compliance
with the judgment of both my parents, and also by my own desire, I was
entirely devoted during my youth; of whose discourse, indeed, I could
never have enough, so much experience did he possess as a statesman
respecting the republic which he had so long governed, both in peace
and war, with so much success. There was also an admirable propriety in
his style of conversation, in which wit was tempered with gravity; a
wonderful aptitude for acquiring, and at the same time communicating,
information; and his life was in perfect correspondence and unison with
his language. He used to say that the government of Rome was superior
to that of other states for this reason, because in nearly all of them
there had been single individuals, each of whom had regulated their
commonwealth according to their own laws and their own ordinances. So
Minos had done in Crete, and Lycurgus in Sparta; and in Athens, which
experienced so many revolutions, first Theseus, then Draco, then Solon,
then Clisthenes, afterward many others; and, lastly, when it was almost
lifel