the law for limiting the length of the speeches of counsel
passed in the second consulship of Pompey, B.C. 55, as being only just
passed.

In the fifth book we are carried back to B.C. 79, and the scene is laid at
Athens, where Cicero was at that time under Antiochus and Demetrius. He
and his brother Quintus, Lucius Cicero his cousin, Pomponius Atticus, and
Marcus Pupius Piso are represented as meeting in the Academia; and Piso,
at the request of his companions, lays open the precepts inculcated by
Aristotle and his school on the subject of the Summum Bonum; after which
Cicero states the objections of the Stoics to the Peripatetic system, and
Piso replies. While giving the opinions of these above-named sects with
great fairness and impartiality Cicero abstains throughout from
pronouncing any judgment of his own.

First Book Of The Treatise On The Chief Good And Evil.

I. I was not ignorant, Brutus, when I was endeavouring to add to Latin
literature the same things which philosophers of the most sublime genius
and the most profound and accurate learning had previously handled in the
Greek language, that my labours would be found fault with on various
grounds. For some, and those too, far from unlearned men, are disinclined
to philosophy altogether; some, on the other hand, do not blame a moderate
degree of attention being given to it, but do not approve of so much study
and labour being devoted to it. There will be others again, learned in
Greek literature and despising Latin compositions, who will say that they
would rather spend their time in reading Greek; and, lastly, I suspect
that there will be some people who will insist upon it that I ought to
apply myself to other studies, and will urge that, although this style of
writing may be an elegant accomplishment, it is still beneath my character
and dignity. And to all these objections I think I ought to make a brief
reply; although, indeed, I have already given a sufficient answer to the
enemies of philosophy in that book in which philosophy is defended and
extolled by me after having been attacked and disparaged by
Hortensius.(13) And as both you and others whom I considered competent
judges approved highly of that book, I have undertaken a larger work,
fearing to appear able only to excite the desires of men, but incapable of
retaining their attention. But those who, though they have a very good
opinion of philosophy, still think it should be followed in a