Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero born 106 BC, died 43 BC in Alpino, Italy, was a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul, and constitutionalist. Cause of death: Beheaded by order of Mark Anthony.

Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote, "The evil was not in the bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease."

"That the man who first ruined the Roman people twas he who first gave them treats and gratuities" Life of Coriolanus (c. 100 AD., Plutarch

Man was given dominion over the earth and those things that creep upon it, fly above it or swim in its waters, but not over one another. The history of mankind demonstrates the "willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men".

“The real destroyers of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits.” Plutarch

The Bible was mostly about how to govern yourselves and not go under other governments of men.

All the prophets of God, Christ, and the Apostles have been warning the people from the beginning not eat with rulers or go to those "Fathers of the earth" who call themselves "benefactors but "exercise authority" one over the other to provide social welfare State.

Those benefits are the "wages of unrighteousness" of a table of "dainties" from which we should not eat for it is a "snare".

Those"deceitful meats" which are provided through "covetous practices" will make us "merchandise“ and "curse children".

All the problems of the world today can be traced back to the fact modern religions ignore the commandments and not to covet your neighbor's goods, make covenants with other gods, bow down and serve them to "sell their rights as free men for full bellies", nor borrow against the future and be slothful in the ways of righteousness.

“True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions… It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and at all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst punishment.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero

It is not right reason that one man or a group of men can take away or even desire to take away the rights of others without bringing their own rights in jeopardy. It is the tyrant in every man's soul that gives rise to the tyranny of the world in which they live. As Polybius wrote before Cicero was born:

"The masses continue with an appetite for benefits and the habit of receiving them by way of a rule of force and violence. The people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others... institute the rule of violence; ^[1] and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder,^[2] until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch." ^[3] ^[4]

Polybius saw the downfall of the republic by way of their free bread and welfare a 150 years before the first Emperor of Rome and 175 years before the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus the Christ who opposed these same systems of free bread at your neighbor's expense.

The authoritarian State often uses force and violence to become the Benefactors of the people if the covet what is their neighbors'. They make a social contract where one class of citizen is forced to provide for another class through "legal charity" which is not true charity. The writings of the Apostles warned along with countless passages of ancient writings of the prophets including Proverbs 23 which warned them about what Christ forbid which was the covetous practices of socialist forms of government.

"Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense." Marcus Tullius Cicero

Biting one another to to satisfy our appetites and desires will surely get every man devoured by his own wantonness.

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to is victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear." Marcus Tullius Cicero

The real treason of society is when every man covets his neighbor's goods and seek to benefit at his neighbor's expense. When every man betrays his neighbor by desiring their government to take from their neighbor so that he may benefit that nation has doomed itself and its citizen all become Workers of Iniquity.

There are many worthy quotes from Cicero but sometimes they may be misused like, "Fuit mirificâ vigilantiâ qui toto suo consulatu somnum non vidit.""He was of wonderful vigilance, who did not sleep during his entire consulship." This was used by The Pulpit Commentary which struggle to make sense of Ecclesiastes 8:16.

Whose blame

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"To not know what occurred before you were born is to a forever remain a child. " -Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions and laughed delightedly at his licentiousness and thought it very superior of him to acquire vast amounts of gold illicitly. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious." From a speech given in 1965 by Florida Supreme Court Justice Millard F. Caldwell at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc. These words are often attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero as a literal quote but are more likely a summation of opinions expressed by Marcus Cicero.

Marcus Tullius Cicero also said, "The evil was not in the bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease."

This is why all the prophets and Christ warned that we are to not go to the men who "exercise authority" for their "dainties" to obtain any of our welfare or benefits and certainly not at the expense of others.

All the problems of the world today can be traced back to the fact modern religions ignore the commandment not to covet your neighbors' good and are to often slothful in the ways of righteousness.

"Nothing so absurd can be said that some philosopher had not said it." (Latin: Sed nescio quo modo nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum) (II, 119)

"A room without books is like a body without a soul." Marcus Tullius Cicero

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." Cicero

Six mistakes

"Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:

1 Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;

2 Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;

3 Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;

4 Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;

5 Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;

6 Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do. [[Marcus Tullius Cicero ]]

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." Cicero. M Tullius

"Not for ourselves alone are we born." Non nobis solum nati sumus. Marcus Tullius Cicero

"For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked." Marcus Tullius Cicero.

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Footnotes

↑ Matthew 11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.
↑ Luke 16:16 The law and the prophets [were] until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.
↑ "But when a new generation arises and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders, they have become so accustomed to freedom and equality that they no longer value them, and begin to aim at pre-eminence; and it is chiefly those of ample fortune who fall into this error. 6 So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. 7 And hence when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence. 8 For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the houses of office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; 9 and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch." Polybius: The Histories (composed at Rome around 130 BC)Fragments of Book VI, p289 See also Loeb Classical Library edition, 1922 thru 1927
↑ An alternate translation in context, "9. For no sooner had the knowledge of the jealousy and hatred existing in the citizens against them which is replaced by democracy, emboldened some one to oppose the government by word or deed, than he was sure to find the whole people ready and prepared to take his side. Having then got rid of these rulers by assassination or exile, they do not venture to set up a king again, being still in terror of the injustice to which this led before; nor dare they intrust the common interests again to more than one, considering the recent example of their misconduct: and therefore, as the only sound hope left them is that which depends upon themselves, they are driven to take refuge in that; and so changed the constitution from an oligarchy to a democracy, and took upon themselves the superintendence and charge of the state. And as long as any survive who have had experience of oligarchical supremacy and domination, they regard their present constitution as a blessing, and hold equality and freedom as of the utmost value. But as soon as a new generation has arisen, and the democracy has descended to their children’s children, long association weakens their value for equality and freedom, and some seek to become more powerful than the ordinary citizens; and the most liable to this temptation are the rich. (which degenerates into rule of corruption and violence, only to be stopped by a return to despotism.) So when they begin to be fond of office, and find themselves unable to obtain it by their own unassisted efforts and their own merits, they ruin their estates, while enticing and corrupting the common people in every possible way. By which means when, in their senseless mania for reputation, they have made the populace ready and greedy to receive bribes, the virtue of democracy is destroyed, and it is transformed into a government of violence and the strong hand. For the mob, habituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbours, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honours, produces a reign of mere violence. Then come tumultuous assemblies, massacres, banishments, redivisions of land; until, after losing all trace of civilisation, it has once more found a master and a despot." Translator: Evelyn Shirley Shuckburgh, Release Date: November 8, 2013 [EBook #44126]

[1] Matthew 11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

[2] Luke 16:16 The law and the prophets [were] until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.

[3] "But when a new generation arises and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders, they have become so accustomed to freedom and equality that they no longer value them, and begin to aim at pre-eminence; and it is chiefly those of ample fortune who fall into this error. 6 So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. 7 And hence when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence. 8 For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the houses of office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; 9 and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch." Polybius: The Histories (composed at Rome around 130 BC)Fragments of Book VI, p289 See also Loeb Classical Library edition, 1922 thru 1927

[4] An alternate translation in context, "9. For no sooner had the knowledge of the jealousy and hatred existing in the citizens against them which is replaced by democracy, emboldened some one to oppose the government by word or deed, than he was sure to find the whole people ready and prepared to take his side. Having then got rid of these rulers by assassination or exile, they do not venture to set up a king again, being still in terror of the injustice to which this led before; nor dare they intrust the common interests again to more than one, considering the recent example of their misconduct: and therefore, as the only sound hope left them is that which depends upon themselves, they are driven to take refuge in that; and so changed the constitution from an oligarchy to a democracy, and took upon themselves the superintendence and charge of the state. And as long as any survive who have had experience of oligarchical supremacy and domination, they regard their present constitution as a blessing, and hold equality and freedom as of the utmost value. But as soon as a new generation has arisen, and the democracy has descended to their children’s children, long association weakens their value for equality and freedom, and some seek to become more powerful than the ordinary citizens; and the most liable to this temptation are the rich. (which degenerates into rule of corruption and violence, only to be stopped by a return to despotism.) So when they begin to be fond of office, and find themselves unable to obtain it by their own unassisted efforts and their own merits, they ruin their estates, while enticing and corrupting the common people in every possible way. By which means when, in their senseless mania for reputation, they have made the populace ready and greedy to receive bribes, the virtue of democracy is destroyed, and it is transformed into a government of violence and the strong hand. For the mob, habituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbours, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honours, produces a reign of mere violence. Then come tumultuous assemblies, massacres, banishments, redivisions of land; until, after losing all trace of civilisation, it has once more found a master and a despot." Translator: Evelyn Shirley Shuckburgh, Release Date: November 8, 2013 [EBook #44126]

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Cicero

Whose blame

Six mistakes

Footnotes

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