Let not such considerations as these distress you: “I shall live in
discredit and be nobody anywhere.” For if discredit be an evil, you can
no more be involved in evil through another than in baseness. Is it any
business of yours, then, to get power or to be admitted to an
entertainment? By no means. How then, after all, is this discredit? And
how it is true that you will be nobody anywhere when you ought to be
somebody in those things only which are within your own power, in which
you may be of the greatest consequence? “But my friends will be
unassisted.” What do you mean by “unassisted”? They will not have money
from you, nor will you make them Roman citizens. Who told you, then, that
these are among the things within our own power, and not rather the
affairs of others? And who can give to another the things which he
himself has not? “Well, but get them, then, that we too may have a
share.” If I can get them with the preservation of my own honor and
fidelity and self-respect, show me the way and I will get them; but if
you require me to lose my own proper good, that you may gain what is no
good, consider how unreasonable and foolish you are. Besides, which would
you rather have, a sum of money or a faithful and honorable friend?
Rather assist me, then, to gain this character than require me to do
those things by which I may lose it. Well, but my country, say you, as
far as depends upon me, will be unassisted. Here, again, what assistance
is this you mean? It will not have porticos nor baths of your providing?
And what signifies that? Why, neither does a smith provide it with shoes,
nor a shoemaker with arms. It is enough if everyone fully performs his
own proper business. And were you to supply it with another faithful and
honorable citizen, would not he be of use to it? Yes. Therefore neither
are you yourself useless to it. “What place, then,” say you, “shall I
hold in the state?” Whatever you can hold with the preservation of your
fidelity and honor. But if, by desiring to be useful to that, you lose
these, how can you serve your country when you have become faithless and
shameless?