Book 3
24
If reason requires it for your country, for your relations, for mankind, why should you not go? You are not ashamed to go to the door of a shoemaker when you want shoes, nor of a gardener when you want lettuce. Why, then, in regard to the rich, when you have some similar want?
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Ay; but I need not be awed before a shoemaker. Nor before a rich man. I need not flatter a gardener. Nor a rich man. How, then, shall I get what I want?
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Why, do I bid you go in expectation of getting it? No; only that you may do your duty.
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Why, then, after all, should I go?
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That you may have gone; that you may have discharged the duties of a citizen, of a brother, of a friend. And, after all, remember that you are going as if to a shoemaker, to a gardener, who has no monopoly of anything great or respectable, though he should sell it ever so dear. You are going as if to buy lettuces worth an obolus, but by no means worth a talent. So here, too, if the matter is worth going to his door about, I will go; if it is worth talking with him about, I will talk with him. But if one must kiss his hand, too, and cajole him with praise, that is paying too dear. It is not expedient for myself, nor my country, nor my fellow-citizens, nor my friends, to destroy what constitutes the good citizen and the friend.
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But one will appear not to have set heartily about the business, if one thus fails.
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What, have you again forgotten why you went? Do you not know that a wise and good man does nothing for appearance, but everything for the sake of having acted well?
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What advantage is it, then, to him, to have acted well?
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What advantage is it to one who writes down the name of Dion without a blunder? The having written it.
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Is there no reward, then?
