On Duties
- Language:
- Latin
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 600 passages
Cite this work
- APACicero. (n.d.). On Duties. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/de-officiis-by-marcus-tullius-cicero
- MLACicero. "On Duties." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/de-officiis-by-marcus-tullius-cicero.
- ChicagoCicero. On Duties. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/de-officiis-by-marcus-tullius-cicero.
What it is about
On Duties, in Latin: three books on what is honourable, what is expedient, and what to do when the two appear to clash.
Context and history
He wrote it in 44 BC, addressed to his son Marcus, then studying at Athens, a few months after Caesar's murder and with his own position already dangerous; he was killed the following year. It is his last work and his most widely circulated: among the first books printed with movable type, and for centuries a moral handbook across half of Europe. The underlying thesis is that the honourable and the expedient never truly conflict.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. Inconsistencies in hyphenation have not been corrected, punctuation has been silently corrected. A list of other corrections to the text can be found at the end of the document. In the book the Latin text is printed on the left page, and the English translation on the right. Here, the text is split by sections starting with a roman numeral, and the Latin text is followed by its English translation. The section numbers that appeared in the margin are placed between *asterisks*. Sidenotes are placed between #hashtags# and are placed either above the paragraph they refer to or inline. Numbers printed in superscript are preceded by a ^. CICERO DE OFFICIIS WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY WALTER MILLER LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO. MCMXIII CONTENTS Introduction _Page_ ix Bibliography xiii Book I 1 Book II 167 Book III 269 Index 405 INTRODUCTION In the _de Officiis_ we have, save for the latter Philippics, the great orator's last contribution to literature. The last, sad, troubled years of his busy life could not be given to his profession; and he turned his never-resting thoughts to the second love of his student days and made Greek philosophy a possibility for Roman readers. The senate had been abolished; the courts had been closed. His occupation was gone; but Cicero could not surrender himself to idleness. In those days of distraction (46-43 B.C.) he produced for publication almost as much as in all his years of active life. The liberators had been able to remove the tyrant, but they could not restore the republic. Cicero's own life was in danger from the fury of mad Antony and he left Rome about the end of March, 44 B.C. He dared not even stop permanently in any one of← Back to Cicero