‹‹‹ Vitr. 7.0.2 | Table of Contents | Vitr. 7.0.4 ›››
3As we are indebted to these, so we are on the contrary bound to censure those, who, borrowing from others, publish as their own that of which they are not the authors; not less are they censurable, who, distorting the meaning of an author, glory in their perversion of it; indeed they deserve punishment for their dishonest conduct. It is said that this practice was strictly punished by the antients; I do not therefore think it foreign to the purpose to relate from history the result of some examples made by them.
3So, while they deserve our thanks, those, on the contrary, deserve our reproaches, who steal the writings of such men and publish them as their own; and those also, who depend in their writings, not on their own ideas, but who enviously do wrong to the works of others and boast of it, deserve not merely to be blamed, but to be sentenced to actual punishment for their wicked course of life. With the ancients, however, it is said that such things did not pass without pretty strict chastisement. What the results of their judgments were, it may not be out of place to set forth as they are transmitted to us.