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23At the end of this speech of his Cicero replied: “There seems to you, then, to be no great evil in disfranchisement and exile and in not living at home or being with your friends, but, instead, being expelled with violence from your country, living in a foreign land, and wandering about with the name of exile, causing laughter to your enemies and disgrace to your friends?”
2“Not in the least, so far as I can see,” declared Philiscus. “There are two elements of which we are constituted, soul and body, and definite blessings and evils are given to each of the two by Nature herself. Now if there should be any defect in these two, it would properly be considered injurious and disgraceful; but if all should be right with them, it would be useful instead. 3This is your condition at the present moment. Those things which you mentioned, banishment and disfranchisement, and anything else of the sort, are disgraceful and evil only by convention and a certain popular opinion, and work no injury to either body or soul. What body could you cite that has fallen ill or perished and what spirit that has grown more unjust or even more ignorant through disfranchisement or exile or anything of that sort? I see none. 4And the reason is that no one of these things is by nature evil, just as neither citizenship nor residence in one’s country is in itself excellent, but whatever opinion each one of us holds about them, such they seem to be. 5For instance, men do not universally apply the penalty of disfranchisement to the same acts, but certain deeds which are reprehensible in some places are praised in others, and various actions honoured by one people are punished by another. Indeed, some do not so much as know the name, nor the thing which it implies. 6And naturally enough; for whatever does not touch that which belongs to man’s nature is thought to have no bearing upon him. Precisely in the same way, therefore, as it would be most ridiculous, surely, if some judgment or decree were to be rendered that So-and -so is sick or So-and -so is base, so does the case stand regarding disfranchisement.
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