[552] Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 64.
[553] Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, pp. 231 f.
[554] Cf. Ibid. p. 232.
[555] Stoicism is second only to Christianity as a moral force in European civilization. “One of the most important expressions of the moral sense for all time,” affirms Professor Clifford, “is that of the Stoic philosophy, especially after its reception among the Romans” (Lectures and Essays (1901), vol. ii, p. 108). Mahaffy declares that the Stoic philosophy, “above all the human influences we know, purified and ennobled the world” (The Silver Age (1906), p. 103). Denis thinks that it was through Stoicism that Rome did most for civilization (Histoire des théories et des idées morales dans l’antiquité (1879), t. ii, p. 5).
[556] Taken from Menander.
[557] “One of the most emphatic as well as one of the earliest extant assertions of the duty of charity to the human race occurs in the treatise of Cicero upon duties.”—Lecky, History of European Morals, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 240.
[558] De Off. iii. 5.
[559] Ibid. iii. xi.
[560] Ibid. i. 16.
[561] De Finibus, v. 23.