Cicero (on the Stoics) · 106–43 BCE
On Duties 3.21 — Cicero (on the Stoics)
Translation by Walter Miller (1913)
Cicero (on the Stoics), On Duties 3.21
Well then, for a man to take something from his neighbour and to profit by his neighbour's loss is more contrary to Nature than is death or poverty or pain or anything else that can affect either our person or our property. For, in the first place, injustice is fatal to social life and fellowship between man and man. For, if we are so disposed that each, to gain some personal profit, will defraud or injure his neighbour, then those bonds of human society, which are most in accord with Nature's laws, must of necessity be broken.
Cite this passage
Cicero (on the Stoics), On Duties 3.21, tr. Walter Miller (1913)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/on-duties/3.21
Cicero, On Duties (De Officiis), tr. Walter Miller (Loeb, 1913). Text: Perseus Digital Library (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesProfiting at another person's expense does more damage to your nature as a social being than death, poverty or pain, because injustice breaks the bonds that hold people together. If everyone cheated for personal gain, society could not exist.
Older wording
- “contrary to Nature”
- — against our natural character as social, rational beings
Themes and situations
- Justice and fairness
- Community and our duty to others
- Nature and the cosmos
- An ethical dilemma
- Money, status and wanting more
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