Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶2 — Cicero (on the Stoics)

Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 4 ¶2

So far we proceed on conjecture. As to the vestiges of the Pythagoreans, though I might collect many, I shall use but a few, because they have no connection with our present purpose. For as it is reported to have been a custom with them to deliver certain precepts in a more abstruse manner in verse, and to bring their minds from severe thought to a more composed state by songs and musical instruments, so Cato, a writer of the very highest authority, says in his Origins, that it was customary with our ancestors for the guests at their entertainments, everyone in his turn, to celebrate the praises and virtues of illustrious men in song to the sound of the flute, from whence it is clear that poems and songs were then composed for the voice. And indeed it is also clear that poetry was in fashion from the laws of the Twelve Tables, wherein it is provided that no song should be made to the injury of another. Another argument of the erudition of those times is that they played on instruments before the shrines of their Gods and at the entertainments of their magistrates, but that custom was peculiar to the sect I am speaking of. To me, indeed, that poem of Appius Caecus, which Panaetius commends so much in a certain letter of his which is addressed to Quintus Tubero, has all the marks of a Pythagorean author. We have many things derived from the Pythagoreans in our customs, which I pass over, that we may not seem to have learned that elsewhere which we look upon ourselves as the inventors of. But to return to our purpose: How many great poets as well as orators have sprung up among us! and in what a short time! so that it is evident that our people could arrive at any learning as soon as they had an inclination for it. But of other studies I shall speak elsewhere if there is occasion, as I have already often done.