Section 43 Brianna, Sarah, Cody
And also, the greatest people and the clearest citizens, jurors, both have been a memory of many and of our fathers, when the eagerness of any youth comes to full boil, the excellent strengths having hardened now step out with age. From which it is pleasing to name nobody from me; you have thought over with yourselves. I do not want to connect not even the smallest mistake to this decent and bright man, with the greatest praise. And if I wished to do this, then I should name many of the greatest and most ornate men, of whom some were made known for extravagant freedom in their youth, for others their profuse luxury, the magnitude of another’s money (debts), expenses, desires, but afterwards having been concealed by their many virtues, who wished he could defend his youth by means of excuses.
posted by AwesomeAndrade | 6:10 AM
6 Comments:
Be sure to pay close attention to case. Nostra has to agree with memoria and cannot agree with patrum. Maiorum, on the other hand is genitive plural, like patrum.
I found Cicero's message to be a clever way of gaining the sympathy of the jury. He talks about virtuous leaders in Rome and how they are similar to Caelius in parts of their youth.
This is a good example of what Cicero has been saying since section 42 that he will grow out of this stage of Epicureanism and grow to see his view of more mature Stoicism.
In addition, I think the "does not" in the first sentence shgould be changed to "neither" making this ino a "neither...nor..." statement.
the verb "vellet" at the end is translated as an indicitive, though it should be subjunctive.
As I mentioned in class, I'm amazed at how redundant Cicero has been throughout his oratory. In at least 5 of the past sections, Cicero has blamed Caelius'involvement (whatever that might be, he's been completely vague) on "the vices of youth". So far in this speech, I haven't heard anything the proves Caelius innocent, howevert hat may come later. I do realize that logic was more important than fact back then, but still, the same logical arguement (that really isn't that effective anyway) made over an over is not grounds for innocence in my book. Perhaps Cicero's skill as an orator and his "rockstar" status did truly sway opinion, because so far he hasn't proven anything by means of logic or fact regardless.
As aforementioned, in line 544, the verb "vellet" was mistranslated as an indicative.
Well said.
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