Stoic Books
Cicero’s On Duties
A practical inquiry into duty, honour, usefulness, justice, and conduct within society.
What this text offers
A practical inquiry into duty, honour, usefulness, justice, and conduct within society. Ask Stoics preserves this edition as a searchable public-domain source rather than presenting isolated quotations without context.
The library contains 371 passage records from this work, with locators and edition provenance.
How to study it
Begin with a live question, read more than the first matching excerpt, and compare the passage with its surrounding argument.
Then choose one existing practice that turns the distinction into a concrete act of attention, restraint, courage, justice, or review.
Questions to bring to the text
Search this work for duty, justice, usefulness, and society. For each result, ask what claim is being made, what distinction supports it, and what kind of conduct follows.
Compare several passages before drawing a conclusion. The same word can serve a different part of an argument in another book, letter, or conversation.
From reading to practice
Write one sentence that preserves the author’s distinction in your own situation without turning the source into a slogan or an external promise.
Choose one act that remains yours—attention, assent, refusal, intention, speech, or conduct—and return afterward to the passage to test whether your reading held up.
Keep the locator beside your note. On the next reading, revise the note if the wider argument corrects or complicates your first interpretation.
Edition and provenance
Translation: Walter Miller. Coverage: complete surviving work. Rights status: public domain in the launch territories.
The source link and locator attached to every excerpt let the reader return to the preserved edition.
Primary-text evidence
These excerpts are shown with their exact work locators. Read them as evidence for study, not as detached slogans.
“My dear son Marcus, you have now been studying a full year under Cratippus, and that too in Athens, and you should be fully equipped with the practical precepts and the principles of philosophy; so much at least one might expect from the pre-eminence not only of your teacher but also of the city; the former is able to enrich you with learning, the latter to supply you with models. Nevertheless, just as I for my own improvement have always combined Greek and Latin studies—and I have done this not only in the study of philosophy but also in the practice of oratory—so I recommend that you should do the same, so that you may have equal command of both languages. And it is in this very direction that I have, if I mistake not, rendered a great service to…”
“What, for instance, shall we think of the elder Dionysius? With what tormenting fears he used to be racked! For through fear of the barber's razor he used to have his hair singed off with a glowing coal. In what state of mind do we fancy Alexander of Pherae lived? We read in history that he dearly loved his wife Thebe; and yet, whenever he went from the banquet-hall to her in her chamber, he used to order a barbarian—one, too, tattooed like a Thracian, as the records state—to go before him with a drawn sword; and he used to send ahead some of his bodyguard to pry into the lady's caskets and to search and see whether some weapon were not concealed in her wardrobe. Unhappy man! To think a barbarian, a branded slave, more faithful than his own wife!…”
“Herewith, my son Marcus, you have a present from your father—a generous one, in my humble opinion; but its value will depend upon the spirit in which you receive it. And yet you must welcome these three books as fellow-guests, so to speak, along with your notes on Cratippus's lectures. But as you would sometimes give ear to me also, if I had come to Athens (and I should be there now, if my country had not called me back with accents unmistakable, when I was half-way there), so you will please devote as much time as you can to these volumes, for in them my voice will travel to you; and you can devote to them as much time as you will. And when I see that you take delight in this branch of philosophy, I shall then talk further with you—at an early…”