For this reason, Tubero, learning and learned men, and these your favorite studies, have always particularly pleased me.
XVIII.

Then Laelius replied: I cannot venture, Scipio, to answer your arguments, or to [maintain the discussion either against] you, Philus, or Manilius.[302] * * * We had a friend in Tubero's father's family, who in these respects may serve him as a model.
Sextus so wise, and ever on his guard.
Wise and cautious indeed he was, as Ennius justly describes him--not because he searched for what he could never find, but because he knew how to answer those who prayed for deliverance from cares and difficulties.

It is he who, reasoning against the astronomical studies of Gallus, used frequently to repeat these words of Achilles in the Iphigenia[303]: They note the astrologic signs of heaven, Whene'er the goats or scorpions of great Jove, Or other monstrous names of brutal forms, Rise in the zodiac; but not one regards The sensible facts of earth, on which we tread, While gazing on the starry prodigies.
He used, however, to say (and I have often listened to him with pleasure) that for his part he thought that Zethus, in the piece of Pacuvius, was too inimical to learning.

He much preferred the Neoptolemus of Ennius, who professes himself desirous of philosophizing only in moderation; for that he did not think it right to be wholly devoted to it.

But though the studies of the Greeks have so many charms for you, there are others, perhaps, nobler and more extensive, which we may be better able to apply to the service of real life, and even to political affairs.