BOOK V.
FRAGMENTS.
I.Ennius has told us-- Of men and customs mighty Rome consists; which verse, both for its precision and its verity, appears to me as if it had issued from an oracle; for neither the men, unless the State had adopted a certain system of manners--nor the manners, unless they had been illustrated by the men--could ever have established or maintained for so many ages so vast a republic, or one of such righteous and extensive sway.
Thus, long before our own times, the force of hereditary manners of itself moulded most eminent men; and admirable citizens, in return, gave new weight to the ancient customs and institutions of our ancestors.

But our age, on the contrary, having received the Commonwealth as a finished picture of another century, but one already beginning to fade through the lapse of years, has not only neglected to renew the colors of the original painting, but has not even cared to preserve its general form and prominent lineaments.
For what now remains of those antique manners, of which the poet said that our Commonwealth consisted?
They have now become so obsolete and forgotten that they are not only not cultivated, but they are not even known.

And as to the men, what shall I say?
For the manners themselves have only perished through a scarcity of men; of which great misfortune we are not only called to give an account, but even, as men accused of capital offences, to a certain degree to plead our own cause in connection with it.

For it is owing to our vices, rather than to any accident, that we have retained the name of republic when we have long since lost the reality.
II.

* * * There is no employment so essentially royal as the exposition of equity, which comprises the true interpretation of all laws.