Letter 108 — On the Approaches to Philosophy (§30)

“When Cicero’s book On the State is opened by a philologist, a scholar, or a follower of philosophy, each man pursues his investigation in his own way. The philosopher wonders that so much could have been said therein against justice. The philologist takes up the same book and comments on the text as follows: There were two Roman kings—one without a father and one without a mother. For we cannot settle who was Servius’s mother, and Ancus, the grandson of Numa, has no father on record.”