If then Pythagoras,28 accustoming his disciples to abstain from all cruelty and inhumanity to the brute creation, did right to discountenance bird-fowling, and to buy up draughts of fishes and bid them be thrown into the water again, and to forbid killing any but wild animals, much more noble is it, in dissensions and differences with human beings, to be a generous, just and true enemy, and to check and tame all bad and low and knavish propensities, that in all intercourse with friends a man may keep the peace and abstain from doing an injury. Scaurus was an enemy and accuser of Domitius, but when one of Domitius' slaves came to him to reveal some important matters which were unknown to Scaurus, he would not hear him, but seized him and sent him back to his master. And when Cato was prosecuting Murena for canvassing, and was getting together his evidence, he was accompanied as was usual by people who watched what he was doing,29 and would often ask him if he intended that day to get together his witnesses and open the case, and if he said "No," they believed him and went their way. All this is the greatest proof of the credit which was reposed in Cato, but it is better and more important, that we should accustom ourselves to deal justly even with our enemies, and then there will be no fear that we should ever act unjustly and treacherously to our friends and intimates.
§ x. But since, as Simonides says, "all larks must have their crests,"30 and every man's nature contains in it pugnacity and jealousy and envy, which last is, as Pindar says, "the companion of empty-headed men," one might get considerable advantage by purging oneself of those passions against enemies, and by diverting them, like sewers, as far as possible from companions and friends.31 And this it seems the statesmanlike Onomademus had remarked, for being on the victorious side in a disturbance at Chios, he urged his party not to expel all of the different faction, but to leave some, "in order," he said, "that we may not begin to