De Officiis.

fine printing

Cicero's most important contribution to moral philosophy, variously rendered into English as On Duties or Obligations. A finely-printed example, pleasingly bound in crushed red-brown morocco gilt in the Arts & Crafts style.

The text is written in the form of a letter to his son Marcus, who was studying philosophy in Athens under the Platonist Antiochus. Influenced by the teachings of the Stoic philosopher Panaetius, the work aims to help guide us towards a compromise between honourable conduct and actions which bring us private advantage. In doing so, Cicero makes his notable appeal to natural law: 'to take away wrongfully from another for the sake of one's own advantage, is more contrary to nature than death' (p.204).

The text, written between October and November 44 BC, also contains a famous denunciation of Julius Caesar, assassinated in March that year, along these grounds: 'So great was the desire in him of doing wrong, that the mere wrongdoing delighted him'.

De Officiis has remained popular ever since — it was the third book to be printed after the Gutenberg Bible and Ars Minor, and was long regarded as essential reading in humanist circles, and a mainstay of English public school education in the seventeenth century.

4to (22 x 17.5 cm); text in English, title in red and black, printed on thick paper, slight spotting; contemporary crushed red-brown morocco in the Arts & Crafts style, covers ruled in gilt, gilt spine in 6 compartments, all edges gilt, a little rubbed, very good; [4], 278pp.