FANNIUS. But we would rather have it from you. Although I have often
consulted those philosophers also, and have listened to them not
unwillingly, yet the thread of your discourse differs somewhat from that
of theirs.

SCAEVOLA. You would say so all the more, Fannius, had you been present
in Scipio's garden at that discussion about the republic, and heard what
an advocate of justice he showed himself in answer to the elaborate
speech of Philus. [Footnote: Carneades, when on an embassy to Rome, for
the entertainment of his Roman hosts, on one day delivered a discourse
in behalf of justice as the true policy for the State, and on the next
day delivered an equally subtile and eloquent discourse maintaining the
opposite thesis. In the third Book of the _De Republica_ Philus is made
the "devil's advocate," and has assigned to him the championship of what
we are wont to call a Machiavelian policy, and, in general, of the
morally wrong as the politically right. He is represented astaking the
part reluctantly, saying that one consents to soil his hands in order to
find gold, and he professes to give the substance of the famous
discourse of Carneades. Laelius answers him, and, so far as we can
judge from the fragments of his reply that are extant, with the
preponderance of reason, which Cicero intended should incline on the
better side. There was perhaps a sublatent irony in making Philus play
this part; for he was an eminently upright man. Valerius Maximus
eulogizes him for his rigid integrity and impartiality, and relates that
when at the expiration of his consulship he was sent to take command of
the army against Numantia, he chose for his lieutenants Metellus and
Pompeius, both his intensely bitter enemies, but the men best fitted for
the service.]