… even to forego taking vengeance on an enemy when he offers a good opportunity is a handsome thing to do … [As] in case a man shows compassion for an enemy in affliction, and gives a helping hand to him when he is in need … When Caesar gave orders that the statues in honor of Pompey, which had been thrown down, should be restored, Cicero said to him, “You have restored Pompey’s statues, but you have made your own secure.”
Moralia, volume 2, “How to Profit by One’s Enemies” (90), pp. 29-31
After passing through those periods which probable reasoning can reach to and real history find footing in, I might very well say of those that are farther off: “Beyond this there is nothing but prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants are the poets and inventor of fables; there is no credit, or certainty any farther.” [But he writes, he intends to write such a history despite this.] ... Let us hope that Fable may, in what shall follow, so submit to the purifying processes of Reason as to take the character of exact history. In any case, however, where it shall be found contumaciously slighting credibility and refusing to be reduced to anything like probable fact, we shall beg that we may meet with candid readers, and such as will receive with indulgence the stories of antiquity.”
Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, “Life of Theseus” (1), pp. 1-3 – in contrast to the “fact check” procedures of Christian historiography)
– in contrast to the “fact check” procedures of Christian historiography)
For upon nobody does the divine power seem so to enjoin the precept ‘Know thyself,’ as upon him who proposes to censure another.
Moralia, “How to Profit by One’s Enemies” (5:2), pp. 19-21