9. In Verrem, ii. 1. 15.
134 ST. AUGUSTINE a social life? But who can enumerate all the great grievances with which human society abounds in
5ie misery of this mortal state? Who can weigh them? Hear how one of their comic writers makes one of his characters express the common feelings of all men in this matter: "I am married; this is one misery. Children are born to me; they are addi-
What shall I say of the miseries of love which Terence also recounts—"shghts, sustional cares."
picions, quarrels, war to-day, peace to-morrow"? ^
Is not human life full of such things? Do they not often occur even in honourable friendships? On all hands we experience these slights, suspicions, quarrels, war, all of which are undoubted evils; while, on the other hand, peace is a doubtful good, because we do not know the heart of our friend, and though we did know it to-day, we should be ignorant of what it might be to-morrow. Who ought to be, or who are more friendly than those who live in the same family? And yet who can rely even upon this friendship, seeing that secret treachery has often broken it up, and produced enmity as bitter as the amity was sweet, or seemed sweet by the most perfect dissimulation?
It is on this account that the words of Cicero so move the heart of every one, and provoke a sigh: "There are no snares more dangerous than those which lurk under the guise of duty or the name of relationship. For the man who is your declared foe you can easily baffle by precaution; but this hidden, intestine, and domestic danger not merely exists, but overwhelms you before you can foresee and examine it." * It is also to this that allu-
7. Terent. Adelph. v. 4.
8. Eunuch, i. 1.
9. In Verrem, ii. 1. 15.