June 13, 2026

Non nobis solum nati sumus ortusque nostri partem patria vindicat, partem amici.

Cicero wrote this in 44 BC, the year Julius Caesar was assassinated and Rome was fracturing under political chaos. He had lost his daughter Tullia the year before, been pushed out of public life, and was writing to his son Marcus, who was studying in Athens and largely ignoring his studies. He was telling a young man who had every reason to turn inward that a life belongs not just to the person living it, but to their country and their friends in real, concrete ways. The claim is not sentimental — it is a structural argument that your time and capacity are already partly owed to others before you decide what to do with them.