Augustus John Williams Quotes

One does not deceive oneself about the consequences of one's acts; one deceives oneself about the ease with which one can live with those consequences.

A man may live like a fool for a year, and become wise in a day.

Every victory enlarges the magnitude of our possible defeat.

But there is much that cannot go into books, and that is the loss with which I become increasingly concerned.

[...] it seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult. He is contemptible in that his judgments reflect a vision of himself which in his ignorance and pride he would impose upon the world. I implore you, do not become a moralist; you will destroy your art and your mind.

He is a man like any other… he will become what he will become, out of the force of his person and the accident of his fate.

Mankind in the aggregate I have found to be brutish, ignorant and unkind, whether those qualities were covered by the coarse tunic of the peasant of the white and purple toga of a senator. And yet in the weakest of men, in moments when they are alone and themselves, I have found veins of strength like gold in decaying rock; in the cruelest of men, flashes of tenderness and compassion; and in the vainest of men, moments of simplicity and grace.

I have come to believe that in the life of every man, late or soon, there is a moment when he knows beyond whatever else he might understand, and whether he can articulate the knowledge or not, the terrifying fact that he is alone, and separate, and that he can be no other than the poor thing that is himself.

It is fortunate that youth never recognizes its ignorance, for if it did it would not find the courage to get the habit of endurance. It is perhaps an instinct of the blood and flesh which prevents this knowledge and allows the boy to become the man who will live to see the folly of his existence.

The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he onced dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself.

Between the brutality that would sacrifice a single innocent life to a fear without a name, and the enlightenment that would sacrifice thousands of lives to a fear that we have named, I have found little to choose.

Rome is not eternal; it does not matter. Rome will fall; it does not matter. The barbarian will conquer; it does not matter. There was a moment of Rome, and it will not wholly die; the barbarian will become the Rome he conquers; the language will smooth his rough tongue; the vision of what he destroys will flow in his blood. And in time that is ceaseless as this salt sea upon which I am so frailly suspended, the cost is nothing, is less than nothing.

What you seem so unwilling to accept, even now, is this: that the ideals which supported the old Republic had no correspondence to the fact of the old Republic; that the glorious word concealed the deed of horror; that the appearance of tradition and order cloaked the reality of corruption and chaos; that the call to liberty and freedom closed the minds, even of those who called, to the facts of privation, suppression, and sanctioned murder.

Horace once told me that laws were powerless against the private passions of the human heart, and only he who has no power over it, such as the poet or the philosopher, may persuade the human spirit to virtue.

He was our enemy, but as it is strange, after so many years the death of an old enemy is like the death of an old friend.

To care not for one’s self is of little moment, but to care not for those whom one has loved is another matter.

He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult. He is contemptible in that his judgments reflect a vision of himself which in his ignorance and pride he would impose upon the world.

How contrary an animal is man, who most treasures what he refuses or abandons! The soldier who has chosen war for his profession in the midst of battle longs for peace, and in the security of peace hungers for the clash of sword and the chaos of the bloody field; the slave who sets himself against his unchosen servitude and by his industry purchases his freedom, then binds himself to a patron more cruel and demanding than his master was; the lover who abandons his mistress lives thereafter in his dream of her imagined perfection.

I am the son of Julius Caesar, and I am consul of Rome. You will not call me boy again.

She has always seemed to me the epitome of womankind: coldly suspicious, politely ill-tempered, and narrowly selfish.

came to know that loss was the condition of our living. It is a knowledge that one cannot give to another.

The barbarian waits, and we grow weaker in the security of our ease and pleasure.

I hate and I love, Catullus said, speaking of that Clodia Pulcher whose family caused so much difficulty in Rome, even in our time and long after her death. It is not enough; but what better way might we begin to discover that self which is never wholly pleased or displeased with what the world offers?

The poets say that youth is the day of the fevered blood, the hour of love, the moment of passion; and that with age comes the cooling baths of wisdom, whereby the fever is cured. The poets are wrong. I did not know love until late in my life, when I could no longer grasp it. Youth is ignorant, and its passion is abstract.

Letter from Philippus of Athens to Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Yet the Empire of Rome that [Octavius] created has endured the harshness of a Tiberius, the monstrous cruelty of a Caligula, and the ineptness of a Claudius. And now our new Emperor is one whom you tutored as a boy, and to whom you remain close in his new authority; let us be thankful for the fact that he will rule in the light of your wisdom and virtue, and let us pray to the gods that, under Nero, Rome will at last fulfill the dream of Octavius Caesar.

He is Accident, and his priest is man, and that priest’s only victim must be at last himself, his poor divided self.

strong principle, coupled with a sour disposition, can be a cruel and inhuman virtue.

But the days of youth go, and part of us goes with them, not to return.

It is the world of Rome, where no man knows his enemy or his friend, where license is more admired than virtue, and where principle has become servant to self.

We need not forgive ourselves," he (Augustus) said. "It has been a marriage. It has been better than most.

Do they know that before us lies a road at the end of which is either death or greatness? The two words go around in my head, around and around, until it seems they are the same.

My uncle once told me to read the poets, to love them, and to use them—but never to trust them.

When one has had power in his grasp, and has failed to hold it, and has remained alive—what does one become?

The way to knowledge is a long journey, and the goal is distant; and one must visit many places along the way, if he is to know that goal when he arrives at it.

What does become of people who slip quietly out of your life?

one that none of us can see. We cannot know at last the effects of what we do, whether for good or ill.

Youth is ignorant, and its passion is abstract.

One does not deceive oneself about the consequences of one’s acts; one deceives oneself about the ease with which one can live with those consequences.

the façade he has erected not so much to disguise himself from another as to mask himself against his own recognition.

He is a man like any other,” he said. “He will become what he will become, out of the force of his person and the accident of his fate.

I begin to understand this Roman disdain for philosophy. Their world is an immediate one—of cause and consequence, of rumor and fact, of advantage and deprivation.

How do you oppose a foe who is wholly irrational and unpredictable—and yet who, out of animal energy and the accident of circumstance, has attained a most frightening power?

There is so much that is not said. I almost believe that the form has not been devised that will let me say what I need to say.

How contrary an animal is man, who most treasures what he refuses or abandons! ("Augustus")

wonder what his last years were like, in his exile at Circeii. Was he happy? When one has had power in his grasp, and has failed to hold it, and has remained alive—what does one become?

Perhaps we are wiser when we are young, though the philosopher would dispute with me. But I swear to you, we were friends from that moment onward; and that moment of foolish laughter was a bond stronger than anything that came between us later —victories or defeats, loyalties or betrayals, griefs or joys. But the days of youth go, and part of us goes with them, not to return.

We are most fortunate, my dear Vergil, that we need not marry to ensure our posterity, but can make the children of our souls march beautifully into the future, where they will not change or die.

I am sure that you have had, as we all have, that mysterious experience of prescience--a moment when, beyond reason and cause, at a word, or a flicker of an eyelid, or at anything at all, one has a sudden foreboding--of what,one does not know,. I am not a religious man; but sometimes I am nearly tempted to believe that the gods do speak to us, and that only in unguarded moments do we listen.

For a people may endure an almost incredible series of the darkest failures without breaking; but give them respite and some hope for the future, and they may not endure an unexpected denial of that hope.

I have come to understand Terentia, I believe. In her own way, she might have been wiser than any of us. I do not know what has become of her. What does become of people who slip quietly out of your life?

And I realize as I write these words that I really am saying that I shall leave my friend, Octavius Caesar, with these feelings within me. For Octavius Caesar is Rome; and that, perhaps, is the tragedy of his life.

Nicolaus of Damascus to Strabo of Amasia: My dear old friend, you have been eminently correct in your descriptions and enthusiasms over the years – this is the most extraordinary of cities in the most extraordinary of times.

I was dealing with governance in both instances, and individual responsibilities, and enmities and friendship. In a university, professors and others are always vying for power, and there’s really no power there. If you have any power at all, it’s a nothing. It’s really odd that these things should happen in a university but they do. Except in scale, the machinations for power are about the same in a university as in the Roman Empire or Washington.

Was Terentia content to be a woman, as I was not? When I lived in the world, I believed that she was content, and had a secret contempt for her. Now I do not know. I do not know the human heart of another; I do not even know my own.

Thus the ordinary Roman who lives in the city proper must never have any sleep. For the noise of the day becomes the din of the night, as drovers curse their horses and oxen, and the great wooden carts groan and clatter over the cobblestones.

And it seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult.

For I have returned to that learning which I abandoned many years ago, and it is likely that I should not have done so had not I been condemned to this loneliness; I sometimes can almost believe that the world in seeking to punish me has done me a service it cannot imagine.

The possibility has occurred to me that the proper condition of man, which is to say that condition in which he is most admirable, may not be that prosperity, peace, and harmony which I labored to give to Rome.” He has founded his empire, in other words, on a misconception.

I have conquered the world, and none of it is secure; I have shown liberty to the people, and they flee it as if it were a disease; I despise those whom I can trust, and love those best who would most quickly betray me. And I do not know where we are going, though I lead a nation to its destiny.

But there was a time when we were young - Marcus Agrippa was young too, - there was a time when we were friends, and knew that we would be friends for as long as we lived. Agrippa; Maecenas; myself; Salvidienus Rufus. Salvidienus is dead too, but he died long ago. Perhaps we all died then, when we were young.

In this early morning stillness, the events of the day seem far away and unreal. I know that the course of my life - of all our lives - has been changed. How do the others feel? Do they know? Do they know that before us lies a road at the end of which is either death or greatness? The two words go around in my head, around and around, until it seems they are the same.

this one of being a mortal god has been the most uncomfortable. I am a man, and as foolish and weak as most men; if I have had an advantage over my fellows, it is that I have known this of myself, and have therefore known their weaknesses, and never presumed to find much more strength and wisdom in myself than I found in another. It was one of the sources of my power, that knowledge.

To the followers of the murdered Caesar: Do you march against Decimus Brutus Albinus in Gaul, or against the son of Caesar in Rome? Ask Marcus Antonius. Are you mobilized to destroy the enemies of your dead leader, or to protect his assassins? Ask Marcus Antonius. Where is the will of the dead Caesar which bequeathed to every citizen of Rome three hundred pieces of silver coin? Ask Marcus Antonius. The murderers and conspirators against Caesar are free by an act of the Senate sanctioned by Marcus Antonius. The murderer Gaius Cassius Longinus has been given the governorship of Syria by Marcus Antonius. The murderer Marcus Junius Brutus has been given the governorship of Crete by Marcus Antonius. Where are the friends of the murdered Caesar among his enemies? The son of Caesar calls to you.

Even now, after all these years, I can taste the bitter sweetness of that body, and feel beneath me the firm warmth. It is odd that I can do so, for I know that the flesh of Julius Antonius now is smoke, and is dispersed into the air. That body is no more, and my body remains upon this earth. It is odd to know that. No other man has touched me since that afternoon. No man shall touch me for as long as I shall live.

Diciamo a noi stessi di essere diventati un popolo civilizzato e con pio orrore parliamo dei tempi in cui un dio delle messi pretendeva il corpo di un essere umano per la sua oscura protezione. Ma non è forse il dio servito da tanti Romani nei nostri ricordi, o anche nel corso della nostra esistenza, tenebroso e pauroso quanto quello antico? Sia pur soltanto per distruggerlo, io ne sono stato il sacerdote. E sia pur soltanto per indebolirne il potere ho fatto quel che voleva. Eppure non l’ho distrutto, né ne ho indebolito il potere. Dorme irrequieto nel cuore degli uomini, aspettando di destarsi o di essere destato. Tra la brutalità capace di sacrificare una singola vita innocente a un timore senza nome, e la luce della civiltà capace di sacrificare migliaia di vite a un timore cui abbiamo dato un nome, ho trovato poco da scegliere.

For it seems to me now that when I read those books and wrote my words, I read and wrote of a man who bore my name but a man whom I hardly know. Strain as I might, I can hardly see him now; and when I glimpse him, he recedes as in a mist, eluding my most searching gaze. I wonder, if he saw me, would he recognize what he has become? Would he recognize the caricature that all men become of themselves? I do not believe that he would.

I go toward Capri for my holiday; but it seems to me now, in the quietness of this night, beneath the mysterious geometry of the stars, where nothing exists except this hand that forms the curious letters which by some other mysterious process you will understand, it seems to me that I go somewhere else, to a place as mysterious as any I have ever seen. I shall write further tomorrow. Perhaps we can discover that place toward which I travel.

It was more nearly an instinct than knowledge, however, that made me understand that if it is one’s destiny to change the world, it is his necessity first to change himself. If he is to obey his destiny, he must find or invent within himself some hard and secret part that is indifferent to himself, to others, and even to the world that he is destined to remake, not to his own desire, but to a nature that he will discover in the process of remaking.

It shall be engraved upon bronze tablets and attached to those columns that mark the entrance to my mausoleum. Upon those columns there will be sufficient space for six of these tablets, and each of the tablets may contain fifty lines of about sixty characters each. Thus the statement of my acts must be limited to about eighteen thousand characters. It seems to me wholly appropriate that I should have been forced to write of myself under these conditions, arbitrary as they might be; for just as my words must be accomodated to such a public necessity, so has my life been. And just as the acts of my life have done, so these words must conceal at least as much truth as they display; the truth will lie somewhere beneath these graven words, in the dense stone which they will encircle. And this too is appropriate; for much of my life has been lived in such secrecy. It has never been politic for me to let another know my heart.

Il giovane, che non conosce il futuro, vede la vita come una sorta di avventura epica, una sorta di Odissea attraverso mari sconosciuti e isole ignote, dove metterà alla prova le proprie capacità e scoprirà la propria immortalità. L’uomo di età matura, che ha vissuto il futuro sognato un tempo, vede la vita come una tragedia. Ha imparato che il suo potere, per quanto grande, non potrà prevalere contro le forze del caso e della natura a cui dà il nome di dèi, e ha imparato che è mortale. Ma il vecchio, se recita a dovere la sua parte, deve vedere la vita come una commedia. I suoi trionfi e i suoi insuccessi si fondono, e l’uno non è motivo di orgoglio o di vergogna più dell’altro, e lui non è né l’eroe che dimostra il proprio valore contro queste forze, né il protagonista che ne rimane distrutto. Come ogni misero e pietoso guscio d’attore, finisce per rendersi contro di aver recitato tante di quelle parti da non essere più se stesso.

I begin to understand this Roman disdain for philosophy. Their world is an immediate one—of cause and consequence, of rumor and fact, of advantage and deprivation. Even I, who have devoted my life to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, can have some sympathy for the state of the world which has occasioned this disdain. They look at learning as if it were a means to an end; at truth as if it were only a thing to be used. Even their gods serve the state, rather than the other way around.

Virgilio, quando morì, mi supplicò seriamente di distruggere il suo grande poema. Non era completo, disse, e imperfetto. Come il generale che vede una legione distrutta e non sa del trionfo di altre due, lui si riteneva un fallito. Eppure il suo poema sulla fondazione di Roma sopravviverà senza dubbio a Roma stessa, e certamente vivrà più a lungo della povera struttura che io ho messo insieme. Non distrussi il poema. Virgilio non credeva, penso, che gli avrei dato ascolto. Ma il tempo distruggerà Roma.

I must tell you now that I did not drop my shield and run from the battle out of mere cowardice - though that was no doubt part of it. But when I suddenly saw one of Octavius Caesar’s soldiers (or maybe Antonius’s, I do not know) advancing toward me with naked steel flashing in his hands and in his eyes, it was as if time suddenly stood still; and I remembered you and all the hopes you had of my future. I remembered that you had been born a slave, and had managed to buy your freedom; that your labor and your life were early turned to your son, so that he might leave in an ease and comfort and security that you never had. And I saw that son uselessly slaughtered on an earth he had no love for, for a cause he did not understand - and I had a sense of what your years might have been with the knowledge of your son’s discarded life - and I ran. I ran over bodies of fallen soldiers, and saw their empty eyes staring at the sky which they would never see again; and it did not matter to me whether they were friend or foe. I ran.

And yet in the center of this chaos, this city, there is, as if it were another world, the great Forum. It is like the fora that we have seen in the provincial cities, but much grander—great columns of marble support the official buildings; there are dozens of statues, and as many temples to their borrowed Roman gods; and many more smaller buildings that house the various offices of government. There is a good deal of open space, and somehow the noise and stench and smoke from the surrounding city seem not to penetrate here at all.

To care not for one’s self is of little moment, but to care not for those whom one has loved is another matter. All has become an object of an indifferent curiosity, and nothing is of consequence. Perhaps I write these words and employ the devices that I have learned so that I may discover whether I might rouse myself from this great indifference into which I have descended. I doubt that I shall be able to do so, anymore than I should be able to push these massive rocks down the slope into the dark concern of the sea. I am indifferent even to my doubt.

Mi perdonerai se lo dico, mio caro Nicolao, ma tutti questi lavori mi sembrano avere una cosa in comune: sono menzogne. […] Mi sembra infatti, adesso, quando leggo queste opere, di leggere di un uomo che portava il mio nome, ma che quasi non conosco. Per quanto mi sforzi, a malapena riesco a vederlo ormai. E, se pure lo intravedo, indietreggia come fosse nella nebbia, evitando i miei sguardi più penetranti. Mi domando: se mi vedesse, riconoscerebbe quello che è diventato? Riconoscerebbe la caricatura che tutti gli uomini divengono di se stessi? Non credo.

The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy.

After all these years, I cannot be angry at a body that fails; despite its weakness, it has served me well; and it is perhaps appropriate that I should attend its demise, as I might attend the death of an old friend, remembering as the soul slips away into whatever immortality it might find, the mortal soul which could not in life separate itself from the animal that was its guest. I am able now, and have been for some months, almost to detach myself from the body that contains me and observe this semblance of myself. It is not an ability altogether new, and yet it seems to me now that it is more natural than it has been before.

And yet in the center of this chaos, this city, there is, as if it were another world, the great Forum. It is like the fora that we have seen in the provincial cities, but much grander—great columns of marble support the official buildings; there are dozens of statues, and as many temples to their borrowed Roman gods; and many more smaller buildings that house the various offices of government. There is a good deal of open space, and somehow the noise and stench and smoke from the surrounding city seem not to penetrate here at all. Here people walk in sunlight in open space, converse easily, exchange rumors, and read the news posted at the various rostra around the Senate House. I come here to the Forum nearly every day, and feel that I am at the center of the world.

I decide to make a poem when I am compelled by some strong feeling to do so - but I wait until the feeling hardens into a resolve; then I conceive an end, as simple as I can make it, toward which that feeling might progress, though often I cannot see how it will do so. And then I compose my poem, using whatever means are at my command. I borrow from others if I have to - no matter. I invent if I have to - no matter. I use the language that I know, and work within its limits. But the point is this: the end that I discover at last is not the end that I conceived at first. For every solution entails new choices, and every choice made poses new problems to which solutions must be found, and so on and on. Deep in his heart the poet is always surprised at where his poem has gone.

The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself.

De jongeman, die de toekomst niet kent, ziet het leven als een soort episch avontuur, een odyssee over vreemde zeeën en langs onbekende eilanden, waarin hij zijn krachten zal beproeven en bewijzen, en aldus zijn sterfelijkheid zal leren kennen. De man van middelbare leeftijd, die de toekomst heeft geleefd waarover hij eens droomde, ziet het leven als een tragedie, want hij heeft gemerkt dat zijn krachten, hoe groot ze ook waren, niet opgewassen zijn tegen de krachten van het toeval en de natuur, die hij voorziet van de namen van de goden, en heeft geleerd dat hij sterfelijk is. Maar de man op leeftijd moet, als hij de hem toegewezen rol goed speelt, het leven als een komedie zien. Want zijn triomfen en zijn mislukkingen voegen zich aaneen, en de een is niet meer aanleiding voor trots of schaamte dan de andere, en hij is noch de held die zichzelf ten overstaan van die krachten bewijst, noch de hoofdpersoon die erdoor wordt vernietigd. Net als elk armzalig, meelijwekkend omhulsel van een acteur, leert hij inzien dat hij zoveel rollen heeft gespeeld dat hij zichzelf niet meer is.

The poet contemplates the chaos of experience, the confusion of accident, and the incomprehensible realms of possibility - which is to say the world in which we all so intimately live that few of us take the trouble to examine it. The fruits of that contemplation are the discovery, or the invention, of some small principle of harmony and order that may be isolated from that disorder which obscures it, and the subjection of that discovery to those poetic laws which at last make it possible. No general ever more carefully exercises his troops in their intricate formations than does the poet dispose his words to the rigorous necessity of meter; no consul more shrewdly aligns this faction against that in order to achieve his end than the poet who balances one line with another in order to display his truth; and no Emperor ever so carefully organizes the disparate parts of the world that he rules so that they will constitute a whole than does the poet dispose the details of his poem so that another world, perhaps more real than the one that we so precariously inhabit, will spin in the universe of men’s minds.

The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for has has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself.

Six times during my life has this tomb of my soul led me to the brink of that eternal darkness into which all men sink at last, and six times it has stepped back, as if at the behest of a destiny it could not overmaster

Six times during my life has this tomb of my soul led me to the brink of that eternal darkness into which all men sink at last, and six times has it stepped back, as if at the behest of a destiny it could not overmaster.

Alex de Grote, het is geen Afhaal Chinees.

And yet in the weakest of men, in moments when they are alone and themselves, I have found veins of strength like gold in decaying rock; and in the cruelest of men flashes of tenderness and compassion; and in the vainest of men moments of simplicity and grace. I remember Marcus Aemilius Lepidus at Messina, an old man stripped of his title, whom I made publicly to ask forgiveness for his crimes and beg for his life; after he had done so in front of the troops he had once commanded, he looked at me for a long moment without shame or regret or fear, and smiled, and turned from me and strode erectly toward his obscurity. And at Actium, I remember Marcus Antonius at the prow of his ship looking at Cleopatra as her own fleet departed leaving him to certain defeat, knowing at that moment that she had never loved him; and yet upon his face was an expression almost womanly in its wise affection and forgiveness. And I remember Cicero , when at last he knew that his foolish intrigues had failed, and when in secret I informed him that his life was in danger. He smiled as if there had been no strife between us and said, "Do not trouble yourself. I am an old man. Whatever mistakes I have made, I have loved my country." I am told that he offered his neck to his executioner with that same grace.

He was our enemy, but as it is strange, after so many years the death of an old enemy is like the death of an old friend.

Tell Octavius that if I cannot remain his friend in life, I may do so in death.

Η υπερβολική προσοχή μπορεί να οδηγήσει στο χαμό το ίδιο σίγουρα όπως και η υπερβολική βιασύνη.

Thus was the murder of Julius Caesar avenged, and thus did the chaos of treason and faction give way to the years of order and peace, under the Emperor of our state, Gaius Octavius Caesar, now the August.

Yet I have always been bewildered when, in the ease of peace, men raise the questions of praise or blame. It seems to me now that both judgments are inappropriate, and equally so. For those who thus judge do not judge so much out of a concern for right or wrong as out of a protest against the pitiless demands of necessity, or an approval of them. And necessity is simply what has happened; it is the past.

In the matter of passion, whether of love or war, excess is inevitable.

Perhaps we are wiser when we are young, though the philosopher would dispute with me. But I swear to you, we were friends from that moment onward; and that moment of foolish laughter was a bond stronger than anything that came between us later—victories or defeats, loyalties or betrayals, griefs or joys. But the days of youth go, and part of us goes with them, not to return.

My uncle once told me that too much caution may lead to death as certainly as too much rashness.

Then for another hour, apparently thinking that allusive loquacity is subtlety, he suggested that Antonius was ambitious—an observation that surprised me as much as if I had been informed that the Vestal Virgins were chaste.

But the point is this: the end that I discover at last is not the end that I conceived at first. For every solution entails new choices, and every choice made poses new problems to which solutions must be found, and so on and on.

What you seem so unwilling to accept, even now, is this: that the ideals which supported the old republic had no correspondence to the fact of the old republic; that the glorious word concealed the deed of honor;that the appearance of tradition and order cloaked the reality of corruption and chaos; that the call to liberty and freedom closed the minds, even of those who called, to the facts of privation, suppression, and sanctioned murder. We had learned that we had to do what we did, and we would not be deterred by the forms that deceived the world.

And it seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult. He is contemptible in that his judgments reflect a vision of himself which in his ignorance and pride he would impose upon the world.