Velleius Paterculus

“ Scipio was so elegant a cultivator and admirer of liberal studies, and of every kind of learning, that he had constantly with him, at home and in the field, two men of eminent talents, Polybius and Panætius; for no man balanced the fatigues of business with the enjoyments of leisure more judiciously than Scipio, as he was constantly studying the arts either of war or of peace, and constantly exercising either his body in toil or his mind in learning. ”

“ In all this great war in Germany, I could observe nothing more noble, nothing more deserving of admiration, than that the general never thought any opportunity of success so attractive as to justify a squandering of the lives of his soldiers; he ever judged the safest means the most honourable, and preferred the approbation of his conscience to the acquisition of fame; nor were the counsels of the general ever swayed by the feelings of the army, but the army was always guided by the wisdom of the general. ”

“ For who can sufficiently wonder, that the most eminent geniuses in every art have agreed in one common character, and have fallen within one period of time; and that, as different kinds of animals, shut up in a fold or other inclosure, continue each distinct from those around it, and form themselves into separate bodies, so minds, capable of any great achievements, have formed distinct assemblages about the same time and with similar effect? ”

“ With what violent griefs, Marcus Vinicius, has he felt his mind tortured in the last three years! How long has heart been consumed with affliction, and, what is most unhappy, such as he was obliged to conceal, while he was compelled to grieve, and to feel indignation and shame, at the conduct of his daughter-in-law [102] and his grandson [103] ! And the sorrows of this period have been aggravated by the loss of his most excellent mother, a woman who resembled the gods more than human beings; and whose power no man ever felt but in the relief of distress or the conferring of honour. ”

“ Thus Pompey, victorious over every nation to which he had gone, grown greater than the wish of his countrymen or even than his own, and having in every way exceeded the measure of human fortune, returned to Italy. An opinion that had prevailed rendered his return extremely popular; for most people had asserted that he would not come into the city without his army, and that he would limit the liberty of the people by his own will. The more strongly they were affected by this apprehension, the more grateful was the unassuming manner in which that great commander returned ”

“ How constantly envy attends eminent fortune, and how closely it pursues the highest characters, may be understood from the follow circumstance, that while no one objected to the triumphs of Anicius and Octavius, there were some who endeavoured to hinder that of Paulus, though it far exceeded the others, as well in the greatness of Perses as a monarch, as in the magnificent display of war-trophies, and the quantity of money carried in it ”

“ XVIII Our wonder may well be transferred from ages to cities. One city in Attica was distinguished in eloquence for a greater number of years, and for more achievements in it, than all the rest of Greece; so that, though the natives of that country were dispersed through its different states, we might suppose its genius to have been confined entirely within the walls of Athens. ”

“ Pompey reproached Lucullus with his scandalous love of money, and Lucullus railed at Pompey’s inordinate ambition; and neither could be convicted of falsehood in what he laid to the charge of the other. For Pompey, from his first engagement in public business, could never with patience endure an equal, and in cases where he was entitled to the first share of honour, he wished to engross the whole; no man, indeed, being less covetous of everything else, or more so of glory. ”

“ No other nation ever entered on war so soon after resolving on it, or so speedily put its determinations in execution. Roman citizens were murdered, traders slain, and, in that quarter of the country most remote from the general, a vast number of soldiers [80] cut off. All Macedonia was reduced by their arms, and everything in every part wasted with fire and sword. So powerful, indeed, were the apprehensions excited by this war, that they shook and alarmed even the steady mind of Augustus Cæsar, strengthened as it was by experience in wars of such magnitude. ”

“ XIII Three years before Carthage was demolished, Marcus Cato, who had been a constant advocate for its destruction, died, in the consulship of Lucius Censorinus and Marcus Manlius. In the very year in which Carthage fell, Lucius Mummius utterly destroyed Corinth, nine hundred and fifty-two years after it had been built by Aletes the son of Hippotes. Each of the generals was honoured with a name from the people whom he conquered, the one being styled Africanus, the other Achaicus. No new man [22] , before Mummius, had ever assumed a surname derived from military merit. ”

“ In Macedonia, Marcus Brutus had drawn over to his side the legions of Caius, the brother of Mark Antony, and those of Vatinius, near Dyrrachium, who willingly joined him. Antonius he had attacked in the field; Vatinius he had overawed by the dignity of his character; as Brutus was reckoned preferable to any leader of the times, and Vatinius was considered inferior to every one; a man in whom deformity of person vied with depravity of mind, so that his soul seemed lodged in an habitation perfectly adapted to it. He was seven legions strong. ”

“ Even the Rhodians, who had previously been most faithful to the Romans, began, with wavering allegiance, to watch the turns of fortune, and appeared rather inclined to the side of the king. Eumenes, too, in this war, was undecided in his views, and acted consistently neither with his brother’s [16] proceedings at first, nor with his own general conduct. At length the senate and people of Rome elected to the consulship Lucius Æmilius Paulus, who had previously triumphed both as prætor and consul; a man deserving of the highest honour which merit can be conceived to attain. ”

“ Before the arrival of Lucius Sylla, however, Cinna was slain in a mutiny of his troops. Such a man deserved to die rather by the sentence of a conqueror, than by the rage of the soldiery. But he was a character, of whom it may truly be said, that he dared what no good man would dare, and accomplished what could be effected by none but the bravest; that he was precipitate in forming his designs, but executed them like a man. Carbo, electing no colleague in his room, continued sole consul for all the rest of the year. ”

“ During the same period, sixty-five years before the foundation of Rome, the city of Carthage was built by Elissa of Tyre, whom some suppose to be the same as Dido. About the same time, Caranus, a man of regal extraction, being the sixteenth in descent from Hercules, took his departure from Argos, and seized on the kingdom of Macedonia. The great Alexander, being the seventeenth in succession from Caranus, might justly boast of his lineages, as being on his mother’s side from Achilles, and on his father’s from Hercules [12] . ”

“ Having then brought his canoe to the shore, and contemplated Cæsar a long time in silence, he said, “Our young men are certainly mad; they worship your divinity in your absence; yet, in you presence, choose rather to dread your arms, than to trust your faith. For my part, Cæsar, I have this day, by your permission and favour, seen the gods, of whom I had before only heard, and I never in my life either wished for, or experienced, a day of greater happiness.” ”

“ Such was the end of a most upright and excellent man, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and on the day before his birthday, after three consulships and as many triumphs, after subduing the whole world, and after reaching a degree of exaltation beyond which it is impossible to ascend; fortune having made such a revolution in his condition, that he who lately wanted earth to conquer, could now scarcely find sufficient for a grave. ”

“ Not only the Parthians, renouncing their alliance of Rome, laid their hands on Armenia; but Germany, when the eyes of its conqueror were turned away, rose up in rebellion. But in the city, in that same year, (thirty from the present time,) in which the emperor Augustus, being consul with Caninius Gallus, gratified the eyes and minds of the Roman people, on occasion of dedicating a Temple to Mars, with most magnificent spectacles of gladiators and a sea-fight, a calamity disgraceful to mention, and dreadful to call to mind, fell upon his own house. ”