Caesar and Christ

Who, then, is free? The wise man, he who is lord over himself, whom neither poverty nor death nor bonds affright, who defies his passions, scorns ambition, and is in himself a whole.

• pp. 249-250 (Easton Press, 1992)

The years as they pass rob us of all joys, one by one.

• p. 250 (Easton Press, 1992)

Halfway on his long journey from 753 to 9 B.C., Livy thought of stopping, on the ground that he had already won lasting fame; he went on, he says, because he found himself restless when he ceased to write.

• p. 251 (Easton Press, 1992)

History has been unfair to this "age of despots" because it has spoken here chiefly through the most brilliant and most prejudiced of historians.

• p. 293 (Easton Press, 1992)

The emperors themselves were the chief victims of their power... Seven of these ten men met a violent end; nearly all of them were unhappy, surrounded by conspiracy, dishonesty, and intrigue, trying to govern a world from the anarchy of home. They indulged their appetites because they knew how brief was their omnipotence; they lived in the daily horror of men condemned to an early and sudden death. They went under because they were above the law; they became less than men because power had made them gods.

• p. 293 (Easton Press, 1992)

Lucan is fair to Caesar, and writes of him an illuminating phrase: nil actum credens cum quid superesset agendum‚"thinking nothing done while anything remained to do."

• p. 296 (Easton Press, 1992)

The public never forgave these teachers of wisdom from taking salaries or fees.

• p. 299 (Easton Press, 1992)

The first lesson of philosophy is that we cannot be wise about everything. We are fragments in infinity and moments in eternity; for such forked atoms to describe the universe, or the Supreme Being, must make the planets tremble with mirth.

• p. 304 (Easton Press, 1992)

Read good books many times, rather than many books; travel slowly, and not too much.

• p. 306 (Easton Press, 1992)

The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

• p. 306 (Easton Press, 1992)

Men are more wicked together than separately. If you are forced to be in a crowd, then most of all you should withdraw into yourself.

• p. 306 (Easton Press, 1992)

Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.

• p. 315 (Easton Press, 1992)

Erasure is as important as writing. Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute. . . . The best method of correction is to put aside for a time what we have written, so that when we come to it again it may have an aspect of novelty, as of being another man's work; in this way we may preserve ourselves from regarding our writings with the affection that we lavish upon a newborn child.

• p. 315 (Easton Press, 1992)

Rome itself had only two large factories—a paper mill and a dyeing establishment; probably neither meals nor fuels were at hand in quantity, and the profits of politics seemed more honorable than the proceeds of industry.

• p. 323 (Easton Press, 1992)

Italian life was now (A.D. 96) as highly industrialized as life was ever to be until the nineteenth century. It would hardly go further on the basis of slavery and a high concentration of wealth. Roman law contracepted large organizations by requiring every sharer in an industrial undertaking to be a legally responsible partner; it forbade "limited liability" companies and allowed joint-stock corporations only for the performance of governmental contracts. Since similar restrictions affected banks, these could seldom provide capital for large-scale enterprise.

• p. 323 (Easton Press, 1992)

Slaves were still sufficiently available to discourage the development of machinery; listless slave labor, with small stake in the product, was not likely to make inventions; some labor-saving devices were rejected because they might have caused technological unemployment; and the purchasing power of the people was too low to stimulate or support mechanized production.

• p. 323 (Easton Press, 1992)

The movement of intelligence over western and southern Europe was as rapid in Caesar's day as at any time before the railway. In 54 B.C. Caesar's letter from Britain reached Cicero at Rome in twenty-nine days; in 1834 Sir Robert Peel, hurrying from Rome to London, required thirty days.

• p. 324 (Easton Press, 1992)

Even in the age of the despots there were Romans of the old type, men of ability and integrity, conscientious administrators who made the Empire prosper under the lords of misrule and opened a way for monarchy's golden age.

• p. 328 (Easton Press, 1992)

We must not exaggerate the wealth of ancient Rome. The total annual revenue of the state under Vespasian was at most 1,500,000,000 sesterces ($150,000,000)—less than a fifth of the budget of New York City [in 1944]. The means of amassing great fortunes by large-scale production were unknown or ignored, and had not developed the immense and taxable industry and commerce of the modern world.

• p. 337 (Easton Press, 1992)

The products of art appeal to the soul through eye or ear or hand rather than through the intellect; their beauty fades when it is diluted into ideas and words. The universe of thought is only one of many worlds; each sense has its own; each art has therefore its characteristic medium, which cannot be translated into speech. Even an artist writes about art in vain.

• p. 338 (Easton Press, 1992)

It was ungracious of Rome to destroy so accommodating a philosopher.

• p. 590 (Easton Press, 1992)

The emperor who condemned him died a coward's death, and soon nothing survived of his inordinate works. But from the defeated Paul came the theological structure of Christianity, as from Paul and Peter the astonishing organization of the Church. Paul had found a dream of Jewish eschatology, confined in Judaic Law; he had freed and broadened it into a faith that could move the world.

• p. 591 (Easton Press, 1992)

Protestantism was the triumph of Paul over Peter; Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ.

• p. 592 (Easton Press, 1992)