CHAPTER XXIV. OF THE ROMAN GRANDEUR. I WILL only say a word or two on this infinite argument to show the simplicity of those who compare the pitiful grandeurs of these times to that of Rome. In the seventh book of Cicero's Familiar Epistles (and let the grammarians put out that surname of familiar if they please, for in truth it is not very proper; and they who, instead of familiar, have substituted ad familiares, may gather something to justify them for so doing out of what Suetonius says in the Life of Cæsar,1 that there was a volume of letters of his ad familiares), there is one directed to Cæsar, being then in Gaul, wherein Cicero repeats these words, which were in the end of another letter that Cæsar had written to him: "As to what concerns Marcus Furius, whom you have recommended to me, I will make him king of Gaul; and if you would advance any other friend of yours, send him to me." It was no new thing for a simple citizen of Rome, as Cæsar then was, to dispose of kingdoms; for he took away that of King Deiotarus from him, to give it to a gentleman of the city of Pergamus called Mithridates; and those who wrote his life record several kingdoms by him sold; and Suetonius says that he had at once from King Ptolemy three millions six hundred thousand crowns, which was very near selling him his kingdom. 8 Tot Galatæ, tot Pontus eat, tot Lydia nummis.5 "2 "So much for Pontus, so much for Lydia, so much for Galatea." 1 Sueton. Life of Cæsar, c. 56. 2 Cicero, Epist. Fam. vii. 5. The most received text has the name M. Orfium. Some commentators have regarded Cæsar's offer as a mere jest; but Montaigne, who takes it as a serious offer, may very well be in the right, for Cæsar's proposal may merely have extended to making Cicero's friend one of the petty reguli, 3 Cicero, de Divinat. ii. 37. senate. Mark Antony said1 that the grandeur of the people of Rome was not so much seen in what they took as what they gave; and, indeed, some ages before Antony, they had dethroned one amongst the rest, with so wonderful authority, that in all the Roman History I have not observed any thing that more denotes the height of their power. Antiochus possessed all Egypt, and was about conquering Cyprus, and other appendages of that empire. Being upon the progress of his victories, C. Popilius came to him from the Senate, A great king deand at their first meeting refused to take him prived of his conquests by a letter by the hand till he had first read the letters he from the Roman brought him. The king having read them, told him he would consider of them; but Popilius made a circumference about him with the wand he had in his hand, saying, "Return me an answer, that I may carry back to the Senate, before thou stirrest out of this circle." Antiochus, astonished at the roughness of so positive a command, after a little pause replied, "I will obey the Senate's command; "2 and then it was that Popilius saluted him as a friend to the people of Rome. After having renounced so great a monarchy, and such a torrent of successful fortune, upon three scratches of the pen; in earnest he had reason, as he afterwards did, to send the Senate word, by his ambassadors, that he had received their order with the same respect as if it had been sent by the immortal gods.3 quered kingdoms All the kingdoms that Augustus gained by the right of war he either restored to those who had lost Why the Romans them, or presented them to strangers. And restored their conTacitus, in reference to this, speaking of Cogi- to their owners. dunus, king of England, gives us, by a touch, a marvellous idea of that infinite power: "The Romans," says he, "were from all antiquity accustomed to leave the kings they had subdued in possession of their kingdoms under their authority, that they might have even kings to be their slaves:" Ut haberent instrumenta servitutis et reges. 1 Plutarch, in Vitâ, c. 8. 2 Livy, xlv. 12. 4 3 Id. 13. 'Tis likely that Soly 4 Tacitus, Agricola, c. 14. man, whom we have seen make a gift of Hungary and other principalities, had therein more respect to this consideration than to that he was wont to allege, viz: that he was glutted and overcharged with so many monarchies, and so much dominion, as his own valour and that of his ancestors had acquired. CHAPTER XXV. Gout counterfeit became a real gout. NOT TO COUNTERFEIT BEING SICK. THERE is an epigram in Martial of very good sense, for he has of all sorts, where he pleasantly tells the story of Cælius, who, to avoid making his court to some great men of Rome, to wait their rising, and to attend them abroad, pretended to have the gout; and, the better to colour this pretence, anointed his legs, and had them wrapped up in a great many clouts and swathings, and perfectly counterfeited both the gesture and countenance of a gouty person, till in the end fortune did him the kindness to make him gouty indeed. Tantum cura potest, et ars doloris ! "So much has counterfeiting brought about, I think I have read somewhere in Appian a story like this, his eye, he found he had totally lost the sight of it indeed, and that it was absolutely gone. 'Tis possible that the action of sight was dulled for having been so long without exercise, and that the optic power was wholly retired into the other eye; for we evidently perceive that the eye we keep shut sends some part of its virtue to its fellow, so that the remaining eye will swell and grow bigger; as also idleness, with the heat of ligatures and plasters, might very well have brought some gouty humour upon this dissembler in Martial. Reading in Froissard1 the vow of a troop of young English gallants, to carry their left eyes bound up till they were arrived in France, and had performed some notable exploit upon us, I have oft been tickled with the conceit of its befalling them as it did the beforenamed Roman, and that they had returned with but an eye apiece to their mistresses, for whose sakes they had entered into this vow. It is proper to from counterfeit fects. Mothers have reason to rebuke their children when they counterfeit having but one eye, squinting, lameness, or any other personal defect; for, besides hinder children that their bodies being then so tender may be ing personal desubject to take an ill bent, fortune, I know not how, sometimes seems to take a delight to take us at our word; and I have heard several examples related of people who have become really sick by only feigning to be so. I have always used, whether on horseback or on foot, to carry a stick in my hand, and so as to affect doing it with a grace; many have threatened that this trick would one day be turned into necessity; that is, that I should be the first of my family that should have the gout. But let us a little lengthen this chapter, and vary it with a piece of another colour, concerning blindness. Pliny 2 reports of one, that, once dreaming he was blind, found himself in the morning so indeed, without any preceding infirmity in his eyes. The force of imagination might assist in this case, as I have said elsewhere; and Pliny seems to be of the same VOL. II. 1 Vol. i. 29 Nat. Hist. vii. 50. opinion; but it is more likely that the motions which the body felt within (of which physicians, if they please, may find out the cause), which took away his sight, were the occasion of his dream. laugh at my Let us add another story, akin to this subject, which Seneca1 relates in one of his Epistles: "You know," says he, writing to Lucilius, "that Harpaste, my wife's fool, lives upon me as an hereditary charge; for, as to my own taste, I have an aversion to those monsters; and if I have a mind to laugh at a fool, I need not seek him far, I can self. This fool has suddenly lost her sight. I tell you a strange, but a very true thing; she is not sensible that she is blind, but eternally importunes her keeper to take her abroad, because she says the house is dark. I pray you to believe that what we laugh at in her happens to every one of us; no one knows himself to be avaricious. Besides, the blind call for a guide; we stray of our own accord. I am not ambitious, we say; but a man cannot live otherwise at Rome; I am not wasteful, but the city requires a great expense; 'tis not my fault if I am choleric, and if I have not yet established any certain course of life; 'tis the fault of youth. Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; 'tis in us, and planted in our bowels; and even this, that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick, renders us more hard to be cured. If we do not betimes begin to dress them, when shall we have done with so many wounds and evils wherewith we abound? And yet we have a most sweet and charming medicine in philosophy; for all the rest give no pleasure till after the cure; this pleases and heals at once." This is what Seneca says; he has carried me from my subject; but there is advantage in the change. 1 Ep. 50. |