Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page
The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage."
The reflection on human nothingness by one who contemplates the ruins of by-gone cities and empires is a topic for every age. But Servius has special considerations to urge, which are happily not of so universal application: "Do you grieve for her lot, who is taken away from the evil to come? who has seen the great days of the Republic, and has expired with its expiration? Does it not often occur to you, as it does to me, that we have fallen on times in which those are to be congratulated who can pass painlessly from life to death? Why be so deeply stirred by a private grief? Consider how fortune has buffeted us already. We have been bereft of those things which men should hold not less dear than their children—our country, our reputation, our dignity,—everything which made life honourable. What can one blow more add to our pain? Schooled in such a fate as ours, ought not the mind to become callous, and hold whatever may befall as insignificant."[1]
In sentences such as these we seem to catch the note of dull, passive despair, which Tacitus has laught us to recognise as the tone appropriate to the Romans under the Empire. The inexorable, unapproachable despotism already throws its chill shadow over the world, and the "petty men," as Cassius says, "peep about, to find themselves dishonourable graves."
- ↑ Extract from Ad Fam., iv., 5.
