IV. You will see that the most
powerful and highly placed men let drop remarks in which they long for leisure,
acclaim it, and prefer it to all their blessings. They desire at times, if it
could be with safety, to descend from their high pinnacle; for, though nothing
from without should assail or shatter, Fortune of its very self comes crashing
down.8
The deified Augustus, to whom the gods vouchsafed more than to any other man,
did not cease to pray for rest and to seek release from public affairs; all his
conversation ever reverted to this subject—his hope of leisure. This was the
sweet, even if vain, consolation with which he would gladden his labours—that
he would one day live for himself. In a letter addressed to the senate, in
which he had promised that his rest would not be devoid of dignity nor
inconsistent with his former glory, I find these words: "But these matters
can be shown better by deeds than by promises. Nevertheless, since the joyful
reality is still far distant, my desire for that time most earnestly prayed for
has led me to forestall some of its delight by the pleasure of words." So
desirable a thing did leisure seem that he anticipated it in thought because he
could not attain it in reality. He who saw everything depending upon himself
alone, who determined the fortune of individuals and of nations, thought most
happily of that future day on which he should lay aside his greatness. He had
discovered how much sweat those blessings that shone throughout all lands drew
forth, how many secret worries they concealed. Forced to pit arms first against
his countrymen, then against his colleagues, and lastly against his relatives,
he shed blood on land and sea.
Through Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and Asia, and almost all countries he
followed the path of battle, and when his troops were weary of shedding Roman
blood, he turned them to foreign wars. While he was pacifying the Alpine
regions, and subduing the enemies planted in the midst of a peaceful empire,
while he was extending its bounds even beyond the Rhine and the Euphrates and
the Danube, in Rome itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and
others were being whetted to slay him. Not yet had he escaped their plots, when
his daughter9 and all the noble youths who were bound to her by
adultery as by a sacred oath, oft alarmed his failing years—and there was
Paulus, and a second time the need to fear a woman in league with an
Antony.10 When be had cut away these ulcers11 together with the
limbs themselves, others would grow in their place; just as in a body that was
overburdened with blood, there was always a rupture somewhere. And so he longed
for leisure, in the hope and thought of which he found relief for his labours. This
was the prayer of one who was able to answer the prayers of mankind.
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