“The sentiment is Roman,” was the reply. “But let us come to the fact. Titus, once fixed in the government, would be worth all the fantasies that ever fed the declaimers on independence. His character is peace, and if he ever comes to the empire, he will make the first of monarchs. You should try him and reap the first fruits of his talent for making people happy. There, look round this room; you see every panel hung with a picture, a lyre, or a volume; what does that tell?”
“Certainly not the habits of a camp; yet he is distinguished in the field.”
The Emperor
“No man more. There is not a rider in the legions who can sit a horse or throw a lance better. He has the talents of a general besides; and more than all, he has the most iron perseverance that ever dwelt in man. If the two armies were to slaughter each other until there was but half a dozen spearmen left between them, Titus would head his remnant and fight until he died. But whether it is nature or the poison that he drank along with Britannicus, he wants the eternal vividness of his father. Aye, there was the soldier for the legions. Look, prince, at this picture,[54] and tell me what you think of the countenance.”
He drew aside a curtain that covered a superb portrait of the Emperor. I saw a countenance of incomparable shrewdness, eccentricity, and self-enjoyment. Every feature told the same tale, from the rounded and dimpled chin to the broad and deeply veined forehead, overhung with its rough mat of hair. The hooked nose, the deep wrinkles about the lips, the thick dark eyebrows, obliquely raised as if some new jest was gathering, showed the perpetual humorist. But the eye beneath that brow—an orb black as charcoal, with a spot of intense brightness in the center, as if a breath could turn that coal into flame—belonged to the supreme sagacity and determination that had raised Vespasian from a tent to the throne.
The secretary, whose jovial character strongly resembled that of the object of his panegyric, could not restrain his admiration.
“There,” said he, “is the man who has fought more battles, said more good things, and taken less physic than any emperor that ever wore the diadem. I served with him from decurion up to tribune, and he was always the same—active, brave, and laughing from morn to night. Old as he is, day never finds him in his bed. He rides, swims, runs, outjests everybody, and frowns at nothing on earth but an old woman and a physician. He loves money, ’tis true; yet what he squeezes from the overgrown, he scatters like a prince. But his mirth is inexhaustible; a little rough, so much for his camp education; but the most curious mixture of justice, spleen, and pleasantry in the world.”
My companion’s memory teemed with examples.
An Emperor’s Traits
“An Alexandrian governor was ordered to Rome to account for a long course of extortion; immediately on his arrival he pretended to be taken violently ill, which, of course, put off the inquiry. The Emperor heard of this, expressed the greatest interest in so meritorious a public servant, paid him a visit the next day, disguised as a physician, ordered him a variety of medicines, which the unfortunate governor was compelled to take, renewed his visit regularly every day, and every day charged him an enormous fee! Beggary stared the governor in the face, and never was a complication of disorders so rapidly cured!