CHAP. 45.—TEN VERY FORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH HAVE HAPPENED TO THE SAME PERSON.
Q. Metellus, in the funeral oration which he made in praise of his father, L. Metellus, who had been pontiff, twice consul,[1211] dictator, master of the horse, one of the quindecemvirs for dividing the lands,[1212] and the first who had elephants in his triumphal procession,[1213] the same having been taken in the first Punic war, has left it written to the effect that his father had attained the ten greatest and best things, in the search after which wise men have spent all their lives. For, as he states, he was anxious to become the first warrior, the best orator, the bravest general, that the most important of all business should be entrusted to his charge, that he should enjoy the very highest honours, that he should possess consummate wisdom, that he should be regarded as the most distinguished senator, that he should by honourable means acquire a large fortune, that he should leave behind him many children, and that he should be the most illustrious person in the state. To refute this assertion, would be tedious and indeed unnecessary, seeing that it is contradicted more than sufficiently by the single fact, that Metellus passed his old age, deprived of his sight, which he had lost in a fire, while rescuing the Palladium from the temple of Vesta;[1214] a glorious action, no doubt, although the result was unhappy: on which account it is, that although he ought not to be called unfortunate, still he cannot be called fortunate. The Roman people, however, granted him a privilege which no one else had ever obtained since the foundation of the city, that of being conveyed to the senate-house in a chariot whenever he went to the senate:[1215] a great distinction, no doubt, but bought at the price of his sight.
(44.) The son also, of the same Q. Metellus, who has given the above account of his father, is considered himself to have been one of the rarest instances of human felicity.[1216] For, in addition to the very considerable honours which he obtained, and the surname which he acquired from the conquest of Macedonia, he was carried to the funeral pile by his four sons,[1217] one of whom had been prætor, three of them consuls, two had obtained triumphs, and one had been censor; each of which honours falls to the lot of a very few only. And yet, in the very full-blown pride of his dignity, as he was returning from the Campus Martius at mid-day, when the Forum and the Capitol are deserted, he was seized by the tribune, Caius Atinius Labeo,[1218] surnamed Macerion, whom, during his censorship, he had ejected from the senate, and was dragged by him to the Tarpeian rock, for the purpose of being precipitated therefrom. The numerous band, however, who called him by the name of father, flew to his assistance, though tardily, and only just, as it were, at the very last moment, to attend his funeral obsequies, seeing that he could not lawfully offer resistance, or repel force by force in the sacred case of a tribune;[1219] and he was just on the very point of perishing, the victim of his virtues and the strictness of his censorship, when he was saved by the intervention of another tribune,—only obtained with the greatest difficulty,—and so rescued from the very jaws of death. He afterwards had to subsist on the bounty of others, his property having been consecrated[1220] by the very man whom he had degraded; and who, as if that had not satiated his vengeance, still farther wreaked his malice upon him, by throwing a rope around his neck,[1221] and twisting it with such extreme violence that the blood flowed from out of his ears.[1222] And for my part, too, I should look upon it as in the number of his misfortunes, to have been the enemy of the second Africanus; indeed, Macedonicus, in this instance, bears testimony against himself; for he said to his sons, “Go, my children, render the last duties to Scipio; you will never witness the funeral of a greater citizen than him;” and this speech he made to his sons, one of whom had already acquired the surname of Balearicus, and another of Diadematus,[1223] he himself at the time bearing that of Macedonicus.
Now, if we take into account the above injury alone, can any one justly pronounce that man happy, whose life was thus endangered by the caprice of an enemy, and that enemy, besides, not an Africanus? What victories over enemies could possibly be counterbalanced by such a price as this? What honours, what triumphs, did not Fortune cancel, in suffering a censor to be dragged through the middle of the city—indeed, that was his only resource for gaining time[1224]—dragged to that Capitol, whither he himself, in his triumph, had forborne to drag in a similar manner even the very captives whom he had taken in his conquests? This crime, too, must be looked upon as all the greater, from its having so nearly deprived Macedonicus of the honours of his funeral, so great and so glorious, in which he was borne to the pile by his triumphant children, he himself thus triumphing, as it were, in his very obsequies. Most assuredly, there is no happiness that can be called unalloyed, when the terror of our life has been interrupted by any outrage, and much more by such an outrage as this. As for the rest, I really am at a loss whether we ought most to commend the manners of the age,[1225] or to feel an increased degree of indignation, that, among so many members of the family of the Metelli, such wicked audacity as that of C. Atinius remained unpunished.
CHAP. 46.—THE MISFORTUNES OF AUGUSTUS.
In the life of the now deified emperor Augustus even, whom the whole world would certainly agree to place in this class,[1226] if we carefully examine it in all its features, we shall find remarkable vicissitudes of human fate. There was his rejection from the post of master of the horse, by his uncle,[1227] and the preference which was given to Lepidus, and that, too, in opposition to his own requests; the hatred produced by the proscription; his alliance in the Triumvirate[1228] with some among the very worst of the citizens, and that, too, with an unequal share of influence, he himself being entirely borne down by the power of Antony; his illness[1229] at the battle of Philippi; his flight, and his having to remain three days concealed in a marsh,[1230] though suffering from sickness, and, according to the account of Agrippa and Mecænas, labouring under a dropsy; his shipwreck[1231] on the coast of Sicily, where he was again under the necessity of concealing himself in a cave; his desperation, which caused him even to beg Proculeius[1232] to put him to death, when he was hard-pressed by the enemy in a naval engagement;[1233] his alarm about the rising at Perusia;[1234] his anxiety at the battle of Actium;[1235] the extreme danger he was in from the falling of a tower during the Pannonian war;[1236] seditions so numerous among his soldiers; so many attacks by dangerous diseases;[1237] the suspicions which he entertained respecting the intentions of Marcellus;[1238] the disgraceful banishment, as it were, of Agrippa;[1239] the many plots against his life;[1240] the deaths of his own children,[1241] of which he was accused, and his heavy sorrows, caused not merely by their loss;[1242] the adultery[1243] of his daughter, and the discovery of her parricidal designs; the insulting retreat of his son-in-law, Nero;[1244] another adultery, that of his grand-daughter;[1245] to which there were added numerous other evils, such as the want of money to pay his soldiers; the revolt of Illyria;[1246] the necessity of levying the slaves; the sad deficiency of young men;[1247] the pestilence that raged in the City;[1248] the famine in Italy; the design which he had formed of putting an end to his life, and the fast of four days, which brought him within a hair’s breadth of death. And then, added to all this, the slaughter of Varus;[1249] the base slanders[1250] whispered against his authority; the rejection of Posthumius Agrippa, after his adoption,[1251] and the regret to which Augustus was a prey after his banishment;[1252] the suspicions too respecting Fabius, to the effect that he had betrayed his secrets; and then, last of all, the machinations of his wife and of Tiberius, the thoughts of which occupied his last moments. In fine, this same god,[1253] who was raised to heaven, I am at a loss to say whether deservedly or not, died, leaving the son of his own enemy his heir.[1254]
CHAP. 47. (46.)—MEN WHOM THE GODS HAVE PRONOUNCED TO BE THE MOST HAPPY.
In reference to this point, two oracles of Delphi may come under our consideration, which would appear to have been pronounced as though in order to chastise the vanity of man. These oracles were the following: by the first, Pedius was pronounced to be the most happy of men, who had just before fallen in defence of his country.[1255] On the second occasion, when it had been consulted by Gyges, at that time the most powerful king in the world, it declared that Aglaüs of Psophis[1256] was a more happy man than himself.[1257] This Aglaüs was an old man, who lived in a poor petty nook of Arcadia, and cultivated a small farm, though quite sufficient for the supply of his yearly wants;[1258] he had never so much as left it, and, as was quite evident from his mode of living, his desires being of the most limited kind, he had experienced but an extremely small share of the miseries of life.
CHAP. 48. (47.)—THE MAN WHOM THE GODS ORDERED TO BE WORSHIPPED DURING HIS LIFE-TIME; A REMARKABLE FLASH OF LIGHTNING.
While still surviving, and in full possession of his senses, by the command of the same oracle, and with the sanction of Jupiter, the supreme Father of the gods, Euthymus,[1259] the pugilist, who had always, with one exception, been victorious in the Olympic games, was deified. He was a native of Locri, in Italy. I find that Callimachus,[1260] considering it a more wonderful circumstance than any he had ever known, that the two statues which had been erected to him, one at Locri, and the other at Olympia, were struck by lightning on the same day, ordered sacrifices to be offered up to him, which was accordingly done, both during his life-time, and after his death. Nothing, indeed, has appeared to me so remarkable, as this mark of approval given by the gods.