Thus the venerable city, after humbling the proud necks of savage nations, and making laws, the everlasting foundations and moorings of liberty, like a thrifty parent, wise and wealthy, has entrusted the management of her inheritance to the Caesars, as to her children.

And although for some time the tribesThe thirty-five tribes into which the Roman citizens were divided. have been inactive and the centuriesThe comitia centuriata. at peace, and there are no contests for votes but the tranquillity of Numa’s time has returned, yet throughout all regions and parts of the earth she is accepted as mistress and queen; everywhere the white hair of the senators and their authority are revered and the name of the Roman people is respected and honoured.

But this magnificence and splendour of the assemblies is marred by the rude worthlessness of a few, who do not consider where they were born, but, as if licence were granted to vice, descend to sin and wantonness. For as the lyric poet Simonides tells us,The passage does not occur in the surviving fragments. Plutarch, , 1, attributes the same saying to Euripides, or whoever it was. one who is going to live happy and in accord with perfect reason ought above all else to have a glorious fatherland.

Some of these men eagerly strive for statues, thinking that by them they can be made immortal, as if they would gain a greater reward from senseless brazen images than from the consciousness of honourable and virtuous conduct. And they take pains to have them overlaid with gold, a fashion first introduced by Acilius Glabrio,See Livy, xl. 34, 5. after his skill and his arms had overcome King Antiochus.At Thermopylae in 191 B.C. But how noble it is, scorning these slight and trivial honours, to aim to tread the long and steep ascent to true glory, as the bard of Ascra expresses it,Hesiod, , 289 ff. τῆς δ᾽ ἀρετῆς ἱδρῶτα θεοὶ προπάροιθεν ἔθηκαν | Ἀθάνατοι· μακρὸς δὲ καὶ ὄρθιος οἶμος ἐπ᾽ αὐτὴν, | καὶ τρηχὺς τὸ πρῶτον· ἐπὴν δ᾽ εἰς ἄκρον ἵκηται, | Ῥηιδίη δὴ ἔπειτα πέλει, χαλεπή περ᾽ ἐοῦσα. is made clear by Cato the Censor. For when he was asked why he alone among many did not have a statue, he replied: I would rather that good men should wonder why I did not deserve one than (which is much worse) should mutter Why was he given one?