Sublime

As early as 1780 Washington had predicted that France, to pay for its American adventure, would face a huge deficit and resort to ruinous taxes that “the people of France are not in a condition to endure for any duration.”10

Latin quotes will include a great deal of Seneca’s aphorisms—lines like “Necessity is usually more powerful than duty” (Trojan Women 581), or “Nature takes revenge on everybody” (Phaedra 352), or “Crime must be hidden by crime” (Medea 721). The aphorisms often speak to recurrent preoccupations of Seneca’s, with fortune and its many reversals (“A ma

At that stage even of paganism therefore the peasant songs and dances sound fainter and fainter in the forest. For one thing the peasant civilisation was fading, or had already faded from the whole countryside. The Empire at the end was organised more and more on that servile system which generally goes with the boast of organisation, indeed it was

“Fortune, you have achieved nothing by resisting all my endeavors. Until now I have fought for my country’s freedom and not my own. My purpose in acting with such determination was not to live free but to live among the free. Now that hope is lost for humankind, let Cato be taken away to safety.” 8 Then he struck the blow that meant death to his bo

"Things are always at their best in the beginning," said Pascal. C. S. Lewis has stated it more perceptively: That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended—civilizations are built up—excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then

A century later, royalty was still farther weakened; the executive power was taken away and was intrusted to annual magistrates, who were called ephors.