Augustus

by John Williams

Emperors may let their memories lie even more readily than poets and historians.”

I have conquered the world, and none of it is secure; I have shown liberty to the people, and they flee it as if it were a disease; I despise those whom I can trust, and love those best who would most quickly betray me. And I do not know where we are going, though I lead a nation to its destiny.

We shall march across the country, feed upon the land, and kill whom we must kill. It is the only life for a man. And things shall be as they will be.

“My uncle once told me that too much caution may lead to death as certainly as too much rashness.”

How do you oppose a foe who is wholly irrational and unpredictable—and yet who, out of animal energy and the accident of circumstance, has attained a most frightening power?

In the matter of passion, whether of love or war, excess is inevitable.

“He is a man like any other,” he said. “He will become what he will become, out of the force of his person and the accident of his fate.”

A man may live like a fool for a year, and become wise in a day.

When one has had power in his grasp, and has failed to hold it, and has remained alive—what does one become?

I scarcely know my mother. I saw her upon few occasions when I was a child, even less frequently when I was a girl, and we met only at more or less formal social gatherings when I was a woman. I was never fond of her; and it gives me now some assurance to know, after these five years of enforced intimacy, that my feeling for her has not changed.

To care not for one’s self is of little moment, but to care not for those whom one has loved is another matter. All has become the object of an indifferent curiosity, and nothing is of consequence.

The poets say that youth is the day of the fevered blood, the hour of love, the moment of passion; and that with age come the cooling baths of wisdom, whereby the fever is cured. The poets are wrong. I did not know love until late in my life, when I could no longer grasp it. Youth is ignorant, and its passion is abstract.

I remember that I wept, knowing that my father would die, whom I had known only as a child; and I came to know that loss was the condition of our living. It is a knowledge that one cannot give to another.

I do not persuade myself that the possession of fame and power is worth the price of it.

Are you mine? I know that you are when you are with me, but when you are so far away—where is your touch, that tells me more than I have known before? Does my unhappiness please you? I hope it does. Lovers are cruel; I would almost be happy, if I could know that you are as unhappy as I am.

“Upon more than one occasion my life has been saved by my believing what my dreams told me. Once it is not saved, I shall cease believing in them.”

Who had been a goddess returned to Rome a mere woman, and in bitterness.

“Well, our comedy is almost over,” he said. “But there can be much sadness in a comedy.”

It has served me well, this body, over the years—though it began its service later than it might have done. It began its service late, for it was told that it had no rights, and must by the nature of things be subservient to dictates other than its own. When I learned that the body had its rights, I had been twice married, and was the mother of three children. . . .

Yes, it has served me well, this body that is blurred by the water, that I can see as I lie supine in my pelagic bath. It has served me, while seeming to serve others. It has always served me. The hands that roamed upon these thighs roamed there for me, and the lover to whom I gave pleasure was a victim of my own desire.

wealth beyond one’s comfort has always seemed to me the most boring of possessions, and power beyond its usefulness has seemed the most contemptible.

One does not deceive oneself about the consequences of one’s acts; one deceives oneself about the ease with which one can live with those consequences.

Thus if there runs in the blood of the most worldly Roman the rustic blood of his peasant ancestor, there runs also the wild blood of the most untamed northern barbarian; and both are ill-concealed behind the façade he has erected not so much to disguise himself from another as to mask himself against his own recognition.