Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
Virtue and Fortune, who have often fought many great contests with each other, are now waging their greatest contest of all, disputing over the leadership of the Romans, as to which of them was its author and which begot so great a power. This will be no small piece of evidence for whichever of them prevails — or rather a defense against an accusation. For Virtue is accused of being fine but unprofitable, and Fortune of being a good that is unreliable.
They say the one labors fruitlessly, the other bestows gifts one cannot trust. Who, then, will not say, once Rome is added to the one side, that Virtue is most profitable, if it has done such great goods to good men; or that good fortune is most stable, since it has now preserved for so long what it has given? Ion the poet, then, in his prose writings not in verse, says
that fortune, though a thing most unlike wisdom, becomes the craftsman of the most similar results: both increase cities, adorn men, lead them up to glory, to power, to dominion. Why need one draw out a long list, enumerating the particulars? The very nature that begets and sustains all things for us — some hold it to be fortune, others wisdom. For this reason the present discourse confers a fine and enviable distinction on Rome,
if we are in doubt about her, as we are about earth and sea and heaven and the stars, whether she was constituted by chance or by providence. For my part, I think it right to suppose that, even though Fortune and Virtue are altogether always at war and at variance with each other, yet with regard to so great a structure of empire and power it is likely that they made a truce, came together, and, having come together,
jointly wrought and completed the finest of human works. And I believe — just as Plato says the whole cosmos came to be out of fire and earth, as the necessary and primary elements, so that it might be both visible and tangible, earth contributing to it weight and stability, fire color and form and motion, while the intermediate natures, water and
air, having softened and quenched the dissimilarity of each of the extremes, drew them together and mingled the matter through themselves — so too the time that laid the foundation of Rome mingled and yoked together fortune and virtue, with god's aid, so that by taking what was proper to each it might fashion for all mankind a hearth truly sacred and a giver of good gifts, and a “hawser” firm and an eternal element, an
“anchorage against the surge and wandering” of affairs adrift, as Democritus says. For just as the natural philosophers say that the cosmos is not yet a cosmos, nor are the bodies willing, once they have come together and mingled, to furnish a common form for all out of nature, but rather the smaller bodies, still moving in scattered fashion, keep slipping through and escaping entanglements and enclosures, while the more massive and already compacted bodies engage in terrible struggles against
one another and fall into disorder, so that there is surge and turmoil, and everything is full of destruction and wandering and shipwreck, until the earth, having attained magnitude out of the bodies coalescing and being carried along, was somehow made to stand fast — and it furnished to the other bodies as well a settled place in itself and around itself — so likewise, while the greatest powers and dominions among men were being driven and swept along by chance, since
no one was willing to prevail while all wished to, the drift and wandering and change of everything was unmanageable, until Rome, having gained strength and growth, and having bound to herself both nations and peoples within her own borders and, on the other hand, foreign and overseas dominions of kings, secured the greatest stability and safety, her empire revolving unstumbling into an order of peace and a single circle,
with all virtue having come to be present in those who contrived these things, and much fortune too having joined in, as it will be possible to show as the discourse proceeds. For now, however, it seems to me that, as if from a watchtower over the problem, I behold Fortune and Virtue advancing toward comparison and contest. But Virtue's gait is gentle and her gaze steady, while there blooms
upon her face as well, for the contest, a flush of ambition. She lags far behind Fortune, who is hastening on; but Fortune is led and escorted by a throng of men slain in war, wearing gore-stained armor, filled with wounds received facing the enemy, dripping blood mingled with sweat, mounted upon half-shattered spoils. Shall we ask who these men are? They say they are the Fabricii and the Camilli and the Mucii and the Cincinnati,
and the Maximi Fabii and the Claudii Marcelli and the Scipios. And I see Gaius Marius too, angry at Fortune, and there Mucius Scaevola shows his burning hand, crying, “Will you grant this too to Fortune?” And Marcus Horatius, the champion by the river, weighed down with Etruscan missiles and dragging a limping thigh, cries out from the deep whirlpool, “Then I too have been maimed by fortune.” Such is the
chorus of Virtue as it advances to the comparison, heavy, a wrestler in arms, terrible to its opponents. Fortune's movement, on the other hand, is swift, her spirit bold, her hope boastful; outstripping Virtue, she draws near — not lightening herself with soft wings, nor setting the tip of her foot upon some sphere in precarious and wavering fashion, only then to depart displeasing; but rather, as the Spartans say
Aphrodite, when crossing the Eurotas, laid aside her mirrors and her bracelets and her girdle, and took up spear and shield adorned to suit Lycurgus — so Fortune, abandoning the Persians and the Assyrians, flitted lightly over Macedonia and quickly shook off Alexander, and, carrying kingdoms about through Egypt and Syria, made her way through them, and turning many times bore up the Carthaginians on her shoulders; but on approaching the Palatine
and crossing the Tiber, it seems, she laid aside her wings, stepped out of her sandals, and abandoned the untrustworthy, ever-turning sphere. Thus she entered Rome as one who meant to stay, and she is present now, as it were, for the trial in just this fashion. “For she is not disobedient,” as Pindar says, “nor does she steer a double rudder,” but rather is “kin to Lawfulness and Persuasion, and daughter of Forethought,” as Alcman traces her lineage. And
that famous horn of plenty they sing of, she holds it in her hand — not filled always with ripening fruit alone, but with whatever all the earth bears, and all the sea, and rivers, and mines, and harbors, pouring it forth ungrudgingly and in streams. Bright and distinguished men, not a few, are seen in her company: Pompilius Numa from the Sabines, and Priscus from the Tarquins, whom, as immigrant kings and strangers,
she established firmly upon the thrones of Romulus. And Paulus Aemilius, leading his army unscathed from his victory over Perseus and the Macedonians and celebrating a triumph without a tear shed, extols Fortune; and Caecilius Metellus the Macedonicus extols her too, that old man, borne to his grave by four sons of consular rank — Quintus Balearicus and Lucius Diadematus and Marcus Metellus and Gaius Caprarius — and by two sons-in-law of consular rank, and by grandsons distinguished by illustrious achievements and
public offices. And Aemilius Scaurus, a new man raised up from a lowly life and a lowlier lineage by Fortune's own hand, is enrolled first among the great senate. And Cornelius Sulla — whom Fortune took up and carried from the bosom of Nicopolis the courtesan — she sets higher than the Cimbrian triumphs of Marius and the seven consulships, upon monarchies and dictatorships. This man openly enrolled himself with his deeds among the followers of Fortune, crying out, in imitation of
the Oedipus of Sophocles, “I count myself a child of Fortune.” And in Latin he was named Felix, while to the Greeks he wrote himself thus: “Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Beloved of Aphrodite.” And the trophies among us in Chaeronea, set up against the forces of Mithridates, are inscribed in just this way — and rightly so; for “most of all, not ‘night,’ as Menander says, but Fortune had a share of Aphrodite's favor.” Might someone, then, taking this
as a starting point proper to the case for Fortune, bring forward the Romans themselves as witnesses, on the ground that they assign more to Fortune than to Virtue? For Virtue, at any rate, had a temple founded among them late, and only after a long time, by Scipio Nomantinus, and then by Marcellus, the one called of Manliness and Honor together, and that of Mind, so called (which might be reckoned equivalent to Judgment), by Aemilius Scaurus, who lived around the time of
the Cimbrian wars — by which time speeches and sophistries and glib talk had already crept into the city, and men had begun to dignify such qualities with temples. But down to this day there is no temple of Wisdom, nor of Self-Control, nor of Endurance, nor of Greatness of Soul, nor of Self-Mastery; whereas the temples of Fortune are splendid and ancient, and were built almost together with the very first foundations of the city. For the first to establish
a temple of Fortune was Ancus Marcius, the grandson of Numa and the fourth king after Romulus; and perhaps it was because he owed his manliness to fortune that he named it thus, since fortune has the greatest share in victory. And they built the temple of Woman's Fortune when they turned back Marcius Coriolanus, who was leading the Volscians against the city, through the agency of the women. For these women, going as envoys to the man together with his mother and
his wife, implored him and prevailed upon him to spare the city and lead the barbarian army away. Then, it is said, the statue of Fortune, at the very moment of its consecration, uttered a voice and said, “In accordance with the city's sacred custom you have piously established me, women of the city.” And moreover Furius Camillus, when he had quenched the Gallic fire, and had thrown down Rome, tipped against the gold, from the balance and
the scale, established a shrine not to Good Counsel nor to Manliness, but to Rumor and Voice, beside the New Road, where they say that before the war a voice came to Marcus Caedicius as he walked by night, bidding him expect a Gallic war within a short time. And the Fortune by the river they call “Fortis,” which means strong, or the best in war, or manly — as one who holds the power of victory over all things.
And they built her temple in the gardens which Caesar left to the people, considering that he too became greatest through good fortune, as he himself bore witness. As for Gaius Caesar, I should be ashamed to say that he was raised to greatness by good fortune, had he not himself borne witness to it. For when, pursuing Pompey from Brundisium, he set sail one day before the Ides of January, in the depth of a stormy winter,
he crossed the open sea safely, Fortune having postponed her usual season; and finding Pompey encamped in full force, strong both on land and at sea, with all his forces gathered together, while he himself had but a few men and the army of Antony and Sabinus was slow in coming to him, he dared to embark on a small skiff and, unknown to both the shipmaster and the pilot, to put out to sea as though
he were someone's servant. When a fierce countercurrent arose against the river's stream and a strong swell, and he saw the pilot changing course, he pulled the cloak from his own head, and revealing himself, said, “Come, good man, take courage and fear nothing, but give your sails over to Fortune and receive the wind, trusting that you carry Caesar and Caesar's Fortune.” So thoroughly was he persuaded
that Fortune sailed with him, traveled abroad with him, campaigned with him, commanded with him — whose task it was to impose calm upon the sea, summer upon winter, speed upon the slowest, courage upon the most faint-hearted; and, more incredible than these, flight for Pompey and the murder of a guest-friend for Ptolemy, so that Pompey might fall and Caesar not be defiled by his blood. And what of this: his son, the first to be proclaimed Augustus, who ruled for fifty-four
years — did he not, when sending forth his own grandson on campaign, pray to the gods to give him the courage of Scipio, the goodwill of Pompey, and his own Fortune? As though inscribing Fortune upon himself as the craftsman of a great work — that same Fortune which, having set him over Cicero and Lepidus and Pansa and Hirtius and Marcus Antonius, first raised him to the heights through the prowess and hands and victories
and fleets and wars and armies of these men, and then, having cast down those very men through whom he had risen, left him alone. For it was on his behalf that Cicero conducted his statesmanship, and Lepidus commanded, and Pansa won his victory, and Hirtius fell, and Antony ran to excess. For I myself count even Cleopatra as Caesar's fortune, against whom, as against a reef, that great commander foundered and was shattered, so that Caesar alone might remain,
Caesar. And it is said that, since there was much intimacy and familiarity between them, when they often had leisure for games of ball or dice, or indeed contests of animals — quails, say, or fighting cocks — Antony was always the loser and came away defeated. And one of his attendants, who prided himself on his skill in divination, would often speak with frankness and admonish him, “O man, what business have you with this young man? Flee him: you are more renowned, older,
you rule more men, you are seasoned in wars, you excel in experience — but your guardian spirit fears his; and your fortune, though great in itself, plays the flatterer to his. Unless you keep your distance, it will desert you and go over to him.” But indeed, so many are the testimonies from witnesses that stand in Fortune's favor. We must, however, also introduce
those drawn from the facts themselves, taking the beginning of our discourse from the beginning of the city. At once, surely, who would not say, with regard to the birth and preservation and nurture and growth of Romulus, that Fortune laid the foundations while Virtue built the structure upon them? First, then, as to the birth and begetting of the very founders and builders of the city, it seems to have come about through a marvelous stroke of good fortune.
For she who bore him is said to have consorted with a god, and just as they say Heracles was begotten in a long night, the day being held back beyond nature and the sun delaying, so too they record that, at the time of Romulus's begetting and conception, the sun was eclipsed, having made an exact conjunction with the moon — just as Ares, though a god, consorted with Silvia, a mortal woman. And this same thing, they say, coincided with Romulus's
very passing from life as well: for they say that when the sun was eclipsed he vanished, on the Nones of Caprae, which day even now they celebrate publicly. Then, when they had been born, and the tyrant sought to destroy them, they were taken up by chance not by a barbarous or savage attendant, but by one who was compassionate and humane, so that he did not kill them; but there was a bank of the river, welling up with a green meadow and shaded by low
trees, and there he laid the infants down near a certain wild fig tree, which they called the Ruminal. Then a she-wolf, newly delivered and her breasts swollen and overflowing with milk, her own cubs having perished, herself in need of relief, stole about the infants and offered them her teat, as though setting down a second birth-pang, that of her milk. And a sacred bird of Ares, which they call the woodpecker, kept coming and perching at their side, watching over the infants in turn
prying open the mouth of each with his claw, would place a morsel in it, sharing out a portion of his own food. The wild fig tree, then, they named ruminalis after the teat which the she-wolf, crouching beside it, offered to the infants. For a long time afterward the inhabitants of that place kept the custom of exposing none of their newborn children, but raising and rearing them all, honoring in this way the suffering of Romulus and its likeness to their own.
And indeed the very fact that they were reared and educated at Gabii without being noticed, and that it went unrecognized that they were the sons of Silvia and the grandsons of King Numitor, appears altogether to be a piece of theft and contrivance on the part of Fortune, so that they should not perish before their achievements on account of their birth, but should come to light in the midst of their own successes, offering their virtue as the proof of their noble descent.
Here there comes to my mind the saying of the great and prudent general Themistocles, spoken to certain later generals who had enjoyed success at Athens and who claimed to be honored above Themistocles. He said that the Day-After once quarreled with the Festival, saying that the Festival was full of toil and business, while on the Day-After people enjoyed in peace what had been prepared for the Festival; and that the Festival replied, "What you say is true, but if I had not come to be, where would you be?" "So too," he said, "if I had not come to be at the time of the Persian Wars, what good would any of you be now?"
This, it seems to me, is what Fortune might say to the Valor of Romulus: "Brilliant indeed are your deeds, and great, and you have truly shown yourself to be of divine blood and lineage; but do you see how far you fall short of me? For if I had not then been present, kind and humane, but had abandoned and cast aside the infants, how could you have come to be, and from where would you have shone forth?
If a savage female beast had not then come upon them, swollen and inflamed from the abundance and flow of her milk and in need of being relieved rather than of nursing something, but instead some utterly untamed and famished creature, would these fine palaces and temples and theaters and colonnades and market-place and public buildings now exist, rather than herdsmen's huts and shepherds' folds, with men bowing before some Alban or Etruscan or Latin master as their lord?"
A beginning, then, is the greatest thing in everything, and most of all in the founding and establishment of a city; and this Fortune provided, by saving and guarding the founder. For Valor made Romulus great, but Fortune watched over him until he became great. And indeed the kingship of Numa, which proved the longest-lasting of all, was admittedly steered by a wonderful good fortune.
For the story that a certain Egeria, one of the Dryad nymphs, a wise spirit who fell in love with the man in their union, secretly instructed and helped shape his statesmanship, is perhaps rather too much like a myth. Indeed others too are said to have entered into divine marriages and become beloved of the gods — Peleus, Anchises, Orions, and Emathions — yet they did not all live out their lives happily, or contentedly, or free from grief.
But Numa seems truly to have had good Fortune as a genuine housemate, colleague, and co-ruler; she, as though in a turbid swell and troubled sea caused by the hostility and harshness of neighboring peoples, took hold of the city as it was being tossed about and inflamed by countless troubles and internal discords, and extinguished, like winds, the opposing passions and jealousies.
And just as they say the sea, receiving the halcyons' brood-time, keeps it safe and helps nurture it through the storm, so she, spreading out and establishing such a calm — a calm free from war, disease, danger, and fear — allowed the newly settled and still-trembling people to take root and to establish the city, growing in security firmly and without hindrance. For just as a merchant ship or a trireme is built amid blows and much violence, being battered with hammers and nails, with dowels, saws, and axes,
yet once built it must stand and settle for a fitting length of time, until its joints become firmly held together and its dowels take on a natural fit; but if, while its joinery is still fresh and slipping, it is dragged down into the water, everything will come loose, shaken apart, and it will let in the sea — so it was with Rome: the first ruler and builder, forming her, as it were out of raw, unseasoned timber, out of wild men and herdsmen, endured no small labors and met no small wars and dangers, being forced of necessity to fend off those who resisted her birth and founding;
but the second ruler, taking her over, provided time to fix and secure her growth through good fortune, gaining much peace and much quiet. But if at that time some Porsenna had pressed hard with an Etruscan camp and army against walls still fresh and trembling, or some warlike chieftain breaking away from the Marsi, or some Lucanian moved by envy and rivalry, a quarrelsome and war-making man, such as later were Mutilus, or bold Silo, or, the last wrestling-match of Sulla, Telesinus — arming, as if by a single signal, the whole of Italy — had sounded the trumpet around the philosopher Numa while he was sacrificing and praying, the leading magistrates of the city would not have withstood so great a storm and swell,
nor would they have grown in manpower and numbers; but as it is, that early peace seems to have become for the Romans a store of supplies for the wars to come, and the people, like an athlete who has trained his body in quiet for forty-three years after the contests of Romulus, made themselves fit to fight against those who later opposed them. For they say that in that time neither famine nor plague nor barrenness of the land nor untimely weather in summer or winter troubled Rome at all,
as though it were not human prudence but divine Fortune that was overseeing the affairs of that period. At that time, then, the double gate of Janus was closed — the gate they call the Gate of War: for it stands open whenever there is war, and is closed when peace comes about. When Numa died it was opened, as war broke out against the Albans.
Then, as countless other wars followed one after another without a break, it was closed again only after four hundred and eighty years, following the war against the Carthaginians, when peace came, in the consulship of Gaius Atilius and Titus Manlius. But after that year it was opened once more, and wars continued until Caesar's victory at Actium; at that time Roman arms rested for a time, but not long,
for the disturbances stirred up by the Cantabrians, together with the Gallic uprisings joined with the Germans, disturbed the peace again. But these things are recorded as testimonies to the good fortune of Numa. The kings after him too admired Fortune as the true founder, nurse, and, in Pindar's word, "city-bearer" of Rome. Servius Tullius, a man who more than any of the kings increased the power of the people and adorned the constitution,
who imposed order upon the voting and order upon the military levies, who became the first censor and overseer of morals and of temperance, and who was thought to be the most courageous and the most prudent of men — he himself attached his own fortunes to Fortune and derived his authority from her, so that he was even believed to have intercourse with Fortune, who descended to him through a certain window into his chamber, which is now called the Fenestella gate.
He founded, then, a shrine of Fortune on the Capitoline, that of the goddess called Primigenia, which one might translate as "First-born," and also that of Obsequens, whom some consider to be "Compliant" and others "Gentle." But rather than dwelling on the Roman titles, I shall try to enumerate in Greek the powers signified by these foundations. For there is also a shrine of Fortune Privata on the Palatine,
and that of the "Bird-catcher," which, ridiculous as it sounds, does carry a meaning by way of metaphor — as of one who draws in things from afar and holds fast whatever comes within her grasp. Near the spring called Muscosa there is also a shrine of Fortune the Virgin, and one at Aesculiae of Fortune Returning; and in the long lane there is an altar of Fortune the Hopeful; and beside the altar of Venus Epitalaria there stands
a seat of Fortune the Male. There are countless other honors and titles of Fortune, most of which Servius established, knowing that great weight — or rather, that everything — in human affairs rests with Fortune, and above all in his own case, since he had been advanced from a captive and an enemy race to kingship through good fortune. For when the city of the Corniculani was taken by the Romans, a captive maiden, Ocrisia,
whose beauty and character were not dimmed even by her misfortune, was given to Tanaquil, wife of King Tarquin, and served her; and a client — the sort the Romans call a cliens — kept her. From this union Servius was said to have been born. Others say it was not so, but that Ocrisia, a virgin, was accustomed to carry the first portions and libation from the royal table each time to the hearth, and once it happened
that as she was casting the first offerings into the fire, as was her custom, suddenly, as the flame died down, the fertile member of a man rose up out of the hearth, and the girl, terrified, told only Tanaquil of this. Tanaquil, being wise and sensible, adorned the girl as befits a bride and shut her up together with the apparition, believing it to be something divine. Some say it was the spirit of a guardian hero,
others that this love-encounter was that of Hephaestus. Servius, in any case, was born, and while still an infant a radiance like a flash of lightning shone from his head. But the followers of Antias do not tell it this way; rather, they say that Servius's wife, Gegania, happened to be dying, and that he, with his mother present, lay down to sleep from despondency and grief; and as he slept, the women saw his
face glowing, surrounded by fire — which was a sign of his birth from fire, and a favorable omen for the unexpected rule that he was to obtain after the death of Tarquin, through Tanaquil's eager efforts. For of all the kings this one seems to have been the least inclined toward sole rule and the least eager for it, since when he had resolved to lay down his kingship he was prevented: for she, dying, it seems, made him swear an oath to remain in office
and not to abandon the ancestral constitution of the Romans. Thus the kingship of Servius was in every respect a gift of Fortune, which he neither expected nor desired to receive, yet which he preserved. But so that we may not seem to be fleeing and withdrawing from the bright and clear proofs of history into the dim region of ancient times, as it were, come, let us leave the kings and turn our discussion to the most familiar events and the most celebrated
wars. In these, who would not acknowledge great daring and courage — "and reverence, the ally of war-loving valor," as Timotheus says? But the smooth flow of events, and the surge of the impulse toward such power and growth — an empire advancing not by human hands or human impulses, but hastened on by a divine escort and by the breath of Fortune — is displayed to those who reason correctly. Trophy
rises upon trophy, and triumph meets triumph, and the first blood shed by arms, still warm, is washed away as it is overtaken by the second. They count their victories not by the number of the dead and the spoils, but by captive kingdoms and enslaved nations and islands and continents added to the boundaries of their dominion by its sheer magnitude. In a single battle Philip lost Macedonia; with a single blow Antiochus yielded Asia; once defeated, the Carthaginians
lost Libya. One man, with the drive of a single campaign, added to Rome Armenia, the Pontic Euxine, Syria, Arabia, the Albanians, the Iberians, and the lands as far as the Caucasus and the Hyrcanians; and three times the Ocean that flows around the inhabited world saw him victorious. He drove back the Numidians in Libya as far as the southern shores, and subdued Iberia, which had joined its sickness with that of Sertorius, all the way to the Atlantic sea; and the kings of the Albanians, as they fled, he brought to a halt near the
Caspian sea. All this he accomplished by making use of the fortune of the state, and then was overturned by his own private fate. But the great guardian spirit of the Romans did not blow for only a day, nor flourish for a brief season, as did that of the Macedonians, nor was it confined to the land alone, as that of the Spartans, nor to the sea alone, as that of the Athenians, nor was it slow to stir, as that of the Persians, nor quick to cease, as that of the Colophonians, but from above,
from its very first origins, it grew up together with the city, increased together with it, and shared its political life with it, and remained steadfast on land and sea, in war and in peace, against both barbarians and Greeks. This spirit poured out and consumed, like a winter torrent, Hannibal the Carthaginian around Italy, though from his own home no envy or political enmity flowed against him. This spirit separated the armies of the Cimbri and the Teutones by great
intervals of place and time, so that Marius might suffice to meet each of them in turn, fighting them separately, and so that three hundred thousand undefeated and invincible warriors, falling upon Italy all at once, might not overwhelm it in a single flood. Because of this spirit, Antiochus was kept occupied while Philip was being warred upon, and Philip, while Antiochus was in danger, fell, already defeated beforehand; and while the Marsic War was setting Rome ablaze, Mithridates was held in check by the Sarmatian and Bastarnian wars;
and as for Tigranes, while Mithridates was still brilliant, suspicion and jealousy kept them apart, but once Mithridates was defeated, Tigranes joined himself to him, only to perish together with him. And did Fortune not also set the city right again amid its very greatest disasters? When the Gauls were encamped around the Capitoline and besieging the citadel, she sent a terrible disease through their army, and the people were perishing; and their nighttime assault, though it went unnoticed by everyone else,
Fortune, along with chance itself, caused to be discovered. About this it is perhaps not out of place to relate a little more at some length. After the great defeat of the Romans at the river Allia, some, coming down to Rome in the confusion of their flight, filled the people with panic and scattered them, only a few gathering on the Capitoline and holding out there. Others, immediately after the rout, gathered together at Veii
and chose as dictator Furius Camillus — the very man whom the people, when he was successful and held his head high, had shaken off and cast down, when he fell afoul of a public charge of embezzlement; but now, cowed and humbled, they recalled him after their defeat, placing in his hands and entrusting to him unaccountable command. So that the man might not appear to be seizing power by opportunity rather than by law, nor, as though he had given up on the city, hold his election to office by arms, relying on the scattered and wandering remnant of the army, it was necessary
that the senators on the Capitoline should ratify by vote what they learned to be the soldiers' resolve. There was, then, a certain Gaius Pontius, a good man, who undertook to be the messenger of the decision to those on the Capitoline, and took upon himself great danger; for the route lay through the midst of the enemy, who surrounded the citadel on every side with guards and palisades. So when he came to the river by night, he strapped broad pieces of cork beneath himself and, resting his body
upon the lightness of this contrivance, let himself go with the current; and finding it gentle and slowly bearing him along, he reached the opposite bank safely, and, disembarking, made his way toward the gap between the enemy's watch-fires, judging the empty space by the darkness and the silence. Then, clinging to the cliff face, and using the crevices and turns and rough places of the rock that offered footholds and handholds,
— surrendering himself to the rock and pressing against it, he made his way across to the other side, and, being taken up by the outposts, he reported to those within what had been decreed; then, taking the decree in hand, he set off back again to Camillus. But by day one of the barbarians, going around the place for some other purpose, noticed the tip-marks of feet and the places where they had slipped, and also the places where the grass sprouting on the earthy parts of the rock had been rubbed off and broken,
and the slanting drag-marks of a body, and the places where it had pressed for support, and he told the others of it. They, thinking that the path was being pointed out to them by the enemy themselves, undertook to make the attempt, and, having waited for the most deserted hour of the night, climbed up undetected — not only by the guards, but even by the men and the watchdogs stationed before the guardpost, who had been overcome by sleep. Yet the Fortune of Rome was not at a loss for a voice able to announce and proclaim so great a disaster.
Sacred geese were kept around the temple of Juno, in her service. Now by nature this creature is easily startled and quick to take fright at any sound; but at that time, because of the severe want prevailing among those inside, the geese were being neglected, and their sleep was thin and hunger-ridden, so that they perceived at once when the enemy appeared above the crest of the height, and, cackling fiercely, rushed at them, and
being still more thrown into confusion by the very sight of the weapons, filled the place with a piercing, harsh clamor. Roused by this, the Romans rose up, and, grasping what had happened, drove the enemy back and hurled them down the cliff. To this day, in memory of what happened then, a procession is held in which a dog is impaled on a stake, while a goose sits, very solemnly, upon a costly cushion carried on a litter — and the sight displays the power of Fortune, and her capacity to find resources for everything out of
the most unlikely materials, whenever she takes some matter in hand and directs it like a general, putting intelligence into creatures without reason, and courage and boldness into cowardly ones. For who would not truly be amazed and marvel, if, stirred by the feeling of it, he should take in, by some reckoning, both the despair of that time and the prosperity the city now enjoys, and look up at the splendor and wealth of its dedications and works of art, and the rivalry of cities in munificence, and
the crowns sent by kings, and all that earth and sea, islands and continents, rivers and trees, animals, plains, and mountains and mines produce — the choicest offerings of them all, vying with one another in beauty and in the grace with which they adorn the place — and reflect how all of this came within a hair's breadth of never existing, of being swallowed up by fire and fearsome darkness and gloom, by barbarian swords and murderous rage,
when everything lay in their grip; and how cheap, unreasoning, timid creatures provided the beginning of its salvation, and geese raised up, on behalf of the god of their fathers and of their homeland, those great champions and commanders — the Mallii, the Servii, the Postumii, and the Papirii, founders of houses yet to come — who had come within nothing of perishing. But if, as Polybius records in the second book of his history of the Celts who at that time captured the city of the Romans,
it is true that, when word reached them that their homes were being destroyed, since the neighboring barbarians had invaded and overrun their country, they withdrew and made peace with Camillus — then there is no dispute with Fortune that she was the cause of the city's deliverance, by drawing the enemy off, or rather by tearing them away from Rome when it was least expected. But why should one linger over matters
that have nothing clear or settled about them, since the records of the Romans were destroyed and their own chronicles thrown into confusion at that time, as Livy has recorded? For events better attested from a later period show more plainly the goodwill of Fortune. I would also set down here the death of Alexander — a man who, through great successes and brilliant achievements, driven by unconquerable daring and ambition, sped along like a star,
shooting from east to west and already casting the gleam of his weapons toward Italy — his pretext for the campaign being that Alexander of Molossia had been cut down by the Bruttians and Lucanians near Pandosia, but the thing that truly drove him was, in truth, a longing for glory beyond all other men, and an ambition for empire, and a rivalry to surpass the limits of the campaigns of Dionysus and
Heracles. And as for Italy, he was inquiring into the power and strength of the force at Rome, drawn up, as it were, like a tempered blade before him — for their name and their most illustrious reputation was being carried to him, as of athletes trained through countless contests; for I do not think the contest would have been decided without bloodshed, had unconquered arms and unenslaved spirits met in battle. For in number these were no fewer than one hundred thirty thousand, and all of them were warlike and manly,
every one of them knowing how to fight from horseback, and also, wherever need required, on foot.