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A Friend of Caesar
A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic
Time, 50-47 B.C.
By William Stearns Davis
"Others better may mould the life-breathing brass of the image, And living features, I ween, draw from the marble, and better Argue their cause in the court; may mete out the span of the heavens, Mark out the bounds of the poles, and name all the stars in their turnings. _Thine_ 'tis the peoples to rule with dominion--this, Roman, remember!-- These for thee are the arts, to hand down the laws of the treaty, The weak in mercy to spare, to fling from their high seats the haughty."
--VERGIL, _AEn._ vi. 847-858.
New YorkGrosset & Dunlap Publishers1900
To My Father
William Vail Wilson Davis
Who Has Taught Me MoreThan All My Books
Preface
If this book serves to show that Classical Life presented many phasesakin to our own, it will not have been written in vain.
After the book was planned and in part written, it was discovered thatArchdeacon Farrar had in his story of "Darkness and Dawn" a scene,"Onesimus and the Vestal," which corresponds very closely to the scene,"Agias and the Vestal," in this book; but the latter incident was toocharacteristically Roman not to risk repetition. If it is asked why sucha book as this is desirable after those noble fictions, "Darkness andDawn" and "Quo Vadis," the reply must be that these books necessarilytake and interpret the Christian point of view. And they do well; butthe Pagan point of view still needs its interpretation, at least as ahelp to an easy apprehension of the life and literature of the great ageof the Fall of the Roman Republic. This is the aim of "A Friend ofCaesar." The Age of Caesar prepared the way for the Age of Nero, whenChristianity could find a world in a state of such culture, unity, andsocial stability that it could win an adequate and abiding triumph.
Great care has been taken to keep to strict historical probability; butin one scene, the "Expulsion of the Tribunes," there is such a confusionof accounts in the authorities themselves that I have taken some slightliberties.