Words&Dirt

“Stephen watched the three glasses being raised from the counter as his father and his two cronies drank to the memory of their past. An abyss of fortune or of temperament sundered him from them. His mind seemed older than theirs: it shone coldly on their strifes and happiness and regrets like a moon upon a younger earth. No life or youth stirred in him as it had stirred in them. He had known neither the pleasure of companionship with others nor the vigour of rude male health nor filial piety. Nothing stirred within his soul but a cold and cruel and loveless lust. His childhood was dead or lost and with it his soul capable of simple joys and he was drifting amid life like the barren shell of the moon.”

––A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, loc. 1365

“Liberty––and the opportunity for an outsider to win the consulship––would be stifled by a society in which everyone knew his place. It was a paradox that was to torture Cicero all his life. His blueprint for the future, however, impractical, was the product of much agonized reflection. Cicero was proud to consider himself the heir of the Republic’s noblest traditions. Chief among these was the age-old balance between ambition and duty. Should this be upset, then criminals might start to hack their way to the top, and tyrants to emerge. Catiline had been foiled––but he was bound to have successors. It was essential that they too be destroyed. After all, what hope was there for the Republic if the great were not the good?”

––Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, by Tom Holland, loc. 3275-81