Gibbon quote for the day. May 19.

Gibbon is really good. It seems to me that Poe was right that Gibbon’s strong suit (concision) and weakness as a writer (artificiality) both come from his need to compress very complicated issues into just a few sentences. But has anything better ever been written about Augustus Caesar than this passage? It’s hard to do this much psychology in just a few lines.

“The tender respect of Augustus for a free constitution which he had destroyed can only be explained by an attentive consideration of the character of that subtle tyrant. A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him at the age of nineteen to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside. With the same hand, and probably with the same temper, he signed the proscription of Cicero and the pardon of Cinna. His virtues, and even his vices, were artificial; and according to the varied dictates of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world.”