thority, no one should believe in him; the intention of which tale was not so much to depict the folly as the vain-glory natural to the nation of which it was told. These vices are always found together, but such actions are due, in truth, rather more to presumption than to stupidity. (a) Augustus Cæsar, having been beaten about by a storm at sea, undertook to brave the god Neptune, and, in the celebration of the games in the Circus, had his statue removed from its place among the other gods, as his revenge upon him.[1] In which he was even less excusable than those already spoken of, and less than he himself was later, when, Quintilius Varus having lost a battle in Germany, he went about in rage and despair, beating his head against the wall and shouting, “Varus, give me back my soldiers!”[2] For they go beyond all degrees of folly — since impiety is added to it — who attack God himself,[3] or Fortune, as if she had ears open to our clamour; (c) after the manner of the Thracians, who, when it thunders or lightens, begin to shoot arrows at the sky in a titanic sort of revenge, in order to bring God to reason. (a) Now, as that poet of old says, quoted by Plutarch,
Point ne se faut courroucer aux affaires;
Il ne leur chaut de toutes nos cholères.[4]
(b) But we shall never say enough in derision of the disorderliness of our mind.
- ↑ See Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 16.
- ↑ See Ibid., 23.
- ↑ In the editions of 1580-1588, the text reads: à Dieu mesmes à belles injures; the last phrase was omitted in 1595.
- ↑ Amyot’s translation of a passage in Plutarch, Of the tranquillity of the mind.
Need is not to be vexed by happenings;
All our anger affects them not.
