-skelter of mournful promiscuities, is in fact the pattern
that flows from the loom of an Eternal Weaver: a beautiful
pattern, with its rhythms and recurrences; there is no haphazard
in it; it is not mechanical,--yet still flawless as the
configuarations of a crystal or the petals of a perfect flower.

The name of the man we are to think of tonight has come down as a
synonym for infamy: we imagine him a gloomy and bloodthirsty
tyrant; a morose tiger enthroned; a gross sensualist;--well, I
shall show you portraits of him, to see whether you can accept
him for that. The truth is that aristocratic Rome, degenerate
and frivolous, parrot-cried out against the supposed deneracy of
the imperial, and for the glories of the old republican, regime;
for the days when Romans were Romans, and 'virtuous.' One came
to them in whom the (real) ancient Roman honor more appeared than
in another man in Italy, perhaps before or since;--and they could
not understand the honor, and hated the man. They captured his
name in a great net of lies; they breathed a huge fog of lies
about him, which come down to us as history. Now to see whether
a plain tale may not put them down.

Once more take your stand, please, on the Mountain of the Gods:
the time, in or about the year 39 B.C.:--and thence try to
envisage the world as Those do who guide but are not involved in
the heats and dusts of it. The Western World; in which
Rome, _caput mundi,_ was the only thing that counted. _Caput
mundi;_ but a kind of idiot head at that: inchoate, without
co-ordination; maggots scampering through what might have been
the brain; the life fled, and that great rebellion of the many
lives which we call decay having taken its place. And yet, it
was no true season for Rome to be dead; it was no natural
death; not so much decent death at all as the death in life
we call madness. For the Crest-Wave men were coming in; it
was the place where they should be. The cycle of Italy had
begun, shall we say, in 94 B.C., and would end in 36 A.D.;
--for convenience one must give figures, though one means
only approximations by them;--and not until after that latter
date would souls of any caliber cease to be incarnate in
Roman bodies. Before that time, then, the madness had to
be cured and Rome's mission had to be fulfilled.

The mission was, to homogenize the world. That was the task the
Law had in mind for Rome; and it had to be done while the
Crest-Wave remained