his pinnacle of fame: he
beheld his legions slaughtered before his eyes: and what a sad relic
of that battle, in which the Senate formed the first line, was the
survival of the general. He saw his Egyptian butcher, and offered his
body, hallowed by so many victories, to a guardsman's sword, altho,
even had he been unhurt, he would have regretted his safety: for what
could have been more infamous than that a Pompey should owe his life
to the clemency of a king? If Marcus Cicero had fallen at the time
when he avoided those dangers which Catiline aimed equally at him and
at his country, he might have died as the savior of the commonwealth
which he had set free: if his death had even followed upon that of his
daughter, he might have died happy. He would not then have seen swords
drawn for the slaughter of Roman citizens, the goods of the murdered
divided among the murderers, that men might pay from their own purse
the price of their own blood, the public auction of the Consul's spoil
in the civil war, the public letting out of murder to be done,
brigandage, war, pillage, hosts of Catilines. Would it not have been a
good thing for Marcus Cato if the sea had swallowed him up when he was
returning from Cyprus after sequestrating the king's hereditary
possessions, even if that very money which he was bringing to pay the
soldiers in the civil war had been lost with him? He certainly would
have been able to boast that no one would dare to do wrong in the
presence of Cato: as it was, the extension of his life for a very few
more years forced one who was born for personal and political freedom
to flee from Caesar and to become Pompey's follower. Premature death
therefore did him no evil: indeed, it put an end to the power of any
evil to hurt him....

Born for a very brief space of time, we regard this life as an inn
which we are soon to quit that it may be made ready for the coming
guest, Do I speak of our lives, which we know roll away incredibly
fast? Reckon up the centuries of cities: you will find that even those
which boast of their antiquity have not existed for long. All human
works are brief and fleeting: they take up no part whatever of
infinite time. Tried by the standard of the universe, we regard this
earth of ours, with all its cities, nations, rivers, and seaboard, as
a mere point: our life occupies less than a point when compared with
all time, the measure of which exceeds that of the world, for indeed
the world is