AN IMPERIAL SACRIFICE


"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's"


This is the secret of writing: look at the external things until
you see pulsating behind them the rhythm and beauty of the
Eternal. Only look for it, and persist in your search, and
presently the Universal will be revealed shining through the
particular, the sweep of everlasting Law through the little
object, and happenings of a day.

Come to history with the same intent and method, and at last
things appear in their true light. Here, too, as in a landscape,
is the rhythm of the Eternal; here are the Basic Forms. I doubt
if the evidence of the annalists is ever worth much, unless
they had an eye to penetrate to these. When one sees behind
the supposed fact narrated and the judgments pronounced the
glimmering up of a basic form, one guesses one is dealing with a
true historian.

Recently I read a book called _The Tragedy of the Caesars,_ by
the novelist Baring-Gould; and in it the life of a certain man
presented in a sense flatly contradictory to the views of
nineteen centuries anent that man; but it seemed to me at last
an account that had the rhythm, the basic form, showing through.
So in this lecture what I shall try to give you will be Mr.
Baring-Gould's version of this man's life, with efforts of my
own to go further and make quite clear the basic form.

What does one mean by 'basic form'? In truth it is hard to
define. Only, this world, that seems such a heterogeneous
helter-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.
 

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