AUGUSTUS


We left Rome galloping down the Gadarene slope, and scrimmaging
for a vantage point whence to hurl herself headlong. Down she
came; a riot and roaring ruin: doing those things she ought not
to have done, and leaving undone those things she ought to have
done, and with no semblance of health in her. There was nothing
for it but the downfall of the world; good-bye civilization and
all that was ever upbuilded of old. Come now; we should become
good Congo forester in our time, with what they call 'long pig'
for our daintiest diet. It is a euphemism for your brother man.

But supposing this mist-filled Gadarene gulf were really
bridgable: supposing there were another side beyond the roar of
hungry waters and the horror; and that mankind,--European
mankind,--might pass over, and be saved, were there but staying
the rout for a moment, and affording a means to cross?

There is a bardic proverb in the Welsh: _A fo Ben, bydded
Bont:_--'He who is Chief, let him be the bridge': Bran the
Blessed said it, when he threw down his giant body over the gulf,
so that the men of the Island of the Mighty might pass over into
Ireland. And the end of an old cycle, and the beginning of a
new, when there is--as in our Rome at that time--a sort of
psychic and cyclic impasse, a break-down and terrible chasm in
history, if civilization is to pass over from the old conditions
to the new, a man must be found who can be the bridge. He must
solve the problems within himself; he must care so little for,
and have such control of, his personality, that he can lay it
down, so to speak, and let humanity cross over upon it. History
may get no news of him at all; although he is then the Chief of
Men, and the greatest living;--or it may get news, only to
belittle him. His own and the after ages may think very little
of him; he may possess no single quality to dazzle the
imagination:--he may seem cold and uninteresting, a crafty
tyrant;--or an uncouth old ex-rail-splitter to have in the White
House;--or an illiterate peasant-girl to lead your armies; yet
because he is the bridge, he is the Chief; and you may suspect
someone out of the Pantheons incarnate in him.

For the truth of all which, humanity has a sure instinct. When
there is a crisis we say, _Look for the Man._ Rome thought (for
the most part) that she had found him when Caesar, having
conquered Pompey, came home master of the world. If this phoenix
and phenomenon in time, now with no competitor above the
horizons, could not settle affairs, only Omnipotence could.
Every thinking (or sane) Roman knew that what Rome needed was a
head; and now at last she had got one. Pompey, the only
possible alternative, was dead; Caesar was lord of all things.
Pharsalus, the deciding battle, was fought in 48; he returned
home in 46. From the year between, in which he put the finishing
touches to his supremacy, you may count the full manvantara of
Imperial Rome: fifteen centuries until 1453 and the fall of
the Eastern Empire.

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