ONE I HAVE PARDONED FOR HIS HIGH POSITION, ANOTHER FOR HIS HUMBLE STATE
1. If the state cannot stand without rule, if a body gathered from many men is truncated and imperfect without a head, they are defenders of their
CHAPTER 4
1. It is, therefore, their own safety that men love, when for one man
him all things perish. Who now would hesitate, when such a reward is held out, to cast himself into a thousand deaths? For they must obey if they would save themselves and their own.
THEY LEAD TEN LEGIONS AT A TIME INTO BATTLE Actually, Augustus Caesar had many more legions than this. For he not only armed at one time forty-four legions, but he also kept them as regular legions to protect the Roman state. What was a legion? Classical authors are not sufficiently in agreement. Plutarch Romzul., [13.1] is author of the statement that Romulus divided the Roman youth into military orders, each one of which comprised 3,000 infantry and 300 cavalry, and this number was called a “legion.” Livy [8.8.14] testifies that the strength of a legion is 5,000 infantry and 300 cavalry. Gellius [16.4.6] on the authority of Cincius defined a legion as consisting of sixty centuries, a total of 6,000.
If what one reads in the book De Re Militari, circulated under Cicero’s name, is true, and the copies are not defective, a legion consists of 2,515 infantry, and 895 cavalry. But it would seem more likely to me that, whatever changes may have been made in the army organization according to the circumstances of the times, the legion eventually came to consist of ten cohorts, of which the first comprised one thousand men, the rest five hundred each. So it is in Vegetius [2.6]. One must not suppose that those units were so exactly limited to that number. It was simply an accepted way of naming them by round numbers, in the same way as men said
“hundredmen” (centumviri) instead of 105, and “the Seventy”
(Septuaginta) translators instead of seventy-two.
WHEN THEY RUSH FORWARD IN THE FRONT RANK
“Front” is a military term. For, as Vegetius [3.14] says: An army drawn up for battle is called “aries”; the line that faces the enemy, “frons.”
Quintilian [2.13.3]: What if you should direct a general, that whenever he draws up his troops for battle, he must range his front in line, extend his wings to the right and left, and station his cavalry to defend his flanks?
Curtius [4.13.28] calls it “face.” This, he says, was the face of the right wing. Then follows [4.13.29]: This was the front of the left wing. He apparently uses “front” and “face” interchangeably. He calls it also “the
first” [4.13.32]: And so the first rank was no more fortified than the flanks, and the flanks were no more so than the rear.
THAT THEY MAY SAVE THE STANDARDS OF THEIR EMPEROR FROM DEFEAT
From the Romans’ custom, who entrusted to the first cohort the eagle and the images of the emperor, as this cohort excelled in number of soldiers and in preeminence of rank.
BREASTS TURNED TO THE WOUNDS As if this disgrace cannot well be outweighed by remaining alive: if someone allows the standard to be captured or thrown down before his very eyes; or, having abandoned the standard, turns tail and, as Virgil [A., 11.55] says, receives shameful wounds in the back. On the contrary those
WOUNDS RECEIVED WITH THE BREAST TURNED TOWARD THE FOE, are praised as honorable tokens of military service. See Plutarch [Mor., 642D]; there is also the simple expression mound in front. Sallust [Cat., 61.3]: Yet all had fallen with wounds in front.
FOR HE IS THE BOND
Fitting metaphors. For if the dignity of the reign is nourished by harmony among the citizens, it is necessary for them to be bound together by a sort of chain. The emperor is therefore the bond, by which they are bound together, that they may not fly apart. If a rector and moderator were lacking, by what chains would a factious and seditious mob be constrained? With what solder, be welded together?
BREATH OF LIFE
Another metaphor, by which is meant that people live and breathe in their leaders: from the life of one all hang as if by a thread. One is reminded of that apostrophe of Lucan addressed to Caesar, [Phars. 5.685f]:
When the life and safety of so many nations depends Upon this life; and so much of the world has made you its head.
Curtius [9.5.30], speaking of Alexander: That whole day and the whole following night, the army equipped for battle besieged the palace, confessing that all lived by the breath of one. But Curtius expresses Seneca’s metaphor more precisely in the person of Philip, Alexander’s physician: O king, my very breath has always depended upon you; but now, indeed, I think, ‘tis drawn by your own sacred and venerable lips.
[Ibid., 3.6.10]. Erasmus imitates this in his Panegyric to Philip. Now this has been taken from the philosophers who affirm that the life of man consists especially in drawing and taking in air through the windpipe, which Celsus [4.1.3] calls the fistula aspera, and Lactantius [Opif. Dei, 11]
the gurgulio, and which, as Gellius says, is the path of the undulating breath [17.11.5]. Of this Cicero has much to say [N.D., 2.54.133ff.]. For the reason why we have to breathe, see Aristotle, Problems [34.12, 964A]. For this reason there are those who consider that life is nothing else than spirit or breath. Servius comments on that phrase of Virgil [A., 2.562] “expiring life:” Virgil, he says, has spoken here according to those who identify life with wind. And the same author, commenting on Virgil’s line [A., 4.705], And into the winds life receded, says: He is following those who say life is air. Still, it is truer to say that all living beings consist of four elements and divine spirit. This was clearly Aristotle’s opinion. For they derive flesh from earth, humor from water, breath from air, heat from fire, and natural disposition from divine spirit. The astrologers, however, think otherwise: that when we are born our spirit derives from the sun, our body from the moon, blood from Mars, natural disposition from Mercury, desire from Jupiter, carnal passions from Venus, humor from Saturn. It is not unreasonable, then, that Seneca applies to SPIRIT the epithet VITAL. For as Quintilian [5.9.6] says: Here is a statement with the same force when reversed: that a man who lives breathes and who breathes lives. So, one finds breath used for life, and breathing for living, sometimes without the adjective.
IF SAFE THEIR KING
These two half verses Seneca has quoted from Virgil [G.,4.210214], where he speaks of bees:
Moreover, neither Egypt nor mighty Lydia Nor the Parthian tribes, nor Median Hydaspes, show Such homage to their king. While he is safe, all are of one mind;
When he is lost, straightway they break their fealty, and themselves Pull down the honey they have reared and tear up their trellised combs.