Time, 50–47 B.C.
By William Stearns Davis
"Others better may mould the life-breathing brass of the image,
And living features, I ween, draw from the marble, and better
Argue their cause in the court; may mete out the span of the heavens,
Mark out the bounds of the poles, and name all the stars in their turnings.
Thine 'tis the peoples to rule with dominion—this, Roman, remember!—
These for thee are the arts, to hand down the laws of the treaty,
The weak in mercy to spare, to fling from their high seats the haughty."—VERGIL, Æn. vi. 847-858.
To My Father
William Vail Wilson Davis
Who Has Taught Me More
Than All My Books
If this book serves to show that Classical Life presentedmany phases akin to our own, it will not have been written invain.
After the book was planned and in part written, it wasdiscovered that Archdeacon Farrar had in his story of "Darknessand Dawn" a scene, "Onesimus and the Vestal," whichcorresponds very closely to the scene, "Agias and the Vestal,"in this book; but the latter incident was too characteristicallyRoman not to risk repetition. If it is asked why such a bookas this is desirable after those noble fictions, "Darkness andDawn" and "Quo Vadis," the reply must be that these booksnecessarily take and interpret the Christian point of view.And they do well; but the Pagan point of view still needs itsinterpretation, at least as a help to an easy apprehension ofthe life and literature of the great age of the Fall of theRoman Republic. This is the aim of "A Friend of Cæsar."The Age of Cæsar prepared the way for the Age of Nero,when Christianity could find a world in a state of such culture,unity, and social stability that it could win an adequate andabiding triumph.
Great care has been taken to keep to strict historical probability;but in one scene, the "Expulsion of the Tribunes,"there is such a confusion of accounts in the authorities themselvesthat I have taken some slight liberties.
W. S. D.
Harvard University,
January 16,1900.