and to Rome, to amuse himself, the
goldsmiths, weavers, sculptors, painters, architects, musicians, whom
Rome had always rebuffed.

Both disappeared, cut off by the violent current of their epoch;
centuries went by: the name of the Emperor grew infamous, while that
of the tent-maker radiated glory. In the midst of the immense disorder
that accompanied the dissolution of the Roman Empire, as the bonds
among men relaxed, and the human mind seemed to be incapable of
reasoning and understanding, the disciples of the saint realised
that the goldsmiths, weavers, sculptors, painters, architects, and
musicians of the Emperor could collect the masses around the churches
and make them patiently listen to what they could still comprehend of
Paul's sublime morality. When you regard St. Mark or Notre Dame or any
other stupendous cathedral of the Middle Ages, like museums for the
work of art they hold, you see the luminous symbol of this paradoxical
alliance between victim and executioner.

Only through the alliance of Paul and Nero could the Church dominate
the disorder of the Middle Ages, and, from antiquity to the modern
world, carry through that formidable storm the essential principles
from which our civilisation developed: a decisive proof that, if
history in its details is a continuous strife, as a whole it is the
inevitable final reconciliation of antagonistic forces, obtained in
spite of the resistance of individuals and by sacrificing them.

Julia and Tiberius

"He walked with head bent and fixed, the face stern, a taciturn man
exchanging no word with those about him.... Augustus realised these
severe and haughty manners, and more than once tried to excuse them
in the Senate and to the people, saying that they were defects of
temperament, not signs of a sinister spirit."

This is the picture that Suetonius gives us of Tiberius, the man
who, in 9 B.C., after the death of Agrippa and Drusus, stood next to
Augustus, his right hand and pre-established successor. At that time
Augustus was fifty-four years old; not an old man, but he was ill and
had presided over the Republic for twenty-one years. Many people must
have asked themselves what would happen if Augustus should die,
or should definitely retire to private life. The answer was not
uncertain: since Rome was engaged in the conquest of Germany, the
chief of the Empire and of the army ought to be a valiant general and
a man of expert acquaintance with Germanic af