. The Tiberii were reserved for him. Caesar and Tacitus
are two successive phenomena, a meeting between whom seems to be
mysteriously avoided, by the One who, when He sets the centuries on the
stage, regulates the entrances and the exits. Caesar is great, Tacitus
is great; God spares these two greatnesses by not allowing them to clash
with one another. The guardian of justice, in striking Caesar, might
strike too hard and be unjust. God does not will it. The great wars
of Africa and Spain, the pirates of Sicily destroyed, civilization
introduced into Gaul, into Britanny, into Germany,--all this glory
covers the Rubicon. There is here a sort of delicacy of the divine
justice, hesitating to let loose upon the illustrious usurper the
formidable historian, sparing Caesar Tacitus, and according extenuating
circumstances to genius.

Certainly, despotism remains despotism, even under the despot of genius.
There is corruption under all illustrious tyrants, but the moral pest is
still more hideous under infamous tyrants. In such reigns, nothing veils
the shame; and those who make examples, Tacitus as well as Juvenal,
slap this ignominy which cannot reply, in the face, more usefully in the
presence of all humanity.

Rome smells worse under Vitellius than under Sylla. Under Claudius and
under Domitian, there is a deformity of baseness corresponding to the
repulsiveness of the tyrant. The villainy of slaves is a direct product
of the despot; a miasma exhales from these cowering consciences wherein
the master is reflected; public powers are unclean; hearts are small;
consciences are dull, souls are like vermin; thus it is under Caracalla,
thus it is under Commodus, thus it is under Heliogabalus, while, from
the Roman Senate, under Caesar, there comes nothing but the odor of the
dung which is peculiar to the eyries of the eagles.

Hence the advent, apparently tardy, of the Tacituses and the Juvenals;
it is in the hour for evidence, that the demonstrator makes his
appearance.

But Juvenal and Tacitus, like Isaiah in Biblical times, like Dante in
the Middle Ages, is man; riot and insurrection are the multitude, which
is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

In the majority of cases, riot proceeds from a material fact;
insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Riot is Masaniello;
insurrection, Spartacus. Insurrection borders on mind, riot on the
stomach; Gaster grows irritated; but Gaster, assuredly, is not always in
the wrong. I