competition be friendly. There is
nothing which so contracts and debases the mind as national envy. True
wit, like true virtue, naturally loves its own image in whatever place it
is found.
DIALOGUE XV.
OCTAVIA--PORTIA--ARRIA.
_Portia_.--How has it happened, Octavia, that Arria and I, who have a
higher rank than you in the Temple of Fame, should have a lower here in
Elysium? We are told that the virtues you exerted as a wife were greater
than ours. Be so good as to explain to us what were those virtues. It
is the privilege of this place that one can bear superiority without
mortification. The jealousy of precedence died with the rest of our
mortal frailties. Tell us, then, your own story. We will sit down under
the shade of this myrtle grove and listen to it with pleasure.
_Octavia_.--Noble ladies, the glory of our sex and of Rome, I will not
refuse to comply with your desire, though it recalls to my mind some
scenes my heart would wish to forget. There can be only one reason why
Minos should have given to my conjugal virtues a preference above yours,
which is that the trial assigned to them was harder.
_Arria_.--How, madam! harder than to die for your husband! We died for
ours.
_Octavia_.--You did for husbands who loved yon, and were the most
virtuous men of the ages they lived in--who trusted you with their lives,
their fame, their honour. To outlive such husbands is, in my judgment, a
harder effort of virtue than to die for them or with them. But Mark
Antony, to whom my brother Octavius, for reasons of state, gave my hand,
was indifferent to me, and loved another. Yet he has told me himself I
was handsomer than his mistress Cleopatra. Younger I certainly was, and
to men that is generally a charm sufficient to turn the scale in one's
favour. I had been loved by Marcellus. Antony said he loved me when he
pledged to me his faith. Perhaps he did for a time; a new handsome woman
might, from his natural inconstancy, make him forget an old attachment.
He was but too amiable. His very vices had charms beyond other men's
virtues. Such vivacity! such fire! such a towering pride! He seemed
made by nature to command, to govern the world; to govern it with such
ease that the business of it did not rob him of an hour of pleasure.
Nevertheless, while his inclination for me continued, this haughty lord
of mankind who could hardly bring his high spirit to treat my brother,
his partner in empire,
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