to its men the sense for all those virtues upon which depend the
stability of the family and the future of the race. And for every era
this is a question of life and death. In such periods when one world
is dying and another coming to birth, all conceptions become confused,
and all attempts bring forth bizarre results. He who wishes to
preserve, often destroys, so that virtue seems vice, and vice seems
virtue. Precisely for this reason it is more difficult for a woman
than for a man to succeed in fulfilling her proper mission, for she is
more exposed to the danger of losing her way and of missing her
particular function; and since she is more likely to fail in realizing
her natural destiny, she is more likely to be doomed to a life of
misfortune.

Such was the fate of the family of Augustus, and such especially was
the fate of its women. The strangers who visit Rome often go out on
Sunday afternoons to listen to the excellent music that can be heard in
a room which is situated in one of the little streets near the Piazza
del Popolo and which used to be called the Corea. This hall was built
over an ancient Roman ruin of circular form which any one can still see
as he enters. That ruin is the entrance to the tomb which Augustus
built on the Flaminian Way for himself and his family. Nearly all of
the personages whose story we have told were buried in that mausoleum.
If any reader who has followed this history should one day find himself
at Rome, listening to a concert in that old Corea, which has now been
renamed after the Emperor Augustus, let him give a thought to those
victims of a terrible story of long ago, and may he remember that here,
where at the beginning of the twentieth century he listens to the flow
of rivers of sweet sound--here only, twenty centuries ago, could the
members of the family of Augustus find refuge from their tragic fate,
and after so much greatness, resolved to dust and ashes, rest at last
in peace.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Women of the Caesars, by Guglielmo Ferrero

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS ***

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