Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXXI. The Regatta
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Voltaire. Tiberius was in his sixty-eighth year
when he retired to Capri with an unbroken
record of a life of stern morality, unchallenged
even by his worst enemies. A possible diagnosis
of some sinister senile dementia is excluded by
the admission of all writers that the old man was
in full possession of his mental health and vigour
up to his death in his 79th year. The vein of
insanity which runs through the Julian stock
was besides absent in the Claudian. His life on
the island was the life of a lonely old man, the
weary ruler of an ungrateful world, a sombre
idealist, heartbroken and bitter, a
hypochondriac he might even be called to-day, his
magnificent intellect and his rare sense of humour
still surviving his belief in mankind. He
distrusted and despised his contemporaries and no
wonder, for almost every man or woman he had
trusted had betrayed him. Tacitus has quoted
his words when, the year before his retirement
to Capri, he rejected the petition to erect him
a temple for divine worship as had been done
to Augustus. Who but the compiler of the
Annals, the brilliant master of sarcasm and
subtle insinuation, could have had the audacity
to quote with a sneer the old Emperor’s grave
appeal to posterity for a fair judgment?
“As for myself, Conscript Fathers, I declare
unto you that I am no more than mortal and
do but discharge the duties of a man; that it
suffices me if I fill worthily the principal place
among you; this I would have remembered by
those who live after me. Enough and more than
enough will they render to my memory, if they
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