reading them." It was hard on Perpenna, but in burning the letters at
least Pompey gave us an example of virtue. It is Plutarch's feeling
for the beauty of such noble actions that has made his biographies a
primer of virtue for all time. None of his heroes are primarily "good"
men. There is scarcely one of them who could have been canonised by
any Church. They have enough of the weaknesses of flesh and blood to
satisfy even the most exacting novelist of these days. On the other
hand, they nearly all had that capacity for grandeur of conduct which
distinguishes the noble man from the base. Plutarch never pretends
that mean and filthy motives and generous motives do not jostle one
another strangely in the same breast, but his portraits of great men
give us the feeling that we are in presence of men redeemed by their
virtues rather than utterly destroyed by their vices. Suetonius, on
the other hand, is the historian of the forty-seven thousand. His book
may be recommended as scandalmongering--hardly as an aid to virtue.
Here we have the servants' evidence of Roman history, the plots and
the secret vices. Suetonius, fortunately, has the grace not to write
as though in narrating his story of vice he were performing a virtuous
act. If we are to have stories of fashionable sinners, let us at least
have them naked and not dressed up in the language of outraged virtue.
Scandal is sufficiently entertaining by itself. There is no need to
lace it with self-righteousness.




XII