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If we prefer, as I do, the humanity of Cicero, we must confess to ourselves the supremacy of Cæsar, and acknowledge ourselves to belong to the beaten cause. "Victrix causa Deis placuit; sed victa Catoni." In discussing the fate of these proconsular officials we feel now the absurdity of mixing together in the same debate the name of Piso and Gabinius with that of Cæsar.
One man alone dared openly to combat the proposal, the great Carnot; and the opposition of Curée to Carnot might have recalled to the minds of those abject champions of popular liberty the verse that glitters amidst the literary rubbish of the Roman Empire: "Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni." The Tribunate named a commission to report; it was favourable to the Bonapartes.
When his plan has failed, as fail it in all probability will, he still, with that serene assurance which is the attribute of mediocrity, will insist that it ought to have succeeded. "Victrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni." Those who knew him in Brittany tell me that long before he became a personage, "le plan de Trochu" was a standing joke throughout that province.
And the third, speaking of the civil wars betwixt Caesar and Pompey, "Victrix causa diis placuit, set victa Catoni." And the fourth, upon the praises of Caesar: "Et cuncta terrarum subacta, Praeter atrocem animum Catonis." And the master of the choir, after having set forth all the great names of the greatest Romans, ends thus: "His dantem jura Catonem."
I said to a friend: "Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni." And now I have brought almost to an end, as far as this sketch has to treat of them, the history both of my opinions, and of the public acts which they involved.
Cato did not utter the phrase "Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni," with more resolution than that with which I answered: "Never!" "Oho! you will never drink wine? We shall see how you keep your word in the course of time!" And that is why I kept my word. Till to-day I have never touched wine.
The verdict of fact and the verdict of literature on the great controversy between them have been summed up in the memorable line of Lucan Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni. Was Cato right, or were the gods right? Perhaps both.
The Roman gods themselves did otherwise. Victrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni. In this did Cato with the gods divide, They chose the conquering, he the conquer'd side. The whole of the country from Utica to Buffalo is pleasing; and the intervening of the inland lakes, large and deep and clear, adds considerably to the effect.
If the just man be in truth a worshipper of the most ancient of Deities, he must needs suppose, either that the object of his worship belongs to a fallen dynasty, or what from of old has been his refuge that the sacred fire which burns within him is an "evidence of things not seen." What if I am incapable of either supposition? There remains the dignity of a hopeless cause "sed victa Catoni."
A pastoral epistle to the Earl of Ormond, and all nobles of the realm of Ireland; 'To all who groan beneath the loathsome tyranny of an illegitimate adulteress, etc., Nicholas Saunders, by the grace of God, Legate, etc. Bah! and this forsooth was thy last meditation! Incorrigible pedant! Victrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni!"
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