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The beauty and gravitas of married life as it used to be are still felt and still found, but the depths of human feeling are not stirred by them. Love lies beyond, is a fact outside the pale of the ordered life of the family or the State.

And the rudest nation this day in Europe is that alone where it is in fashion. Other vices discompose the understanding: this totally overthrows it and renders the body stupid: "Cum vini vis penetravit . . . Consequitur gravitas membrorum, praepediuntur Crura vacillanti, tardescit lingua, madet mens, Nant oculi; clamor, singultus, jurgia, gliscunt."

She loved her gravitas, which implied great things; but contemned the Beautiful; and so, when a knowledge of the Beautiful would have gone far to save her, by maintaining in her a sense of proportion and the fitness of things she lost her morale and became utterly vulgarian.

The Roman's word in art, as in life, was still gravitas, and he contrived to infuse a shade of contempt into the word levis. With the inspired Greek we rise, with the inspired Roman we sink. With the Greek poet, it may be any poet of the Anthology, I am uplifted, I am touched by the breath of rapture.

Ours is the good old roast beef and common sense of I mean, the grand old gravitas of Rome. What! you must have a Jupiter to worship, mustn't you? No sound as by Parliament-Established-Religion of Numa Pompilius, Sir, and the world would go to the dogs! And, of course, vermilion paint.

"Revocata in forum fides; submota e foro seditio, ambitio campo, discordia curia: sepultaeque ac situ obsitae, justitia, aequitas, industria, civitati, redditae; accessit magistratibus auctoritas, senatui majestas, judiciis gravitas; compressa theatralis seditio; recte faciendi, omnibus aut incussa voluntas aut imposita necessitas. Honorantur recta, prava puniuntur.

Notice recepit 'recovered', Tarentum having been lost by the Romans to Hannibal in 212 B.C. SENEM ADULESCENS: observe the emphasis given by placing close together the two words of opposite meaning. ERAT ... GRAVITAS: 'that hero possessed dignity tempered by courtesy'. Expressions like erat in illo gravitas are common in Cicero; e.g. Mur. 58 erat in Cotta summa eloquentia.

Yes; but there is a basis for our boasting, too; which boasting, after all, is mainly a mental state; we aim to be taciturn in our speech, and to proclaim our superiority with sound thumps, rather than like wretched Greeks with poetry and philosophy and such. We do possess, and love, at the very least we aim at, the thing we call gravitas; and there are points to admire in it.

The Romans, a harder and coarser race, had their ideal of virtus and gravitas, which included simplicity of life, dignity and self-restraint, honesty and industry, and devotion to the state. They rightly felt that these qualities constituted a vocation to empire.

Yet the later tradition of his acting was rather that he was serious and self-restrained; Horace calls him gravis, and Quintilian too speaks of his gravitas. Probably, like Garrick, he was capable of a great variety of moods and parts.