This rather long quote is word for word from a book that was published in 1959. It is an historical novel in which the author notes that it took forty-six years to complete. This means that the genesis of the quote stretches back almost eighty-five years before our present day. The author could hardly have imagined that the caveat would have been so on target almost a century later, and we can only wonder at how much more accurate it might be in the next couple of years.

The caveat reads:

"Any resemblance between ancient Rome and the United States of America and/or Russia is purely historical and not a coincidence."

The Library of Congress Catalog Card number is 58-12032 © 1959 Reback & Reback

The title of the book is THE DIVINE PHYSICIAN by Taylor Caldwell

The main character is 'Lucanus', which is the proper name of the author of the Gospel according to Luke. He is conversing with a half-brother, Priscus, after the death of Priscus's father, Diodorus, who was also the adopting father of Lucanus. Diodorus was a well-respected Roman soldier/statesman who was constantly trying to turn Rome around from the condition in which it found itself. Priscus was lamenting the fact that his father died trying bring about the healing of the Roman Empire. Lucanus begins:

"You misunderstand me, Priscus, I know tht it was inevitable that Rome become what she is. Republics decay into democracies, and democracies degenerate into dictatorships. That fact is immutable. When there is equality-and democracies always bring equality-the people become faceless, they lose power and initiative, they lose pride and independence, they lose their splendor. Republics are masculine, and so they beget the sciences and the arts; they are prideful, heroic and virile. They emphasize God, and glorify Him. But Rome has decayed into a confused democracy, and has acquired feminine traits, such as materialism, greed, the lust for power, and expediency. Masculinity in nations and men is demonstrated by law, idealism, justice and poesy, femininity by materialism, dependency on others, gross emotionalism, and absence of genius. Masculinity seeks what is right; femininity seeks what is immediately satisfying. Masculinity is vision; femininity ridicules vision. A masculine nation produces philosophers, and has respect for the individual; a feminine nation has an insensate desire to control and dominate. Masculinity is aristocratic; femininity has no aristocracy, and is happy only if it finds about it a multitude of faces resembling it exactly, and a multitude of voices echoing its own tiny sentiments and desires and fears and follies. Rome has become feminine, Priscus. And feminine nations and feminine men inevitable die or are destroyed by a masculine people."

Priscus still tried to lighten the subject. He said, jokingly, "My soldiers, the legions of Rome, are not females, Lucanus!" But he frowned and considered. What was a man to do? He was absolutely impotent when the people unanimously preferred soft slavery to hard freedom.

So Priscus said, "I grant you that you are correct. But I have told you that my father was born too late. He died of a broken heart. I was born even later. I do not intend to die of a broken heart. What price my attempting to call even a single man to sobriety and heroism? It would accomplish nothing."

"Again you misunderstand me, Priscus. I understand that you cannot halt history, for decay and death are inevitable in republics. The only society which can endure with grandeur in the world is an aristocratic society, governed by chosen wise men, priests, scientists, heroes, artists poets, philosophers. Republics breed exigent politicians, and these politicians always, without end, create democracies, and death. If men would only watch diligently, so that masculinity would not depart from a nation! But it never happens!

"Priscus, you as a husband and a father, and most particularly, a father, can cultivate the masculinity of free and noble men in your children; a man must always begin in his own family and then reach forth for his neighbors. He may fail but at least he has tried. It is not in the failing that a man is judged, but by the lack of his effort. At the last, man is judged singly, and never in the mass."

COMMENTARY

None. The text speaks for itself. Though there are several appropriate Scriptural quotes: 'Let those who have ears, hear!' and 'My Spirit will not always strive against the spirits of men!'

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