The last passage I shall read is from the novel Augustus.
At Will Andrews moment of recognition,
Andrews was in his early 20s, William Stoner
was in his 65th year.
And the passage that I shall read now
is spoken by Augustus in his 76th year.
We all know something about the career of Octavius Caesar named
Augustus.
At the age of 19, he was one of the three rulers of the Roman
Empire.
At the age of 27, he was sole ruler of the Roman Empire.
And for 50 years he was emperor of that factual state.
In his 76th year, knowing that his days are limited,
he takes a last vacation on his small yacht
down the coast of Italy to the island of Capri
where he has a house and has friends.
The whole of the last section is a long letter
that Augustus in his old age is writing to the only friend
of his who remains alive.
His old friends Horace, Virgil, and others are dead--
he has no one.
He is accompanied only by his young Greek physician
Philippus.
And during the course of this last letter to Nicolaus
of Damascus-- a Damascus Jew--
he has been convinced that his life, the life of power,
has been meaningless.
He has sacrificed himself, he perceives,
to the needs of the state and he is
unsure of the cost and unsure of the significance of what
he has done.
He has had a mild stroke which he know presages the end
and which he has concealed from his doctor.
This letter is written on August 11 in the year 14 AD.
Augusta speaks, "During the night
I did not move from my couch but kept a vigil
on the stars that move in their eternal voyage
across the great dome of the sky.
Toward dawn, for the first time in two days, I dozed a little
and I had a dream.
I was in that curious state where
one dreams and knows that one dreams yet
finds there a reality which mocks that of one's waking
life.
I wished to remember the contours of that other world,
but when I was awakened the memory of the dream fled
into the brightness of the morning.
I was awakened by the stirring of the crew
and by the sound of a distant singing.
For a moment in my confusion I thought
of those sirens of whom Homer wrote so beautifully
and imagined myself to be bound to the mast of my ship,
helpless against the call of an unimaginable beauty.
But it was not the sirens, it was a green ship
from Alexandria that sails slowly
toward us from the South.
And the Egyptian crew dressed in white robes
with garlands on their heads stood
on deck singing in their native tongue as they approached us.
And the musky odor of burning incense
was born to us on the morning breeze.
We watched their approach with some puzzlement
until at last the huge ship, which dwarfed our own,
came so close that we could make out the smiling swarthy
faces of the men.
And then the captain stepped forward and hailed me by name.
With some difficulty, which I trust I concealed even from
Philippus, I arose from my couch and went to the deck rail upon
which I leant while I returned the greeting of this captain.
It appeared that the ship had unloaded a cargo of goods
at the harbor between Pozzuoli and Naples
and had been informed of my presence nearby.
And the crew had wished before they made their way back
to their far Egyptian Homeland to greet me
and to give me their thanks.
The ship were so close I did not have to shout,
and I could see clearly the dark face of the captain.
I inquired his name.
It was Pothelios.
And as the crew continued its low singing,
Pothelios said to me, 'you have given us the liberty
to sail the seas and thus furnish room
with the bountiful goods of Egypt.
You have rid the seas of those pirates and brigands that
in the past would have made that liberty empty.
Thus, the Egyptian Roman may prosper
and may return to his Homeland secure in the knowledge
that only the accidents of wind and wave threaten his safety.
For all this, we give thanks to you and pray that the gods will
allow you good fortune for the rest of your days.'
For a moment I could not speak.
Pothelios had addressed me in a stiff but passable Latin,
and it occurred to me that 30 years ago, he
would have spoken in that demotic Egyptian Greek
and that I would have been hard put to understand him.
I returned the captain's thanks and said a few words
to the crew and directed Philippus
to see that each member of that crew
be given some coins of gold.
And I returned to my couch from where
I watched the huge freighter turn slowly away from us
and move southward, its sails bulging in the wind, its crew
waving and laughing happy in their safety and homeward
voyage.
And so now we too move southward and our less bulky ship dances
upon the waves.
The sunlight catches the flecks of white foam,
the top of the little waves, the waves slap gently and whisper
against the sides of our ship.
The blue green depth of the sea seems almost playful.
And I can persuade myself now that after all there
has been some symmetry to my life some point
and that my existence has been of more benefit than harm
to this world that I am content to leave.
Now, throughout this world, the Roman order prevails.
The German barbarian may wait in the North, the Parthenon
in the East, and others beyond frontiers that we have not yet
conceived, and if Rome does not fall to them,
it will at last fall to that barbarian from which none
escape time.
Yet now for a few years the Roman order prevails.
It prevails in every Italian town
of consequence, in every colony, in every province
from the Rhine and the Danube to the border of Ethiopia,
from the Atlantic Shores of Spain and Gaul
to the Arabian sands and the Black Sea.
Throughout the world I have established schools
so that the Latin tongue and the Roman way
may be known and have seen to it that those schools will
prosper.
Roman law tempers the disordered cruelty of provincial custom
just as provincial custom modifies Roman law.
And the world looks in all up on that Rome
that I found built of crumbling clay
and that now is made of marble.
The despair that I have voiced seems to me
now unworthy of what I have done.
Rome is not eternal, it does not matter.
Rome will fall, it does not matter.
The barbarian will conquer, it does not matter.
There was a moment of Rome and it will not wholly die.
The barbarian will become the Rome he conquers,
the language will smooth his rough tongue,
and the vision of what he destroys
will flow in his blood.
And in time that is ceaseless as this salt sea
upon which I am so frailly suspended, the cost is nothing,
is less than nothing.
We approach the island of Capri.
It shines like a jewel in the morning sun,
a dark emerald rising out of the blue sea.
The wind has almost died and we float
as if upon the air toward that quiet and leisurely place where
I have spent so many happy hours.
Already the island inhabitants, who
are my neighbors and my friends, have
begun to gather at the harbor.
They wave and I can hear their voices calling.
'Gaily, gaily,' they call to me.
In a moment I shall rise and answer them.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]