caligula

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.

Mister Cameron - I have read the unexpurgated Ovid, the love poems of Sappho, the Decameron in the original, and a great many texts in Greek and Latin histories that were not though fit for proper gentlemen to read, much less proper ladies. I know in precise detail what Caligula did to, and with, his sisters, and I can quote it to you in Latin or in my own translation if you wish. I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility. I frankly doubt that you will produce anything to shock me.

But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.

So this is the boom, eh?_ I said. __ot exactly Scott Fitzgerald, is it?_ ____l tell you what it__ like,_ he said glumly. __t__ like being in Caligula__ Rome, and everyone around you__ having an orgy, and you__e the mug stuck looking after the horse._ He pulled heavily on his cigarette. __he whole thing__l come crashing down,_ he said bleakly, __nd all anyone__l have done is eaten a lot of expensive cheese.

Animalsfattened for your for your arena suffered lessthan you in dying-yours the lawlessnessof something simple that has lost its law,my namesake, and the last Caligula.