Having been divorced from her
husband, she and the monster Sylla made love to each other at one of
these exhibitions of gladiators, and were soon after married. Gibbon,
in speaking of the lies which Severus told his two competitors in the
contest for empire, says, 'Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as
they seem to the dignity of public transactions, offend us with a
less degrading idea of meanness than when they are found in the
intercourse of private life. In the latter, they discover a want of
courage; in the other, only a defect of power; and, as it is
impossible for the most able statesmen to subdue millions of
followers and enemies by their own personal strength, the world,
under the name of _policy_, seems to have granted them a very liberal
indulgence of craft and dissimulation.'[17]
But the weak in society are often obliged to defend themselves
against the strong by the same weapons; and the world grants them the
same liberal indulgence. Men advocate the use of the ballot in
elections that the weak may defend themselves and the free
institutions of the country, by dissimulation, against the strong who
would oppress them.
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