Note 10 — Chapter II · FANATICISM, LUXURY, CORRUPTION OF MORALS, AND IRRELIGION DO NOT NECESSARILY LEAD TO THE FALL OF SOCIETIES

Cæsar, the democrat and sceptic, knew how to hold language contrary to his opinions when it was necessary. His funeral oration on his aunt is very curious: “On the mother’s side,” he said, “Julia was descended from kings; on her father’s, from the immortal gods: for the Marcian Reges, whose name her mother bore, were sprung from Ancus Marcius, while Venus is the ancestress of the Julii, the clan to which belongs the family of the Cæsars. Thus in our blood is mingled at the same time the sanctity of kings, who are the mightiest of men, and the awful majesty of the gods, who hold kings themselves in their power” (Suetonius, “Julius,” p. 6). Nothing could be more monarchical; and also, for an atheist, nothing could be more religious.