The Manual of Xefolius

FROM XEFOLIUS.

upon his bed of roses; but happiness, deaf to his voice, left him in his fainting state.

I heard Alexander Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE), King of Macedon, whose conquests created one of the largest empires in history. exclaim: "What it costs me, O Athenians, to be praised by you!" And I saw the man who shed so many ambitious tears at the foot of the statue of this scourge of the world This refers to Julius Caesar. According to Plutarch, Caesar wept while reading the life of Alexander, or seeing his statue, because Alexander had conquered the world at an age when Caesar had yet to perform any great feat., marveling that he could not find supreme happiness in supreme glory. "Is it only this?" said Caesar as he sat upon the throne of the universe...; and he was still chasing after the frivolous ornament of a crown when death came to strike him down.

I saw Sulla Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138–78 BCE), the Roman dictator known for his bloody proscriptions, who surprisingly resigned his absolute power to live as a private citizen., weary of murders, let the bloody sword fall from his hand, and BEG MERCY FROM THE LAWS OF HIS BEING.

I heard Charles V, Victor Amadeus, Queen Christina These monarchs are cited as historical examples of the "impotence of human greatness" because they all famously abdicated their thrones: Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire (1556), Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia (1730), and Christina of Sweden (1654)., and so many others, confess the impotence of human greatness, and I said to myself: "Ah! What are you, you who torment your existence?".... But what is to be done with the desire and the hope that no mortal can strip away, which never abandon man, and which have led me astray onto a thousand paths of sorrow, where I have found neither exit nor rest?... Yet the great principle which has so magnificently provided for the needs necessary to