Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings

...about which Dirksen has already discoursed at length Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1845, p. 17 et seq.. But as for the learned man's opinion that Valerius proposed primarily to show how far those times—in which the world was ruled by a single will—excelled the happiness of the ancient Republic, and that the most salutary state of the recent age could not be praised without injury to antiquity, I fear he has found in the encomiums of the present—scattered throughout the work but not overly frequent—something that is neither present nor can be concluded from them without sophistry. For if, at the beginning of II, 1, he promises to examine the elements of life in the ancient and memorable institutions of the city of Rome and other nations—the life that his contemporaries led happily under an excellent prince—he does not compare the two states of the city in such a way that the superiority of the recent age becomes apparent. Rather, as he says clearly, he wishes the profit to be derived from the present to be drawn from the simplicity and candor of that former age. More obviously, the very reasoning by which he examines the earlier centuries of Roman history opposes this opinion, for he never attempted to detract from their dignity, even when, seizing an opportunity for flattery, he depicted the times of the Caesars as most happy.

But since we have been led to this matter, it is necessary that we contemplate the mind and character of the writer somewhat more accurately.

Valerius has been reproached for a base and servile character on account of the foul and dishonest flatteries heaped upon Tiberius and his house. And not without cause. For there is hardly anything more illiberal than those excessive and infinite praises by which, on any occasion given or not, he exalted to the stars an emperor whose extreme fury—by which he did not spare even his own blood—and whose insane and shameful lusts, in which he deeply immersed himself at Capreae the island of Capri, were not hidden. Yet Valerius seems unable to conceive of a more salutary prince, a happier state of the empire, or a more beautiful piety than that of Tiberius, and he does not shrink from worshipping him even while he lives as if he were a god 1. Likewise, he represents the house and family of the emperor as the primary standard and mirror of all virtues 2, especially C. Julius Caesar and Augustus, whom he venerates not as princes of men, but of gods 3.

1) Cf. Preface to Book I; II, 1, init.; II, 9, 6; V, 5, 3; IX, 11, ext. 4; etc.
2) V, 5, 3; VI, 1, init.; II, 8, fin.
3) Preface to Book I; I, 6, 13; I, 7, 1 and 2; III, 5, 6; IIII, 7, 7; VI, 2, 1; VI, 9, 15; VII, 7, 4; VIII, 9, 3; VIII, 15, init.; etc.