In his cups they all passed, confusedly, before him; the
hermaphrodites whispered to the rose-breathers the secrets of
impossible love; the griffons bore to him women with magical eyes;
the Albanians danced with elastic feet; he heard the shrill call
of the Psyllians, luring the serpents to death; the column of
Panchaia unveiled its mysteries; the Hyperboreans the reason of
their fear of life, and on the wings of the chimera he set out
again in search of that continent which haunted antiquity and
which lay beyond the sea.
IV
THE PURSUIT OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
"Another Phaethon for the universe," Tiberius is reported to have
muttered, as he gazed at his nephew Caius, nicknamed Caligula, who
was to suffocate him with a mattress and rule in his stead.
To rule is hardly the expression. There is no term in English to
convey that dominion over sea and sky which a Caesar possessed,
and which Caligula was the earliest to understand. Augustus was
the first magistrate of Rome, Tiberius the first citizen. Caligula
was the first emperor, but an emperor hallucinated by the enigma
of his own grandeur, a prince for whose sovereignty the world was
too small.
Each epoch has its secret, sometimes puerile, often perplexing;
but in its maker there is another and a more interesting one yet.
Eliminate Caligula, and Nero, Domitian, Commodus, Caracalla and
Heliogabalus would never have been.
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