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I know, 0 Caesar, that thou art awaiting my arrival with impatience, that thy true heart of a friend is yearning day and night for me. I know that thou art ready to cover me with gifts, make me prefect of the pretorian guards, and command Tigellinus to be that which the gods made him, a mule-driver in those lands which thou didst inherit after poisoning Domitius. Pardon me, however, for I swear to thee by Hades, and by the shades of thy mother, thy wife, thy brother, and Seneca, that I cannot go to thee. Life is a great treasure. I have taken the most precious jewels from that treasure, but in life there are many things which I cannot endure any longer. Do not suppose, I pray, that I am offended because thou didst kill thy mother, thy wife, and thy brother; that thou didst burn Eome and send to Erebus all the honest men in thy dominions. No, grandson of Chronos. Death is the inheritance of man; from thee other deeds could not have been expected. But to destroy one's ear for whole years with thy poetry, to see thy belly of a Domitius on slim legs whirled about in a Pyrrhic dance; to hear thy music, thy declamation, thy doggerel verses, wretched poet of the suburbs, — is a thing surpassing my power, and it has roused in me the wish to die. Eome stuffs its ears when it hears thee; the world reviles thee. I can blush for thee no longer, and I have no wish to do so. The howls of Cerberus, though resembling thy music, will be less offensive to me, for I have never been the friend of Cerberus, and I need not be ashamed of his howling. Farewell, but make no music; commit murder, but write no verses; poison people, but dance not; be an incendiary, but play not on a cithara. This is the wish and the last friendly counsel sent thee by the — Arbiter Elegantiae.


Henryk Sienkiewicz


#petronius #sarcastic-humor #art



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Did you know about Henryk Sienkiewicz?

In Desert and Wilderness (W pustyni i w puszczy 1912). He ended up transferring to the Institute of Philology and History where he acquired a thorough knowledge of literature and Old Polish. In 1884 Jacek Malczewski exhibited tableaux vivants inspired by With Fire and Sword.

A Polish szlachcic (noble) of the Oszyk coat of arms he was one of the most popular Polish writers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905 for his "outstanding merits as an epic writer. "
Born into an impoveriHenryk Sienkiewiczd noble family in Russian-ruled Poland Sienkiewicz wrote historical novels set during the Rzeczpospolita (Polish Republic or Commonwealth).

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