[4] For some law of a higher life seems to have attended this youth from his noble cradle even to his last breath. For with rapid strides he grew so conspicuous at home and abroad that in his foresight he was esteemed a second Titus, son of Vespasian, in the glorious progress of his wars as very like Trajan, mild as Antoninus Pius, and in searching out the true and perfect reason of things in harmony with Marcus Aurelius, in emulation of whom he moulded his conduct and his character. 1 5. And since (as the authority of Cicero informs us) 2 “we take delight in the loftiness of all noble arts, as we do of trees, but not so much in their roots and stumps,” just so the beginnings of his surpassing ability were then veiled by many overshadowing features. Yet they ought to be preferred to his many admirable later achievements, for the reason that while still in early youth, educated like Erechtheus 3 in Minerva's retreat, and drawn from the peaceful shades of the Academy, not from a soldier's tent, to the dust of battle, he vanquished Germany, subdued the meanders of the freezing Rhine, here shed the blood of kings breathing cruel threats, and there loaded their arms with chains.
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