Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[361] the gift and of knowing its usefulness to others provides better rewards than all office, all wealth. Aper, the representative orator, says that when he is called on to plead for the oppressed or for any good cause, he rises above all places of high preferment, and can afford to look down on them all. (“ mihi supra tribunatus et praeturas et consulatus ascendere videor.”) Maternus, who has retired from the public forum to write tragedies, justifies his course on the ground that the influence of the poet is far more lasting than that of the orator; and he is so far from asking wealth as a reward that he hopes to leave behind him, when he shall come to die, only so much of worldly possessions as may provide parting gifts for a few friends. (“Nec plus habeam quam quod possim cui velim relinquere.”) If ancient Rome furnished this lofty standard, cannot modern Christendom hope at least to match it?