"Most men – it is my
experience – are neither virtuous nor scoundrels, good-hearted nor bad-hearted.
They are a little of one thing and a little of the other and nothing for any
length of time: ignoble mediocrities. But a few men remain always true to a single
extreme character: these are the men who leave the strongest mark on history,
and I should divide them into four classes. First there are the scoundrels with
stony hearts, of whom Macro, the Guards Commander under Tiberius and Caligula,
was an outstanding example. Next come the virtuous men with equally stony
hearts, of whom Cato the Censor, my bugbear, was an outstanding example. The
third class are the virtuous men with golden hearts, such as old Athenodorus
and my poor murdered brother Germanicus. And last and most rarely found are the
scoundrels with golden hearts, and of these Herod Agrippa was the most perfect
instance imaginable. It is the scoundrels with the golden hearts, these
anti-Catos, who make the most valuable friends in time of need. You expect
nothing from them. They are entirely without principle, as they themselves
acknowledge, and only consider their own advantage. But go to them when in
desperate trouble and say, ‘For God’s sake do so-and-so for me,’ and they will
almost certainly do it – not as a friendly favour but, they will say, because
it fits in with their own crooked plans; and you are forbidden to thank them.
These anti-Catos are gamblers and spendthrifts; but that is at least better
than being misers. They also associate constantly with drunkards, assassins,
crooked business men, and procurers; yet you seldom see them greatly the worse
for liquor themselves, and if they arrange an assassination you may be sure
that the victim will not be greatly mourned, and they defraud the rich
defaulters rather than the innocent and needy, and they consort with no woman
against her will."
- Claudius the God, Robert Graves
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