[3] In obscurity--_Silentio._ So as to have nothing said of them, either during their lives or at their death. So in c. 2: _Eorum ego vitam mortemque juxta aestumo, quoniam de utrâque siletur_. When Ovid says, _Bene qui latuit, bene vixit,_ and Horace, _Nec vixit malè, qui vivens moriensque fefellit,_ they merely signify that he has some comfort in life, who, in ignoble obscurity, escapes trouble and censure. But men thus undistinguished are, in the estimation of Sallust, little superior to the brute creation. "Optimus quisque," says Muretus, quoting Cicero, "honoris et gloriae studio maximè ducitur;" the ablest men are most actuated by the desire of honor and glory, and are more solicitous about the character which they will bear among posterity. With reason, therefore, does Pallas, in the Odyssey, address the following exhortation to Telemachus: "Hast thou not heard how young Orestes, fir'd With great revenge, immortal praise acquir'd? O greatly bless'd with ev'ry blooming grace, With equal steps the paths of glory trace! Join to that royal youth's your rival name, And shine eternal in the sphere of fame." [4] Like the beasts of the field--_Veluti pecora._ Many translators have rendered _pecora_ "brutes" or "beasts;" _pecus_, however, does not mean brutes in general, but answers to our English word _cattle_. [5] Groveling--_Prona._ I have adopted _groveling_ from Mair's old translation. _Pronus_, stooping _to the earth_, is applied to _cattle_, in opposition to _erectus_, which is applied to _man_; as in the following lines of Ovid, Met. i.: "_Prona_ que cum spectent animalia caetera terram, Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri Jussit, et _erectos_ ad sidera tollere vultus." "--while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend, Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies." _Dryden._ Which Milton (Par. L. vii. 502) has paraphrased: "There wanted yet the master-work, the end Of all yet done; a creature, who not _prone And 'brute as other creatures_, but endued With sanctity of reason, might _erect_ _His stature_, and _upright with front serene_ Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence Magnanimous to correspond with heaven." "Nonne vides hominum ut celsos ad sidera vultus Sustulerit Deus, et sublimia fluxerit ora, Cùm pecudes, voluerumque genus, formasque ferarum, Segnem atque obscoenam passim stravisset in alvum." "See'st thou not how the Deity has rais'd The countenance of man erect to heav'n, Gazing sublime, while prone to earth he bent Th' inferior tribes, reptiles, and pasturing herds, And beasts of prey, to appetite enslav'd"