XXXV. Lucan, in his fifth Book of the Civil War, makes a fine digression upon the happiness of the poor boatman, Amiclas, when he paints Cæsar, in the silence of the night, tapping at the door of his cabbin to awake him, and make him rise, and carry him with all possible haste to Calabria. All the world was agitated, and trembling with the movements of the civil war; and within Greece itself, which is the theatre of the war, in the very neighbourhood of the armies, a poor boatman on dried sheep skins, sleeps without fear. The strokes of the generous leader at his door awake him, without producing the least surprize in his breast; for although he was not ignorant, that the whole face of the country was covered with troops, he knew very well, there was nothing in his cabbin to invite military insults. O life of the poor, exclaims the poet, in which is contained the felicity of being exempt from outrages. O poverty! thou greatest blessing of heaven, although not recognized or justly valued by men. What palaces or what temples were there, which enjoyed the privilege of Amiclas and his cabbin, neither of which, could be made to tremble at the strokes of the robust hand of Cæsar! -------- _O vita tuta facultas_ _Pauperis, angustique lares! O munera nondum_ _Intellecta divûm. Quibus hoc contingere templis;_ _Aut potuit muris, nullo trepidare tumultu_ _Cæsarea pulsante manu!_ XXXVI. It is not to be wondered at, that temples and palaces should be shaken, when cottages remain secure; because in temples and palaces, riches are kept, therefore in them, there is no being free from alarms. If we compare the fortune of Amiclas, with the lives of Cæsar and Pompey, who were all contemporaries; how brilliant were theirs, how obscure was his; but if you consider them prudently, how much preferable was that of Amiclas. Those ambitious heroes, whose elevated splendor, made the world regard them as two suns, were in reality no more than parahelions, or suns in appearance only, false reflections, stamped in the inconstancy of flying clouds. How far were they from happy, each being constantly tormented with the jealousy of the other’s power. _Et jam nemo ferre potest, Cæsar ve priorem_ _Pompeiusve parem._