Advancement of Learning 199 



when men set things in work without opening themselves 

 at all,) be sometimes both prosperous and admirable ; yet 

 many times dissimulatio errores parit, qui dissimulator em 

 ipsum illaqueant ; and therefore, we see the greatest 

 politiques have in a natural and free manner professed their 

 desires, rather than been reserved and disguised in them. 

 For so we see that Lucius Sylla made a kind of profession, 

 that he wished all men happy or unhappy, as they stood his 

 friends or enemies. So Caesar, when he went first into Gaul, 

 made no scruple to profess that he had rather be first in a 

 village, than second at Rome. 1 So again, as soon as he had 

 begun the war, we see what Cicero saith of him, Alter (mean 

 ing of Caesar) non recusat, sed quodammodo postulat, ut, ui 

 est, sic appelletur tyrannus. 2 So we may see in a letter of 

 Cicero to Atticus, that Augustus Caesar, in his very entrance 

 into affairs, when he was a darling of the senate, yet in his 

 harangues to the people would swear, Ita parentis honores 

 consequi liceat, 3 .which was no less than the tyranny; save 

 that, to help it, he would stretch forth his hand towards 

 a statua of Caesar s that was erected in the place : and 4 

 men laughed, and wondered, and said, Is it possible? or, 

 Did you ever hear the like ? and yet thought he meant no 

 hurt; he did it so handsomely and ingenuously. And 

 all these were prosperous: whereas Pompey, who tended 

 to the same end, but in a more dark and dissembling 

 manner, as Tacitus saith of him, Occultior, non melior, 5 

 wherein Sallust concurreth, ore probo, animo inverecundo? 

 made it his design, by infinite secret engines, to cast the 

 state into an absolute anarchy and confusion, that the state 

 might cast itself into his arms for necessity and protection, 

 and so the sovereign power be put upon him, and he never 

 seen in it: and when he had brought it, as he thought, to 

 that point, when he was chosen consul alone, as never any 

 was, yet he could make no great matter of it, because men 

 understood him not; but was fain, in the end, to go the 

 beaten track of getting arms into his hands, by colour of the 

 doubt of Caesar s designs: so tedious, casual, and unfor 

 tunate are these deep dissimulations: whereof it seemeth 



1 Plutarch, Apophthegms. 2 Cic. ad Att. x. 4, 2. 



3 Ad Att. xvi. 15, 3. 



4 1 follow edition 1605 in this passage. 



6 Tacit. Hist. ii. 38. &quot; [Sueton] de Clar. Gram. xv. 



