Chapter 12

To your favour, already so weighty, was added the weight which a question put by certain persons piled upon it. When they inquired whom you appointed senior of the two consuls, you replied that there could he no uncertainty as to that; and the honourable men who surround you could not feel uncertainty. Nevertheless, this pronouncement aroused the expectations of those who would have been glad to think that the most distinguished man, who is my colleague, and who happened to be present at the time, had been awarded the precedence. At any rate, they made themselves wearisome by seeking for that meaning which they had read into your answer. Whereupon, as I am informed, your well-known modesty caused you for a while to hesitate, not through indecision as to your course, but to reprove with your flushed glance those who were flattering their own hopes by their affected inability to understand. Then you replied outright: Why do you ask in what order of precedence the two consuls designate are to stand? Can they stand in any other order than that which the prefecture has already determined? What happy modesty, so sagely to suggest that popular reason! You could have made another reply, Gratian, but refrained in order to spare the feelings of certain persons. But I find myself on dangerous ground and for the sake of that distinction which I never coveted, I must avoid it. Since I have been declared the senior, it is enough for me to keep to your decision: so farewell, you who would examine merits! I do not, however, regard this honour of precedence as a trifling favour, my most gracious Sovereign. It confers a glory of which Cicero was fully conscious: The Roman People, he says, made me chief praetor and senior consul."1 His very form of expression makes us clearly understand that it is more honourable to receive precedence over one person, than over many; for while there is indeed no disgrace in taking the second place, the one of two who is preferred is signally distinguished. It is said of Alexander of Macedon that, after reading that passage in Homer 1 relating the decision to select by lot one of the nine chiefs who were all eager to fight in answer to Hector's challenge, and how the whole host besought Jupiter the Best and Greatest with anxiously conflicting prayers to suffer Ajax, or the son of Tydeus, or even Agamemnon, the king of rich Mycenae, to be chosen; he exclaimed: I would have killed the man who named me third! See the high spirit of the dauntless hero! He scorned to be placed third in a list of nine persons, even though, of course, he would have more below him than above him. How deeply ashamed he would feel if he were the second of two persons only! For where there are two candidates, the choice of one is rich in high distinction. If the two who are made consuls are exalted over all mankind, then the one who has precedence over his colleague is set not above one only, but over all.