Laudator Temporis Acti

Stephen Vincent Benét, "The Last of the Legions," in his Selected Works, Vol. 2: Prose (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1942), pp. 430-444 (at 442):

When we were back in our billets, Agathocles spoke to me.

"The general is pleased with you," he said. "He saw that they tried to bribe you, but you were not bribed. If you had been bribed, he would have had your head."

"Do I care for that?" I said, a little wildly. "What matters one head or another? But if Rome falls, something ends."

He nodded soberly, without coughing. "It is true," he said. "You had nothing but an arch, a road, an army and a law. And yet a man might walk from the east to the west because of it — yes, and speak the same tongue all the way. I do not admire you, but you were a great people."

"But tell me," I said, "why does it end?"

He shook his head. "I do not know," he said. "Men build and they go on building. And then the dream is shaken — it is shaken to bits by the storm. Afterwards, there follow darkness and the howling peoples."