Joseph Mallord William Turner Fishermen at Sea paintingJohn Singer Sargent Venetian Canal paintingJohn Singer Sargent The Rialto painting
war. Triumphs, besides, are very bad for military discipline. Soldiers get drunk and out of hand and usually finish the day by breaking up the wine-shops and setting fire to the oil-shops and insulting the women and generally behaving as if Rome were the city they had conquered, not some miserable log hut encampment in Germany or sand-burrowed village in Morocco. After a triumph celebrated by a nephew of mine, whom I shall soon be telling you about, four hundred soldiers and nearly four thousand private citizens lost their lives one way and another-five big blocks of tenements in the prostitutes' quarter of the City were burned to the ground and three hundred wine-shops sacsed, besides any amount of other damage.
But I was on the subject of Cato the Censor. His manual of husbandry and household economy was made my spelling book and every tune I stumbled over a word I used to get two blows; one on my left ear for stupidity
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