Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/108

 two and seventy tongues, and each tongue is further parted out among many peoples; and the nations are severed and kept apart by the sea, and by forests, and mountains, and marshes, and by diverse deserts and impassable regions over which even the merchants do not journey. How can the name of any one ruler reach places where the very name of the city where he liveth, and of the nation where he hath his dwelling, is utterly unheard of? I know not for what folly ye desire to spread your names over all the earth, as ye cannot do, nor come near doing. Thou hast heard, I suppose, how great was the Romans' dominion in the days of the chieftain [consul] Marcus, whose second name was Tullius and his third Cicero. Well, in one of his books, he mentions that the fame of Rome had not yet crossed the mountains called Caucasus, nor had the Scythians, who dwell on the other side of those mountains, ever heard the name of that city or people. It had come first to the Parthians, and even to them it was still very new. And yet it was a name of dread to many a neighbouring people. Do ye not then understand how narrow must be your fame, which ye toil and strive unduly to spread abroad? How great, thinkest thou, is the fame, and how great the honour, that a single Roman people have ever reached? Though a man without measure and unduly desire to spread his fame over all the earth, he cannot bring it to pass, for the customs of nations are so diverse, and so various are their ways, that one country