Juvenal—Remembering Why We Fight

Triumph of Neptune, mosaic (ca. 1st cen. CE)

Esto bonus miles, tutor bonus, arbiter idem

integer; ambiguæ si quando citabere testis

incertæque rei, Phalaris licet imperet ut sis

falsus et admoto dictet perjuria tauro,

summum crede nefas animam præferre pudori

et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.

Be a good soldier, or upright trustee,

An arbitrator from corruption free;

And if a witness in a doubtful cause,

Where a bribed judge means to elude the laws,

Though Phalaris’ brazen bull were there,

And he would dictate what he’d have you swear,

Be not so profligate, but rather choose

To guard your honour, and your life to lose,

Rather than let your virtue be betray’d;

Virtue, the noblest cause for which you’re made.

–Decimus Junius Juvenalis (Juvenal), Satura viii, 79-84 (ca. 100 CE)(J. Dryden transl. 1692)(the key phrase here, “propter vitam vivendi perdere causas,” might be rendered more accurately, though less poetically, as “do not forsake the reasons for living in the interest of staying alive.”)