Yet only a moment ago his thoughts, always tending to morbid associations, had blended, in one of those falsely harmonious images that are significant within the dream but meaningless when one recalls it, two recent events.
“All we know of Roman immorality teaches us that absolute power is a poison, and that the Romans, being fundamentally an inartistic people, had a taste for pornography which they often gratified in the description of individuals and families on which that poison had worked.”
Rebecca West | Black Lamb and Grey Falcon