Xxxi.—: Be not over-righteous, nor make thyself over-wise: for why shouldst thou suddenly be taken off!

There are times, says Tacitus, wherein great virtues meet with certain ruin. And this happens to men eminent for virtue and justice, sometimes suddenly, and sometimes after it was long foreseen. But if prudence be also joined, so as to make such men cautious and watchful of their own safety, then they gain thus much, that their ruin shall come suddenly, and entirely from secret and dark counsels—whence they may escape envy, and meet destruction unexpected. But for that over-righteousness expressed in the aphorism, it is not understood of virtue itself, in which there is no excess, but of a vain and invidious affectation and show thereof, like what Tacitus intimates of Lepidus—making it a kind of miracle that he never gave any servile opinion, and yet stood safe in severe times.