"Quanto Dignior"

     My daily reading from Brevissima today was #187, "Quanto Dignior," from the Florilegium Gottingense, 109. In the current age of ascendance of the crude, crass, and obnoxious to the highest positions in the land, it struck me as somewhat appropriate:

Quanto dignior es, aut per genus aut per honores,

In te tanto res vitiosae sunt graviores.

Roughly rendered in English:

However much more worthy you are, either by birth or by the positions you've held,

So much more gravely do your vices count against you.

Or, as it was put in Luke 12:48, "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more." Much is required of you when you seek the highest offices in the land. If the voters choose to award such offices to you, you much show yourself worthy . . . a test currently being failed dramatically by the 45th presidential administration and the current Congress.