MICkey Mousing

MIC Contest: Entry 332

Another chance for readers to score get their mitts on an iPod Shuffle...remember readers, you're part of an elite club (read: there are rather few of you) your odds of emerging victorious in this competition (provided, of course, that you sign your name when you email me or write a comment providing an answer) are better than Jim Henson never making a movie again (Hint: the Muppet Master is singing with the eternal choir, so you run the numbers). Right then, the question:

The following are the last lines of a work by what Roman Emperor?

O man, citizenship of this great world-city has been yours. Whether for five years of rivescore, what is that to you? Whatever the law of that city decrees is fair to one and all alike. Wherein, then, is your grievance? You are not ejected from the city by any unjust judge or tyrant, but by the selfsame Nature which brought you into it; just as when an actor is dismissed by the manager who engaged him. 'But I have played no more than three of the five acts.' Just so; in your drama of life, three acts ar all the play. Its point of completeness is determined by him who formerly sanctioned your creation, and today sanctions your dissolution. Neither of those decisions lay within yourself. Pass on your way, then, with a smiling face, under the smile of him who bids you go.

Hints:
- He's no longer alive.
- His name does not rhyme with Schumlius Schmaesar. So, don't even try it.
- It's the Maxwell Staniforth translation (that one pretty much oughta give it away for the Googlers out there).

Right then, good hunting. I just finished the book and I'm on to another. I'll post again shortly with a question on the novel of the moment.