the constant ability to oversee. We say that to "oversee" something means to "dominate" it. This overseeing, which includes the surmounting, involves a constant "being-on-the-watch." That is the form of acting which oversees everything but still keeps to itself: in Latin, the actio of the actus. The surmounting overseeing denotes the dominating "sight" expressed in the often quoted phrase of Caesar: veni, vidi, vici—I came, I oversaw, and I conquered. Victory is only the effect of Caesar's seeing and overseeing, whose proper character is actio. The essence of the imperium resides in the actus of constant "action." The imperial actio of the constant surmounting of others includes the sense that the others, should they rise to the same or even to a neighboring level of command, will be brought down—in Latin fallere (participle: falsum). This bnnging to a fall pertains necessarily to the imperial realm. The bringing to a fall can occur in a "direct" attack and overthrowing. The other can, however, also be brought down by being "tripped up" from behind in a furtive way. The bringing to a fall is then subterfuge, "trick" [Trick], which word, not accidentally, comes from the "English." Subterfuge is, considered from the outside, the roundabout and therefore mediate bringing to a fall versus immediate overthrowing. Thereby the fallen are not destroyed but are in a certain way raised up again—within the limits fixed by the dominating ones. This "fixing" is in Latin pango, whence the word pax—peace. This is, imperially thought, the fixed situation of the fallen. Actually, to compass someone's downfall in the sense of subterfuge and roundabout action is not the mediate and derived, but the really genuine, imperial actio. The properly "great" feature of the imperial resides not in war but in the fallere of subterfuge as roundabout action and in the pressing-into-service for domination. The battles against the Italian cities and tribes, by means of which Rome secured its territory and expansion, make manifest the unmistakable procedure of roundabout action and encirclement through treaties with tribes lying further out. In the Latin fallere, to bring down, as subterfuge, there resides "deceiving"; the falsum is treachery and deception, "the false."
What happens when the Greek ψεῦδος is thought in the sense of the Latin falsum? The Greek ψεῦδος, as hiding and consequently also as "deceiving," is now no longer experienced and interpreted on the basis of concealing but instead on the basis of subterfuge. The Greek ψεῦδος, by being translated into the Latin falsum, is transported into the Roman-imperial domain of bringing to a downfall. Ψεῦδος, dissembling and concealing, now becomes what fells, the false. Thus it is clear that Roman expenence and thinking, organizing and expanding, constructing and working, from their essential outset never moved within the region of ἀλήθεια and ψεῦδος. As a kind of historiographical constatation, it has been known for a long time now that the Romans took things over from the Greeks in many ways and that this appropriation