More Haste Less Speed

Suetonius records this as one of Augustus's favourite sayings in The Lives of the Caesars (Divus Augustus, §25), noting that Augustus used the original Greek phrase σπεῦδε βραδέως (speude bradeōs — "hasten slowly"). Augustus applied the principle particularly to military command, believing that rashness in a general was more dangerous than slow deliberation. He had gold coins struck bearing images of a crab and a butterfly to symbolize the same idea — the crab's slow deliberateness paired with the butterfly's speed — and the maxim became one of the defining mottos of his long, remarkably stable reign.