But yesterday the word of Cæsar might
Have stood against the world; now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence.
--SHAKESPEARE.
Cæsar was assassinated in his fifty-sixth year. He fell pierced with
twenty-three wounds, only one of which, as the physician who examined his
body affirmed, was in itself mortal. In early life his health had been
delicate, and at a later period he was subject to fits of epilepsy, which
attacked him in the campaign of Africa, and again before the battle of
Munda. Yet the energy and habitual rapidity of all his movements seem to
prove the robustness of his constitution, at least in middle life. It may
be presumed that if he had escaped the dagger of the assassin, he might,
in the course of nature, have attained old age; and against any open
attack his position was impregnable. He might have lived to carry out
himself the liberal schemes which he was enabled only to project. But it
was ordained, for inscrutable reasons, that their first originator should
perish, and leave them to be eventually effected by a successor, within a
quarter of a century.
The judgment of the ancients upon this famous deed varied according to
their interests and predilections. If, indeed, the republic had been
permanently re-established, its saviour would have been hailed, perhaps,
with unmingled applause, and commanded the favour of the Romans to a
late posterity. Cicero, though he might have shrunk from participating
in the deed, deemed it expedient to justify it, and saluted its authors
in exulting accents, as tyrannicides and deliverers. But the courtiers
of the later Cæsars branded it as a murder, or passed it over in
significant silence. Virgil, who ventures to pay a noble compliment
to Cato, and glories in the eternal punishment of Catiline, bestows
not a word on the exploit of Brutus. Even Lucan, who beholds in it a
stately sacrifice to the gods, admits the detestation with which it was
generally regarded. Augustus, indeed, wisely tolerant, allowed Messalla
to speak in praise of Cassius; but Tiberius would not suffer Cremutius
to call him with impunity the last of the Romans. Velleius, Seneca,
and, above all, Valerius Maximus, express their abhorrence of the murder
in energetic and manly tones. It was the mortification, they said, of
the conspirators at their victim’s superiority, their disappointment
at the slowness with which the stream of honours flowed to them, their
envy, their vanity, anything rather than their patriotism, that impelled
them to it. The Greek writers, who had less of prejudice to urge them
to extenuate the deed, speak of it without reserve as a monstrous and
abominable crime. Again, while Tacitus casts a philosophic glance on
the opinions of others, and abstains from passing any judgment of his
own, Suetonius allows that Cæsar was, indeed, justly slain, but makes
no attempt to absolve his assassins. From Livy and Florus, and the
epitomiser of Trogus, we may infer that the sentiments expressed by
Plutarch were the same which the most reasonable of the Romans generally
adopted; he declared that the disorders of the body politic required
the establishment of monarchy, and that Cæsar was sent by providence,
as the mildest physician, for its conservation. On the whole, when we
consider the vices of the times and the general laxity of principle
justly ascribed to the later ages of Greek and Roman heathenism, it is
interesting to observe how little sympathy was extended by antiquity to
an exploit which appealed so boldly to it.[b]
The following extract from Suetonius’ _Lives of the Cæsars_ is our chief
source of knowledge as to Cæsar’s personality.
He is said to have been tall, of a fair complexion, round limbed, rather
full faced, with eyes black and lively, very healthful, except that,
towards the end of his life, he would suddenly fall into fainting-fits,
and be frightened in his sleep. He was likewise twice seized with the
falling sickness in the time of battle. He was so nice in the care of
his person that he had not only the hair of his head cut and his face
shaved with great exactness, but likewise had the hair on other parts of
the body plucked out by the roots, a practice with which some persons
upbraidingly charged him. His baldness gave him much uneasiness, having
often found himself upon that account exposed to the ridicule of his
enemies. He therefore used to bring forward his hair from the crown of
his head; and of all the honours conferred upon him by the senate and
people, there was none which he either accepted or used with greater
pleasure than the right of wearing constantly a laurel crown. It is said
that he was particular in his dress. For he used the _latus clavus_[129]
with fringes about the wrists, and always had it girded about him but
loosely. This circumstance gave origin to the expression of Sulla, who
often advised the nobility to beware of “the loose-coated boy.”
He first lived in Subura in a small house; but, after his advancement to
the pontificate, in a house belonging to the state in the Sacred way.
Many writers say that he affected neatness in his person, and niceness in
his entertainments: that he entirely took down again a country-seat, near
the grove of Aricia, which he erected from the foundation, and finished
at a vast expense, because it had not exactly suited his fancy, though
he was at that time poor and in debt; and that he carried about in his
expeditions marble pavement for his tent.
They likewise report that he invaded Britain in hopes of finding pearls,
the bigness of which he would compare together, and examine the weight by
poising them in his hand; that he would purchase at any cost gems, carved
works, and pictures, executed by the eminent masters of antiquity; and
that he would give for handsome young slaves a price so extravagant that
he was ashamed to have it entered in the diary of his expenses.
The same authors inform us that he constantly kept two tables in the
provinces, one for the officers of the army, or the gentlemen of
the provinces, and the other for such of the Roman gentry as had no
commission in the troops, and provincials of the first distinction. He
was so very exact in the management of his domestic affairs, both small
and great, that he once put a baker in fetters, for serving him with a
finer sort of bread than his guests; and put to death a freedman, and a
particular favourite, for debauching the lady of a Roman knight, though
no complaint had been made to him of the affair.
It is admitted by all that he was much addicted to women, as well as very
expensive in his intrigues with them, and that he debauched many ladies
of the highest quality; among whom were Postumia the wife of Servius
Sulpicius, Lollia the wife of Aulus Gabinius, Tertulla the wife of M.
Crassus, and likewise Mucia the wife of Cn. Pompeius. For it is certain
that the Curios, father and son, and many others, objected to Pompey in
reproach, “that to gratify his ambition, he married the daughter of a
man upon whose account he had divorced his wife, after having had three
children by her, and whom he used, with a heavy sigh, to call Ægisthus.”
But the mistress whom of all he most loved was Servilia, the mother
of M. Brutus; for whom he purchased in his consulship, next after the
commencement of their intrigue, a pearl which cost him six millions
of sesterces; and in the Civil War, besides other presents, consigned
to her, for a trifling consideration, some valuable estates in land,
which were exposed to public auction. When many persons wondered at the
lowness of the price, Cicero facetiously observed, “To let you know how
much better a purchase this is than ye imagine, Tertia is deducted”; for
Servilia was supposed to have prostituted her daughter Tertia to Cæsar.
That he had intrigues likewise with married women in the provinces
appears from a distich, which was much repeated in the Gallic triumph.
In the number of his mistresses were also some queens, such as Eunoe,
a Moor, the wife of Bogudes, to whom and her husband he made, as Naso
reports, many large presents. But his greatest favourite was Cleopatra,
with whom he often revelled all night till daybreak, and would have
gone with her through Egypt in a pleasure-boat, as far as Ethiopia, had
not the army refused to follow him. He afterwards invited her to Rome,
whence he sent her back loaded with honours and presents, and gave her
permission to call by his name a son, who, according to the testimony
of some Greek historians, resembled Cæsar both in person and gait. Mark
Antony declared in the senate that Cæsar had acknowledged the child as
his own; and that C. Matius, C. Oppius, and the rest of Cæsar’s friends
knew it to be true. On which occasion Oppius, as if it had been an
imputation which he was called upon to refute, published a book to show
that the child which Cleopatra fathered upon Cæsar was not his. Helvius
Cinna, tribune of the commons, told several persons as a fact that he
had a bill ready drawn up, which Cæsar had ordered him to get enacted in
his absence, that, with the view of procuring issue, he might contract
marriage with any one female, or as many as he pleased.
It is acknowledged even by his enemies that in respect of wine he was
abstemious. A remark is ascribed to M. Cato, “that he was the only
sober man amongst all those who were engaged in a design to subvert the
government.” For in regard to diet, C. Oppius informs us, he was so
indifferent for his own part, that when a person in whose house he was
entertained had served him, instead of fresh oil, with oil which had some
sort of seasoning in it, and which the rest of the company would not
touch, he alone ate very heartily of it, that he might not seem to tax
the master of the house with inelegance or want of attention.
He never discovered any great regard to moderation, either in his command
of the army, or civil offices; for we have the testimony of some writers
that he requested money of the proconsul his predecessor in Spain,
and the Roman allies in that quarter, for the discharge of his debts;
and some towns of the Lusitanians, notwithstanding they attempted no
resistance to his arms and opened to him their gates, upon his arrival
before them he plundered in a hostile manner. In Gaul, he rifled the
chapels and temples of the gods, which were filled with rich presents;
and demolished cities oftener for the sake of plunder than for any
offence they had given him. By this means gold became so plentiful with
him that he exchanged it through Italy and the provinces of the empire
for three thousand sesterces the pound. In his first consulship he stole
out of the Capitol three thousand pounds’ weight of gold, and placed in
the room of it the same weight of gilt brass. He bartered likewise to
foreign nations and princes, for gold, the titles of allies and kings;
and squeezed out of Ptolemy alone near six thousand talents, in the name
of himself and Pompey. He afterwards supported the expense of the Civil
Wars and of his triumphs and public shows, by the most flagrant rapine
and sacrilege.
In point of eloquence and military achievements, he equalled at least,
if he did not surpass, the greatest men. After his prosecution of
Dolabella, he was indisputably esteemed among the most distinguished
pleaders. Cicero, in recounting to Brutus the famous orators, declares
“he does not see that Cæsar was inferior to any one of them; that he had
an elegant, splendid, noble, and magnificent vein of eloquence.” And in
a letter to C. Nepos, he writes of him in the following terms: “What!
which of all the orators, who, during the whole course of their lives,
have done nothing else, can you prefer before him? Which of them is
ever more pointed in expression, or more often commands your applause?”
In his youth he seems to have chosen Strabo Cæsar as his model; out
of whose oration for the Sardinians he has transcribed some passages
literally into his _Divinatio_. He is said to have delivered himself
with a shrill voice, and an animated action which was graceful. He has
left behind him some speeches, among which are a few not genuine; as
that for Q. Metellus. These Augustus supposes, and with reason, to be
the production of blundering writers of shorthand, who were not able to
follow him in the delivery, rather than anything published by himself.
For I find in some copies the title is not “for Metellus,” but “what he
wrote to Metellus”; whereas the speech is delivered in the name of Cæsar,
vindicating Metellus and himself from the aspersions cast upon them by
their common defamers. The speech addressed “to his soldiers in Spain,”
Augustus considers likewise as spurious. Under this title we meet with
two; one made, as is pretended, in the first battle, and the other in the
last; at which time Asinius Pollio says, he had not leisure to address
the soldiers, on account of the sudden assault of the enemy.
He has likewise left commentaries of his own transactions both in the
Gallic and the civil war with Pompey; for the author of the Alexandrian,
African, and Spanish wars is not known with any certainty. Some think
they are the production of Oppius, and some of Hirtius; the latter of
whom composed the last book, but an imperfect one, of the Gallic War.
Of those memoirs of Cæsar, Cicero in his _Brutus_ speaks thus: “He
wrote his memoirs in a manner that greatly deserves approbation; they
are plain, precise, and elegant, without any affectation of ornament. In
having thus prepared materials for such as might be inclined to compose
his history, he may perhaps have encouraged some silly creatures to
enter upon such a work, who will needs be dressing up his actions in
all the extravagance of bombast; but he has discouraged wise men from
ever attempting the subject.” Hirtius delivers his opinion of the same
memoirs in the following terms: “So great is the approbation with which
they are universally perused, that, instead of exciting, he seems to have
precluded the efforts of any future historian. Yet with regard to this
subject, we have more reason to admire him than others; for they only
know how well and correctly he has written, but we know likewise how
easily and quickly he did it.” Pollio Asinius thinks that they were not
drawn up with much care, or with a due regard to truth: for he insinuates
that Cæsar was too hasty of belief with respect to what was performed by
others under him; and that, in respect of what he transacted in person,
he has not given a very faithful account--either with design, or through
a defect of memory; expressing at the same time an opinion that Cæsar
intended a new and more correct production on the subject.
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF VESTA, ROME]
He has left behind him likewise two books of analogy, with the same
number under the title of _Anti-Cato_, and a poem entitled _The Journey_.
Of these books he composed the first two in his passage over the Alps, as
he was returning to his army from holding the assizes in Hither Gaul; the
second work about the time of the battle of Munda; and the last during
the four-and-twenty days he was upon his expedition from Rome to Further
Spain. There are extant some letters of his to the senate, written in
a manner never practised by any before him, for they are divided into
pages in the form of a pocket-book; whereas the consuls and generals,
till then, used constantly in their letters to continue the line quite
across the sheet, without any folding or distinction of pages. There
are extant likewise some letters from him to Cicero, and others to his
friends concerning his domestic affairs; in which, if there was occasion
for secrecy, he used the alphabet in such a manner that not a single word
could be made out. The way to decipher those epistles was to substitute
“d” for “a” and so of the other letters respectively. Some things
likewise pass under his name, said to have been written by him when a boy
or a very young man; as the _Encomium of Hercules_, a tragedy entitled
_Œdipus_, and a collection of apophthegms; all which Augustus forbid to
be published, in a short and plain letter to Pompeius Macer, whom he had
appointed to direct the arrangement of his libraries.
He was a perfect master of his weapons, a complete horseman, and able to
endure fatigue beyond all belief. Upon a march, he used to go at the head
of his troops, sometimes on horseback, but oftener on foot, with his head
bare in all kinds of weather. He would travel in a post-chaise at the
rate of a hundred miles a day, and pass rivers in his way by swimming, or
supported with leathern bags filled with wind, so that he often prevented
all intelligence of his approach.
In his expeditions, it is difficult to say whether his caution or
boldness was most conspicuous. He never marched his army by a route which
was liable to any ambush of the enemy, without having previously examined
the situation of the places by his scouts. Nor did he pass over into
Britain, before he had made due inquiry respecting the navigation, the
harbours, and the most convenient access to the island. But when advice
was brought to him of the siege of a camp of his in Germany, he made his
way to his men, through the enemy’s guards, in a Gallic habit. He crossed
the sea from Brundusium and Dyrrhachium, in the winter, through the midst
of the enemy’s fleets; and the troops which he had ordered to follow him
not making that haste which he expected, after he had several times sent
messengers to expedite them, in vain, he at last went privately, and
alone, aboard a small vessel in the night-time, with his head muffled
up; nor did he discover who he was, or suffer the master to desist from
prosecuting the voyage, though the wind blew strong against them, until
they were ready to sink.
He was never discouraged from any enterprise, nor retarded in the
prosecution of it, by any ill omens. When a victim which he was about to
offer in sacrifice had made its escape, he did not therefore defer his
expedition against Scipio and Juba. And happening to fall, upon stepping
out of the ship, he gave a lucky turn to the omen, by exclaiming, “I
hold thee fast, Africa.” In ridicule of the prophecies which were spread
abroad, as if the name of the Scipios was, by the decrees of fate,
fortunate and invincible in that province, he retained in the camp a
profligate wretch, of the family of the Cornelii, who, on account of his
scandalous life, was surnamed Salutio.
He engaged in battle not only upon previous deliberation, but upon the
sudden when an occasion presented itself; often immediately after a
march, and sometimes during the most dismal weather, when nobody could
imagine he would stir. Nor was he ever backward in fighting, until
towards the end of his life. He then was of opinion that the oftener he
had come off with success, the less he ought to expose himself to new
hazards; and that he could never acquire so much by any victory as he
might lose by a miscarriage. He never defeated an enemy whom he did not
at the same time drive out of their camp; so warmly did he pursue his
advantage that he gave them no time to rally their force. When the issue
of a battle was doubtful, he sent away all the officers’ horses, and in
the first place his own, that being deprived of that convenience for
flight they might be under the greater necessity of standing their ground.
He rode a very remarkable horse, with feet almost like those of a man,
his hoofs being divided in such a manner as to have some resemblance
to toes. This horse he had bred himself, and took particular care of,
because the soothsayers interpreted those circumstances into an omen that
the possessor of him would be master of the world. He backed him too
himself, for the horse would suffer no other rider; and he afterwards
erected a statue of him before the temple of Venus Genitrix.
He often alone, by his courage and activity, restored the fortune of a
battle; opposing and stopping such of his troops as fled, and turning
them by the jaws upon the enemy; though many of them were so terrified
that a standard bearer, upon his stopping him, made a pass at him; and
another, upon a similar occasion, left his standard in his hand.
The following instances of his resolution are equally, and even more
remarkable. After the battle of Pharsalia, having sent his troops before
him into Asia, as he was passing the Hellespont in a ferry boat, he met
with L. Cassius, one of the opposite party, with ten ships of war; whom
he was so far from avoiding, that he advanced close up to him; when,
advising him to surrender, and the other complying, he took him into the
boat.
At Alexandria, in the attack of a bridge, being forced by a sudden sally
of the enemy into a boat, and several hurrying in with him, he leaped
into the sea, and saved himself by swimming to the next ship, which lay
at the distance of two hundred paces; holding up his left hand out of the
water, for fear of wetting some papers which he held in it; and pulling
his general’s cloak after him with his teeth, lest it should fall into
the hands of the enemy.
He never estimated a soldier by his manners or fortune, but by his
strength alone; and treated them with equal severity and indulgence; for
he did not always keep a strict hand over them, except when an enemy
was near. Then indeed he was so rigorous an exactor of discipline, that
he would give no notice of march or battle until the moment he was to
enter upon them; that the troops might hold themselves in readiness for
any sudden movement; and he would frequently draw them out of the camp,
without any necessity for it, especially in rainy weather, and upon holy
days. Sometimes, giving them warning to watch him, he would suddenly
withdraw himself by day or night, and would oblige them to long marches,
on purpose to tire them, if they were tardy.
When at any time his soldiers were discouraged by reports of the great
force of the enemy, he recovered them, not by denying the truth of
what was said, or by diminishing the fact, but on the contrary by
exaggerating every particular. Accordingly, when his troops were under
great apprehensions of the arrival of King Juba, he called them together,
and said, “I have to inform you that in a very few days the king will
be here, with ten legions, thirty thousand horse, a hundred thousand
light-armed foot, and three hundred elephants. Let none therefore presume
to make any further inquiry, or to give their opinion upon the subject,
but take my word for what I tell you, which I have from undoubted
intelligence; otherwise I shall put them aboard a crazy old vessel, and
leave them exposed to the mercy of the winds.”
He neither took notice of all their faults, nor proportioned his
punishments to the nature of them. But after deserters and mutineers
he made the most diligent inquiry, and punished them severely; other
delinquencies he would connive at. Sometimes, after a successful battle,
he would grant them a relaxation from all kinds of duty, and leave them
to revel at pleasure; being used to boast that his soldiers fought
nothing the worse for being perfumed. In his speeches, he never addressed
them by the title of “soldiers,” but by the softer appellation of
“fellow-soldiers”; and kept them in such fine condition that their arms
were ornamented with silver and gold, not only for the purpose of making
the better appearance, but to render the soldiers more tenacious of them
in battle, from their value. He loved his troops to such a degree that,
when he heard of the disaster of those under Titurius, he neither cut his
hair nor shaved his beard until he had revenged it upon the enemy; by
which means he engaged extremely their affection, and rendered them to
the last degree brave.
Upon his entering into the Civil War, the centurions of every legion
offered each of them to maintain a horseman at his own expense, and the
whole army agreed to serve gratis, without either corn or pay; those
amongst them who were rich charging themselves with the maintenance of
the poor. No one of them, during the whole course of the war, went over
to the enemy; and most of those who were made prisoners, though they
were offered their lives upon the condition of bearing arms against him,
refused to accept the terms. They endured want, and other hardships,
not only when themselves were besieged, but when they besieged others,
to such a degree that Pompey, when blocked up in the neighbourhood
of Dyrrhachium, upon seeing a sort of bread, made of an herb, which
they lived upon, said, “I have to do with wild beasts,” and ordered it
immediately to be taken away; because, if his troops should see it, they
might be impressed with a dangerous apprehension of the hardiness and
desperate resolution of the enemy. With what bravery they fought, one
instance affords sufficient proof; which is, that after an unsuccessful
engagement at Dyrrhachium, they desired him to punish them; insomuch that
their general found it more necessary to comfort than punish them.
In other battles, in different parts, they defeated with ease immense
armies of the enemy, though they were much inferior to them in number. To
conclude, one battalion of the sixth legion held out a fort against four
legions belonging to Pompey, during several hours; being almost every one
of them wounded, by the vast number of arrows discharged against them,
and of which there were found within the ramparts a hundred and thirty
thousand. This is no way surprising, when we consider the behaviour of
some individuals amongst them; such as that of Cassius Scæva, or C.
Acilius a common soldier. Scæva, after he had an eye struck out, was
run through the thigh and the shoulder, and had his shield pierced in a
hundred and twenty places, maintained obstinately the guard of a gate in
a fort, with the command of which he was intrusted. Acilius, in the sea
fight at Marseilles, having seized a ship of the enemy with his right
hand, and that being cut off, in imitation of that memorable instance of
resolution in Cynægirus amongst the Greeks leaped into the ship, bearing
down all before him with the boss of his shield.
They never once mutinied during all the ten years of the Gallic War, but
were sometimes a little refractory in the course of the Civil War. They
always however returned quickly to their duty, and that not through the
compliance but the authority of their general; for he never gave ground,
but constantly opposed them on such occasions. The whole ninth legion
he dismissed with ignominy at Placentia, though Pompey was at that time
in arms; and would not receive them again into his service, until not
only they had made the most humble submission and entreaty, but that the
ringleaders in the mutiny were punished.
When the soldiers of the tenth legion at Rome demanded their discharge
and rewards for their service, with great threats, and no small danger
to the city, though at that time the war was warmly carried on against
him in Africa, he immediately, notwithstanding all the efforts of his
friends, who endeavoured to prevent him from taking such a measure, came
up to the legion and disbanded it. But addressing them by the title of
“quirites,” instead of “soldiers,” he by this single word so thoroughly
regained their affections that they immediately cried out they were his
“soldiers,” and followed him into Africa, though he had refused their
service. He nevertheless punished the most seditious amongst them, with
the loss of a third of their share in the plunder and the land which had
been intended for them.
In the service of his clients, while yet a young man, he evinced great
zeal and fidelity. He defended the cause of a noble youth, Masintha,
against King Hiempsal, so strenuously that in a wrangle which happened
upon the occasion he seized by the beard the son of King Juba; and upon
Masintha being declared tributary to Hiempsal, while the friends of the
adverse party were violently carrying him off, he immediately rescued him
by force, kept him concealed in his house a long time, and when, at the
expiration of his prætorship, he went to Spain, he carried him with him
in his litter, amidst his sergeants, and others who had come to attend
and take leave of him.
He always treated his friends with that good nature and kindness, that
when C. Oppius, in travelling with him through a forest, was suddenly
taken ill, he resigned to him the only place there was to lodge in at
night, and lay himself upon the ground, and in the open air. When he
had come to have in his own hands the whole power of the commonwealth,
he advanced some of his faithful adherents, though of mean extraction,
to the highest posts in the government. And when he was censured for
this partiality, he openly said, “Had I been assisted by robbers and
cut-throats in the defence of my honour, I should have made them the same
recompense.”
He never in any quarrel conceived so implacable a resentment as not
very willingly to renounce it when an opportunity occurred. Though C.
Memmius had published some extremely virulent speeches against him, and
he had answered him with equal acrimony, yet he afterwards assisted him
with his vote and interest, when he stood candidate for the consulship.
When C. Calvus, after publishing some scandalous epigrams against him,
endeavoured to effect a reconciliation by the intercession of friends, he
wrote of his own accord the first letter. And when Valerius Catullus, who
had, as he himself observed, in his verses upon Mamurra put such a stain
upon his character as never could be obliterated, begged his pardon, he
invited him to supper the same day; and continued to take up his lodging
with his father occasionally, as he had been accustomed to do.
His disposition was naturally averse to severity in retaliation. After
he had made the pirates, by whom he had been taken, prisoners, because
he had sworn he would crucify them, he did so indeed; but previously
to the execution of that sentence, ordered their throats to be cut. He
could never bear the thought of doing any harm to Cornelius Phagita,
who had kidnapped him in the night, with the design of carrying him to
Sulla; and from whose custody, not without much difficulty and a large
bribe likewise, he had been able to extricate himself. Philemon, his
secretary, who had made a promise to his enemies to poison him, he put to
death only, without torture. When he was summoned as a witness against P.
Clodius, his wife Pompeia’s gallant, who was prosecuted for a pollution
of religious ceremonies, he declared he knew nothing of the affair,
though his mother Aurelia and his sister Julia gave the court an exact
and full account of the transaction. And being asked why then he had
divorced his wife: “Because,” said he,“I would have those of my family
untainted, not only with guilt, but with the suspicion of it likewise.”
Both in the administration of government and his behaviour towards the
vanquished party in the Civil War, he showed a wonderful moderation and
clemency. And whilst Pompey declared that he would consider all those
as enemies who did not take arms in defence of the republic, he desired
it to be understood that he should regard all those who remained neuter
as his friends. In respect of all those to whom he had, on Pompey’s
recommendation, given any command in the army, he left them at perfect
liberty to go over to him, if they pleased. When some proposals were
made at Ilerda for a surrender, which gave rise to a free communication
between the two camps, and Afranius and Petreius, upon a sudden change of
resolution, had put to the sword all Cæsar’s men that were found in the
camp, he scorned to imitate the base treachery which they had practised
against himself. In the field of Pharsalia, he called out to the soldiers
“to spare their fellow-citizens,” and afterwards gave liberty to every
man in his army to save an enemy. None of them, so far as appears, lost
their lives but in battle, excepting only Afranius, Faustus, and young
Lucius Cæsar; and it is thought that even they were put to death without
his consent. Afranius and Faustus had borne arms against him, after their
pardon had been granted them; and L. Cæsar had not only in the most cruel
manner destroyed with fire and sword his freedmen and slaves, but cut to
pieces the wild beasts which he had prepared for the entertainment of the
people. And finally, a little before his death, he granted liberty to all
whom he had not before pardoned, to return into Italy, and admitted them
to a capacity of bearing offices both civil and military.
He even erected again the statues of Sulla and Pompey, which had been
thrown down by the populace. And any machinations against him, or
reflections upon him, he chose rather to put a stop to than punish.
Accordingly, with regard to any conspiracies against him which were
discovered, or nightly cabals, he went no further than to intimate
by a proclamation that he knew of them; and as to those who indulged
themselves in the liberty of reflecting severely upon him, he only warned
them in a public speech not to persist in their obloquy. He bore with
great moderation a virulent libel written against him by Aulus Cæcina,
and the abusive lampoons of Pitholaus, most highly reflecting on his
reputation.
His other actions and declarations, however, with regard to the public,
so far outweigh all his good qualities, that it is thought he abused
his power and was justly cut off. For he not only accepted of excessive
honours, as the consulship every year successively, the dictatorship for
life, and the superintendency of the public manners, but likewise the
titles of “imperator,” and “father of his country,” besides a statue
amongst the kings, and a throne in the place allotted to the senators
in the theatre. He even suffered some things to be decreed for him that
were unsuitable to the greatest of human kind; such as a golden chair in
the senate house and upon the bench when he sat for the trial of causes,
a stately chariot in the Circensian procession, temples, altars, images
near the gods, a bed of state in the temples, a peculiar priest, and a
college of priests, like those appointed in honour of Pan, and that one
of the months should be called by his name. He indeed both assumed to
himself, and granted to others, every kind of distinction at pleasure.
In his third and fourth consulship he had only the title of the office,
being content with the power of dictator, which was conferred upon him
at the same time; and in both years he substituted other consuls in his
room, during the three last months; so that in the intervals he held no
assemblies of the people for the election of magistrates, excepting only
tribunes and ædiles of the commons; and appointed officers, under the
name of prefects, instead of the prætors, to administer the affairs of
the city during his absence. The honour of the consulship, which had just
become vacant by the sudden death of one of the consuls, he instantly
conferred, the day before the 1st of January, upon a person who requested
it of him, for a few hours.
With the same unwarrantable freedom, regardless of the constant usage of
his country, he nominated the magistrates for several years to come. He
granted the insignia of the consular dignity to ten persons of prætorian
rank. He called up into the senate some who had been made free of the
city, and even natives of Gaul, who were little better than barbarians.
He likewise appointed to the management of the mint and the public
revenue of the state some of his own servants; and entrusted the command
of three legions, which he left at Alexandria, to an old catamite of his,
the son of his freedman Rufinus.
He gave way to the same extravagance in his public conversation, as
T. Ampius informs us; according to whom he said: “The commonwealth is
nothing but a name, without substance, or so much as the appearance of
any. Sulla was an illiterate fellow to lay down the dictatorship. Men
ought to be more cautious in their converse with me, and look upon what
I say as a law.” To such a pitch of arrogance did he proceed that, when
a soothsayer brought him word that the entrails of a victim opened for
sacrifice were without a heart, he said: “The entrails will be more
favourable when I please; and it ought not to be regarded as any ill omen
if a beast should be destitute of a heart.”
But what brought upon him the greatest and most invincible odium was
his receiving the whole body of the senate sitting, when they came to
wait upon him before the temple of Venus Genitrix, with many honourable
decrees in his favour. Some say, as he attempted to rise, he was held
down by C. Balbus. Others say he did not attempt it at all, but looked
somewhat displeased at C. Trebatius, who put him in mind of standing up.
This behaviour appeared the more intolerable in him because, when one
of the tribunes of the commons, Pontius Aquila, would not rise up to
him, as in his triumph he passed by the place where they sat, he was so
much offended, that he cried out, “Well then, master tribune, take the
government out of my hands.” And for some days after, he never promised a
favour to any person, without this proviso, “if Pontius Aquila will allow
of it.”
To this extraordinary affront upon the senate, he added an action yet
more outrageous. For when, after the sacrifice of the Latin festival, he
was returning home, amidst the incessant and unusual acclamations of the
people, one of the crowd put upon a statue of him a laurel crown, with
a white ribbon tied round it, and the tribunes of the commons, Epidius
Marullus and Cæsetius Flavus, ordered the ribbon to be taken away and
the man to be carried to prison; being much concerned either that the
mention of his advancement to regal power had been so unluckily made,
or, as he pretended, that the glory of refusing it had been thus taken
from him, he reprimanded the tribunes very severely, and dismissed them
both from their office. From that day forward, he was never able to
wipe off the scandal of affecting the name of king; though he replied
to the people, when they saluted him by that title, “My name is Cæsar,
not King.” And at the feast of the Lupercalia, when the consul Antony in
the rostra put a crown upon his head several times, he as often put it
away, and sent it into the Capitol to Jupiter. A report was extremely
current that he had a design of removing to Alexandria or Ilium, whither
he proposed to transfer the strength of the empire, and to leave the city
to be administered by his friends. To this report it was added that L.
Cotta, one of the fifteen commissioners entrusted with the care of the
Sibyl’s books, would make a motion in the house that, as there was in
those books a prophecy that the Parthians should never be subdued but by
a king, Cæsar should have that title.[130] This was why the conspirators
precipitated the execution of their design.[c]
APPIAN COMPARES CÆSAR WITH ALEXANDER
“Happy in all things, magnificent; and with just reason comparable to
Alexander; for they were both beyond measure ambitious, warlike, ready in
the execution of what they had resolved and hardy in dangers; they spared
not their bodies; and in war relied not so much upon their conduct, as
upon their bravery and good fortune. The one went a long journey in a
country without water to go to Ammon, happily crossed over the bottom of
the Pamphylian Gulf, the sea being retired as if his genius had locked
up the waters; as another time marching in the champian, it caused it to
cease from raining. He navigated an unknown sea; being in the Indies, he
first scaled the walls of a city, and leaped down alone into the midst
of his enemies, receiving thirteen wounds; was always victorious; and
whatever war he was engaged in, he ended it in one or two battles.
“In Europe he subdued many barbarous people, and reduced them under his
obedience, together with the Grecians, a fierce people, and lovers of
liberty, who never before obeyed any person but Philip; who commanded
them for some time under the honourable title of general of the Greeks.
He carried his arms almost through all Asia with an incredible celerity.
And to comprise in a word the happiness and power of Alexander, all the
countries he saw he conquered; and as he was designing to conquer the
rest, he died.
“As for Cæsar, passing the Ionian Sea in the midst of winter, he found
it calm, as well as the British Ocean, which he passed without any
knowledge of it in a time when his pilots, driven by storm against the
English rocks, lost their ships; another time embarking alone by night
in a little boat, and rowing against the waves, he commanded the pilot
to hoist sail and rather to consider the fortune of Cæsar than the sea.
He threw himself more than once all alone into the midst of his enemies,
when his men were all struck with panic fear; and is the only general
of the Romans that ever fought thirty times in pitched battle against
the Gauls, and subdued in Gaul forty nations, before so dreadful to the
Romans, that in the law dispensing with priests and old men from going
to war, the wars against the Gauls are excepted, and the priests and
all men obliged to bear arms. Before Alexandria, seeing himself alone
enclosed upon a bridge, he laid down his purple, threw himself into the
sea, and pursued by his enemies, swam a long time under water, only by
intervals lifting up his head to take breath; till coming near his ships,
he held up his hands, was known, and so saved.
“For the civil wars, which he neither undertook out of fear (as he
himself says), or out of ambition, he had to deal with the greatest
generals of the age, fighting at the head of many great armies; not
barbarian, but Romans, encouraged by their former actions, and by their
good fortune, yet he defeated them all; and not one of them but he ruined
in a fight or two. But we cannot say of him as of Alexander, that he was
never overcome; for he suffered once a great loss against the Gauls,
under the conduct of Titurius and Cotta, his lieutenants. In Spain his
army was so near blocked up by Petreius and Afranius, that he wanted but
little of being besieged. At Dyrrhachium and in Africa they turned their
backs; and in Spain, against the young Pompeius they fled. But for Cæsar
himself, he was always undaunted; and whatever war he engaged in, came
off in the end victorious; and the Roman Empire, which now extends itself
by sea and land, from the Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean, was brought
under his power, partly by his valour, and partly by his clemency. He
settled himself much better than Sulla, and governed himself with more
moderation; for being king in effect, in spite of all the world, he took
not that name.
“At last, making his preparations for other wars, he was surprised
by death as well as Alexander. Their armies were also alike; for the
soldiers of both were cheerful in fight and hardy, but stubborn and
mutinous when over-wrought with labour. The deaths of both of them were
equally mourned and lamented by their armies, who attributed to them
divine honours. They were both well made in body and of noble aspect;
both descended from Jupiter; one by Eacus and Hercules, and the other by
Anchises and Venus. Though they were inflexible when resisted, they were
easier to pardon and be reconciled, and likewise to do good to such as
they had vanquished; contented themselves with the victory.
“Hitherto the comparison is just, save only that their beginnings were
not equal; for Alexander began with the quality of a king, in which he
had been before instructed by his father Philip; but Cæsar was only a
private man; and though he were of an illustrious race, yet his fortunes
were much encumbered. They both despised the presages that threatened
them, without injuring those divines who foretold their death; and almost
the same signs happened to them, and a like event; for in the sacrifices
made by one and the other twice, they found not the chief of the entrails
of the victims; the first time they were only threatened with great
danger. Alexander’s happened when besieging the Oxydracæ, being mounted
first upon the wall, and the too great weight breaking the ladders behind
him, he beheld himself deserted by his men, and threw himself into the
midst of his enemies, where having received many wounds on his breast
and a great blow on the neck, he was ready to die, when the Macedonians,
touched with shame, broke open the gates and relieved him.
“The like happened to Cæsar in Spain in the fight between him and young
Pompeius; where, seeing his men went on trembling, he advanced betwixt
the two armies, received two hundred darts on his buckler, till such
time as fear having given place to shame, all the army ran in and
secured him from the danger. Thus the first entrails without the chief
threatened only danger of death, but the second were certain presage
of death itself. Pythagoras the divine, after having sacrificed, said
to Apollodorus, who feared Alexander and Hephæstion, that he need fear
nothing, for they both should shortly die. Hephæstion, dying some time
after, Apollodorus, doubting lest there might be some conspiracy formed
against the king, gave him notice of the prediction; he only laughed at
it; and informing himself of Pythagoras what those presages meant, he
told him it was a sign of death; whereupon he again laughed, praising
Apollodorus’ love and the divine’s freedom.
“As for Cæsar, the last time he went to the senate, as we have said a
little before, the same presage presenting, he said, smiling, he had
seen the like in Spain, to which the augur answering that he was then in
danger, but now the sign was mortal, he yielded in some measure to that
advice, and offered another sacrifice; but tired with the length of the
ceremony, entered the palace and perished. There happened to Alexander
the same thing; for when he returned from the Indies to Babylon with his
army, being come nigh the city, the Chaldeans counselled him to defer his
entry; to whom having given this verse for answer,
‘Who promises most good’s the best divine,’
they besought him at last that he would not let his army enter with their
faces to the west; but would fetch a compass, that in entering they might
see the rising sun and the city. It is said he would have obeyed them
in this; but in marching about he met with a marshy ground, which made
him slight the second as well as the first advice, so that he entered
the city with his face to the west. Some time after embarking upon the
Euphrates, and going down to the river Pallakopas, which receives the
Euphrates and carries its waters into marshes and pools which might
happen to drown all Assyria, he resolved to make a dam; and it is said
that going down the river he laughed at the Chaldeans because he had gone
into Babylon and come out of it again in a boat without any harm; but
death attended him at his return from this voyage.
“Cæsar’s raillery with the augur, who told him the ides of March were
fatal to him, was much alike; he answered him jeering, the ides were
come, and yet he was killed the same day. So that herein there was great
agreement between them, both in the presages they received from the
divines without being offended, their raillery, and the event of the
prediction. They were likewise great lovers of the sciences, as well of
their own country as strangers’. Alexander conferred with the Brachmanes,
who were esteemed the most subtile and sagacious of the Indians, as the
Magi are of the Persians. Cæsar did the like with the Egyptians when
he re-established Cleopatra in her kingdom, which occasioned him when
the peace was made to reform many things amongst the Romans; and that
after the example of the Egyptians he regulated the year by the course
of the sun, which before was governed by the moon; and so till then were
unequal, by reason of the intercalary days. It happened to him likewise
that one of those who conspired his death escaped, but were all punished
as they deserved by his son, and as the murderers of Philip were by
Alexander.”[e]
From this we turn to what is probably the most masterly estimate of
Cæsar’s character and abilities ever penned by a student of Roman
history. It is the estimate of one who is an enthusiastic admirer of
Cæsar’s genius, but also a keen historical critic.
MOMMSEN’S ESTIMATE OF CÆSAR’S CHARACTER
The new monarch of Rome, the first ruler over the whole extent of Roman
and Hellenic civilisation, Caius Julius Cæsar was in his fifty-sixth
year--he was born the 12th of July, 100 B.C.--when the battle of Thapsus,
the last of the long chain of victories which led to such important
consequences, gave the decision of the world’s future into his hands.
Few men’s quality has been so severely tested as that of this creative
genius, the only one that Rome and the last that the ancient world
produced--that world which was to continue to march in the paths he had
marked out for it, till the time of its own downfall.
A scion of one of the oldest of the noble families of Latium, which
traced its genealogy back to the heroes of the _Iliad_ and the kings
of Rome, and even as far as Venus Aphrodite, a goddess common to both
nations, the years of his boyhood and young manhood had gone by as those
of the noble youths of that epoch were wont to pass. He too had tasted
both the froth and the lees of the cup of fashionable life, had recited
and declaimed, had occupied his leisure with the pursuit of literature
and the making of verses, had dallied with every species of love-making,
and had been initiated into all the mysteries of shaving, hair-curling,
and ruffles, which belonged to the science of dress as understood at that
period, besides the far more difficult art of always borrowing and never
paying. But the pliant steel of that nature resisted even these shallow
and ruinous courses; Cæsar’s bodily vigour remained unimpaired, as did
the temper of his mind and heart. In fencing and riding he was a match
for any of his soldiers, and his swimming saved his life at Alexandria;
the incredible speed with which he travelled, generally by night so as to
gain time,--a direct contrast to the procession-like slowness with which
Pompey moved from one place to another,--was the astonishment of his
contemporaries and not the least important factor in his success.
As his body, so was his spirit. His marvellous insight revealed itself in
the sureness and practical character of all his arrangements even when he
gave orders without personal investigation. His memory was incomparable
and it was easy for him to carry on several affairs concurrently and
with equal precision. Gentleman, genius, and monarch, he still had a
heart. As long as he lived he preserved the purest reverence for his
excellent mother Aurelia, his father having died early; on his wife, and
more especially on his daughter Julia, he bestowed a worthy affection
which was not without its effect on politics. In their several ways the
ablest and worthiest men of his time both of higher and lower rank stood
to him in relations of mutual trust. As he never abandoned his adherents
in Pompey’s ungenerous and heartless fashion, but stood by his friends
unshaken in good and evil days, and this not merely from calculation,
so also many of them, like Aulus Hirtius and Caius Matius, gave noble
witness of their attachment to him even after his death.
If in a nature so harmoniously organised one particular side may be dwelt
upon as characteristic, it is this that anything of an ideological or
visionary character was far removed from it. It is needless to say that
Cæsar was a passionate man, for there is no genius without passion; but
his passions were never stronger than he. He had been young, and song,
love, and wine had played their part in his joyous existence; but they
did not penetrate the inmost heart of his being. Literature attracted his
long and earnest attention; but if the Homeric Achilles kept Alexander
awake, Cæsar in his sleepless hours prepared considerations on the
inflections of Latin nouns and verbs. He made verses, as every one did
at that time, but they were feeble; on the other hand he was interested
in astronomical subjects and in those of physical science.
If for Alexander wine was and remained the dispeller of care, the
temperate Roman entirely avoided it after the period of his youthful
revels. Like all those who have been surrounded in youth by the full glow
of the love of women, its imperishable glamour still rested on him; even
in later years love adventures and successes with women still came in his
way, and he still retained a certain dandyism in his outward bearing, or,
more correctly, a joyous consciousness of the masculine beauty of his
own appearance. The laurel wreaths with which he appeared in public in
later years were carefully disposed so as to cover the baldness of which
he was painfully sensible, and he would doubtless have given many of his
victories if that could have brought back his youthful locks.
But however gladly he may have played the monarch amongst the women, he
was only amusing himself with them and allowed them no influence over
him; even his much-talked-of relations with Queen Cleopatra were only
entered into for the purpose of masking a weak point in his political
position. Cæsar was thoroughly matter-of-fact and a true realist; and
what he attempted and performed was carried through and effected by that
coolness which was his most essential quality and itself a manifestation
of genius. To it he owed the power of living actively in the present and
undisturbed by memory and expectation, as well as the ability to act
at each moment with all his force and to apply his full genius to the
smallest and most casual beginnings. He owed to it also the versatility
with which he grasped and mastered whatever the understanding can seize
and the will compel, the confident carelessness with which he commanded
his words and sketched his plans of campaign, the “marvellous joyousness”
which remained faithful to him in good and evil days, and the complete
self-dependence which allowed no favourite nor mistress, nor even a
friend to exercise power over him.
But it is to this perspicacity that we may also trace the fact that
Cæsar never deluded himself concerning the power of fate and human
capabilities; for him the kindly veil was lifted which hides from man
the insufficiency of his toil. However cleverly he might lay his plans
and weigh all the possibilities, there was always present with him a
feeling that in all things fortune, that is chance, must contribute
the largest part; and with this may be connected the fact that he so
often gave odds to fate, and in particular again and again hazarded his
person with foolhardy indifference. As men of unusual intelligence have
betaken themselves to games of pure chance, so too there was in Cæsar’s
rationalism a point where in a certain sense he came in touch with
mysticism.
From such materials a statesman could not fail to be produced. Cæsar
was a statesman from his earliest youth and in the deepest sense of the
word, and his aim was the highest which a man may set before himself--the
political, military, intellectual, and moral revival of his own deeply
fallen nation and that still more deeply fallen Hellenic people which
was so closely allied with his own. The hard school of thirty years’
experience had changed his views concerning the means by which this goal
was to be attained; his aim remained the same in the days of hopeless
depression as in the fullness of unlimited power, in the days when as
a demagogue and conspirator he glided to it by obscure paths and in
those in which as participant of the highest power and then as monarch,
he created his works in the full sunshine before the eyes of a world.
All the measures of a permanent character which originated with him at
the most various times ranged themselves in their appropriate places in
the great scheme. Strictly, therefore, we should not speak of solitary
performances of Cæsar; he created nothing solitary.
Cæsar the orator has been justly praised for his virile eloquence, which
made a mock of all the advocate’s art and like the clear flame gave light
and warmth at the same time. Cæsar the writer has been justly admired
for the inimitable simplicity of his composition, the singular purity
and beauty of his language. The greatest masters in the military art
in all periods have justly praised Cæsar the general who, emancipated
as no other has been from the entanglements of routine and tradition,
always managed to find that method of warfare by which in a particular
case the enemy might be vanquished and which is consequently the right
one in that case. With the certainty of a diviner he found the right
means for every purpose, after defeat stood like William of Orange ready
for battle, and ended every campaign without exception with victory.
He applied in unsurpassed perfection that principle of warfare whose
employment distinguishes military genius from the ability of an ordinary
officer--namely, the principle of the swift movement of masses; and found
security for victory not in great numbers but in swift movement, not in
long preparations but in swift and even rash action even with inadequate
resources.
But with Cæsar all this is only subsidiary; he was indeed a great orator,
writer, and general, but he only became each of these because he was
an accomplished statesman. The soldier in him, in particular, plays an
entirely incidental rôle, and one of the most remarkable peculiarities
which distinguishes him from Alexander, Hannibal, and Napoleon is that
in him not the commander but the demagogue was the starting-point of his
political activity. According to his original plan he had intended to
attain his goal as Pericles and Caius Gracchus had done, without having
recourse to arms; and as leader of the popular party he had moved for the
space of eighteen years exclusively in the sphere of political plans and
intrigues, before, unwillingly convinced of the necessity of military
support, he placed himself at the head of an army at a time when he was
already forty years old. It was explicable enough that at a later period
he should have still remained more statesman than general; as Cromwell
also transformed himself from leader of the opposition into a military
chief and democratic king and, on the whole, little as the puritan prince
may seem to resemble the dissolute Roman, he is of all statesmen perhaps
the one who is most closely allied to Cæsar both in his development and
in his aims and achievements.
Even in Cæsar’s manner of warfare his impromptu generalship is still
clearly recognisable; the lieutenant of artillery who had risen to be
general is not more distinctly apparent in Napoleon’s enterprises against
England and Egypt than is the demagogue metamorphosed into a general
in the like undertakings of Cæsar. A trained officer would hardly have
laid aside the most important military considerations for political
reasons of a not very imperative nature, as Cæsar frequently did, the
most astonishing instance being the occasion of his landing in Epirus.
Individual proceedings of his are consequently blameworthy in a military
sense. But the general loses only what the statesman gains.
The statesman’s task, like Cæsar’s genius, is of a universal character;
though he turns his attention to the most complex and diverse affairs,
yet they all without exception have their bearing on the one great goal
which he serves with boundless fidelity and consistency; and of all the
numerous phases and directions of his great activity he never gave the
preference to one above another. Although a master of the military art,
he nevertheless, with a statesman’s foresight, did his utmost to avoid
civil war, and even when he began it to earn no bloody laurels. Although
the founder of a military monarchy, he exerted an energy unexampled in
history to prevent the formation of either a hierarchy of marshals or
a prætorian government. He preferred the sciences of arts and peace to
those of war.
The most noteworthy characteristic of his work as a statesman is its
perfect harmony. In fact all the necessary qualifications for this most
difficult of all human tasks were united in Cæsar. Realist through and
through, he never allowed consecrated tradition and the images of the
past to trouble him; nothing was of any importance to him in politics
save the living present and intelligent law, as in the character of a
grammarian he set aside historical and antiquarian inquiry and only
recognised, on the one hand the usages of the living language, on the
other the laws of conformity. A born ruler, he swayed the minds of men as
the wind drives the clouds, and compelled the most diverse characters to
abandon themselves to him--the simple citizen and the rough soldier, the
noble ladies of Rome and the fair princesses of Egypt and Mauretania, the
brilliant cavalry leader and the calculating banker.
[Illustration: ROMAN TRIPOD]
His talent for organisation was wonderful; Cæsar forced his coalition
and his legions into close union and held them firmly together as no
other statesman ever did with his allies, nor any general with an army
composed of unruly and conflicting elements; never did ruler judge his
instruments with so keen an eye and put each in its appropriate place.
He was a monarch, but he never played the king. Even as absolute master
of Rome he retained the bearing of a party leader; perfectly pliant and
complaisant, easy and agreeable in conversation and courteous to all, he
appeared to desire to be nothing more than the first among his equals.
Cæsar entirely avoided the mistake of so many men otherwise as great as
he--that of carrying the spirit of the military commander into politics;
however great the temptation arising from his vexatious relations with
the senate, he never had recourse to such acts of brute force as that of
the 18th Brumaire. Cæsar was a monarch, but he was never caught by the
glamour of tyranny. He is perhaps the only one among the Lord’s mighty
ones, who in great things as in small never acted in response to fancy or
caprice but in all cases in accordance with his duty as a ruler, and who,
when he looked back on his life, might indeed deplore miscalculations
but could repent of none of the errors of passion. There is nothing in
the story of Cæsar’s life which can compare even in a small degree with
those ebullitions of poetic sensuality, with the murder of Clitus or the
burning of Persepolis, of which the history of his great predecessor in
the East has to tell. Finally he is perhaps the only one of those mighty
ones who preserved to the very end of his career a statesman-like sense
of the possible and impossible and who did not shipwreck on the great
problem which is the hardest of all for natures of the grand order, the
problem of recognising the natural limits of success even at its very
pinnacle.
What was practicable he performed, and never neglected the attainable
good for the sake of the impossible better; never disdained at least to
mitigate an incurable evil by some palliative. But where he perceived
that fate had spoken he always listened. Alexander at the Hypanis,
Napoleon in Moscow turned back because they were compelled to do so, and
reproached fate because she granted only limited success. Cæsar at the
Thames and the Rhine retired of his own free will, and at the Danube and
Euphrates laid no extravagant schemes for the conquest of the world,
but merely planned the execution of some carefully considered frontier
regulations.
Such was this singular man whom it seems so easy and is so hopelessly
difficult to describe. His whole nature is pellucidly clear, and
concerning him tradition has preserved more abundant and vivid details
than of any of his peers in the ancient world. Such a personality might
indeed be conceived as shallower or more profound but not really in
different ways; to every not wholly perverse inquirer this lofty figure
has appeared with the same essential traits, and yet none has succeeded
in restoring it in clear outline. The secret lies in its completeness.
Humanly and historically speaking Cæsar stands at that point of the
equation at which the great conflicting principles of life neutralise one
another. Possessing the greatest creative force and yet at the same time
the most penetrating intelligence, no longer a youth but not yet an old
man, highest in will and highest in achievement, filled with republican
ideals and yet a born king, a Roman to the deepest core of his being and
again destined to reconcile and unite Roman and Hellenic civilisations
both externally and in their inward relations--Cæsar is the complete
and perfect man. This is why in him more than in any other historical
personality we miss the so-called characteristic traits, which are really
nothing else than deviations from the natural human development. What
are taken for these at the first superficial glance reveal themselves on
closer inspection, not as individual qualities, but as the peculiarities
of the period of civilisation or of the nation; thus as his youthful
adventures are common to him and to all his gifted contemporaries who
were similarly situated, so his unpoetic but energetic and logical nature
is mainly Roman.
Besides this it is in accordance with Cæsar’s perfectly human character
that he was in the highest degree dependent on time and place; for
there is no such thing as humanity pure and simple; the living man can
but exhibit the qualities of a given nation and a particular stamp
of civilisation. Cæsar was a perfect man only because he had placed
himself, as none other had done, in the central stream of the tendencies
of his day, and because more than any other he possessed the essential
characteristic of the Roman nation, the true citizen quality in its
perfection; while his Hellenism also was only that which had long since
become closely intertwined with the national spirit of the Italians.
But herein lies the difficulty, we might perhaps say the impossibility,
of giving a distinct portrait of Cæsar. As the artist can paint anything
save perfect beauty, so also the historian, where once in a thousand
years he encounters perfection, can only be silent before it. For the
rule may indeed be laid down, but we have only a negative idea of the
absence of defect; nature’s secret, of uniting the normal and the
individual in their fullest manifestations, cannot be expressed. Nothing
is left us but to duly appreciate those who saw this perfection and to
obtain a dim idea of the imperishable reflection which rests on the works
created by this great nature. It is true that these also show the mark
of his age. The Roman himself might be compared with his young Greek
predecessor not merely as an equal but as a superior; but the world had
grown old since then and its youthful lustre had grown dim. Cæsar’s work
was no longer, like that of Alexander, a joyous effort to advance towards
the immeasurable distance; he was engaged in construction, and that from
ruins, and was satisfied to work as profitably and securely as possible
in the wide but defined sphere already indicated. The fine poetic sense
of the nations is therefore justified in paying no heed to the unpoetic
Roman, while it has surrounded the son of Philip with all the golden
splendour of poetry and all the rainbow colours of legend. But with equal
justice the political life of nations has for thousands of years returned
again and again to the lines which Cæsar traced, and if the peoples to
whom the world belongs still apply his name to the chiefest of their
monarchs, there is in this a profound warning and one, unfortunately,
also calculated to rouse feelings of shame.
MOMMSEN’S ESTIMATE OF CÆSAR’S WORK
Cæsar had been a leader of the popular party from a very early period and
as it were by hereditary right, and for thirty years he had upheld its
shield without ever changing or even hiding his colours; even as monarch
he was still a democrat. As he entered into the entire inheritance of
his party, of course with the exception of the wrong-headed notions of
Catiline and Clodius, cherished the bitterest and even a personal hatred
towards the aristocracy and the true aristocrats, and retained unaltered
the principal watchwords of the Roman democracy--namely, the amelioration
of the position of debtors, foreign colonization, the gradual abolition
of the existing differences of privilege between the various classes in
the state and the emancipation of the executive power from the senate; so
his monarchy also was so little in conflict with the democracy that, on
the contrary, it was through it that the latter first attained completion
and fulfilment. For this monarchy was no oriental despotism by the grace
of God, but a monarchy such as Caius Gracchus wished to found, such as
Pericles and Cromwell founded--the representation of the people by the
man who possessed its supreme and unlimited trust. Thus the ideas which
underlie Cæsar’s work were not exactly new; but their development, in
the last instance always the main thing, belongs to him, and to him
the grandeur of the realisation which might have surprised even the
originating genius could he have seen it, and which has inspired and will
ever inspire all who have encountered it in actual operation or in the
mirror of history, whatever the historical period or political complexion
to which they may belong, with deeper and deeper emotion and wonder
according to the measure of their capacity for comprehending human and
historical greatness.
This is perhaps the right place to expressly declare what the historian
always tacitly assumes and to enter a protest against the custom common
alike to simplicity and dishonesty, the custom of employing the praise
and blame of history independent of the special conditions, as phrases
of general application, in this case of transforming the verdict on
Cæsar into a judgment on so-called Cæsarism. In truth the history of
past centuries should be the teacher of that in progress, but not in the
common sense, as though men could read the junctures of the present in
the records of the past and in those on the art of political diagnosis
and prescriptions could read up the symptoms and their remedies;
but history is only instructive in so far as the study of ancient
civilisations reveals the general organic conditions of civilisation
itself, with those primary forces which are everywhere the same and
those combinations which are everywhere different, and in so far as,
instead of producing unthinking imitation, it guides and inspires
independent creations on old lines. In this sense the history of Cæsar
and the Roman Cæsarship, with all the unsurpassed greatness of the master
workman and all the historical necessity of the work, is verily a keener
criticism of modern autocracy than the hand of man could write.
By the same law of nature in accordance with which the most insignificant
organism is infinitely superior to the most cunning machine, any
constitution, however defective, which allows free play for the
spontaneous action of a majority of citizens is infinitely superior to
absolutism, even though conducted with the greatest amount of humanity
and genius; for the former is capable of development, and is therefore
living, the latter remains what it is, that is it is dead. This law of
nature also asserted itself in the case of the absolute military monarchy
of Rome, and only the more completely because under the inspired guidance
of its creator and in the absence of any real complications with foreign
countries the development of that monarchy was less hampered and limited
than any similar government. From the time of Cæsar, as Gibbon long ago
pointed out, the Roman Empire had only an external cohesion and was
only extended in mechanical fashion, whilst inwardly it wholly withered
and expired with himself. If at the commencement of the autocracy and
especially in Cæsar’s own mind there still prevailed a sanguine hope of a
union of free popular development with absolute rule, even the government
of the highly gifted emperors of the Julian line soon taught in terrible
fashion how far it is possible to mingle fire and water in one vessel.
Cæsar’s work was necessary and beneficial, not because it did or could
of itself bring blessing, but because an absolute military monarchy was
the least of evils and the logical and necessary conclusion determined
by the ancient organisation, founded as it was on slavery and entirely
alien to republican and constitutional representation, and by the legal
constitution of the city, which in the course of five hundred years had
ripened into an oligarchical absolutism. But history will not consent to
diminish the honour of the true Cæsar because where there are spurious
Cæsars a similar device may bewilder simplicity and furnish evil with an
opportunity for lying and fraud. History too is a bible, and if it no
more than the latter can defend itself from being misunderstood by the
fool or quoted by the devil, it too will be in a position to endure and
render his due to each.[d]
FOOTNOTES
[129] The _latus clavus_ was a broad stripe of purple, in the form of
a ribbon, sewed to the tunic on the fore part. There were properly two
such; and it was broad, to distinguish it from that of the equites, who
wore a narrow one.
[130] [This interesting extract contains, of course, much unfounded
gossip. In general we should set down as historical those acts and
sayings only which could be known to the public or which were immediately
recorded.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: MARK ANTONY
(From a bust at Rome)]