"Truly a wonderful man was Caius Julius Caesar," says Captain Miles
Standish. Truly wonderful he was on each of his many sides: as soldier,
statesman, orator, and author, all of the first rank--and a respectable
critic, man of science and poet besides.
As a writer of Latin prose, and as an orator, he was second to Cicero
alone in the age that is called the Ciceronian; and no third is to be
named with these two. Yet among his contemporaries his literary power
was an insignificant title to fame, compared with his overwhelming
military and political genius. Here he stood alone, unrivaled, the most
successful conqueror and civilizer of all history, the founder of the
most majestic political fabric the world has ever seen. There have been
other generals, statesmen, authors, as great as Caesar; but the
extraordinary combination of powers in this one man goes very far toward
making good the claim that he was the most remarkable man in history.
He was born 100 B.C., a member of the great Julian _gens_, which claimed
descent from AEneas and Venus, the glories of which are celebrated in
Vergil's immortal epic. Thus the future leader of the turbulent
democracy, and the future despot who was to humble the nobles of Rome,
was by birth an aristocrat of bluest blood. His life might easily have
come to an untimely end in the days of Sulla's bloody ascendency, for he
was connected by marriage with Marius and Cinna. Sulla was persuaded to
spare him, but clearly saw, even then, that "in Caesar there were many
Mariuses."
All young Romans of rank were expected to go through a term of at least
nominal military service. Caesar's apprenticeship was in Asia Minor in 80
B.C. He distinguished himself at the storming of Mytilene, and
afterwards served in Cilicia. He began his political and oratorical
career by the prosecution of Cornelius Dolabella, one of the nobility,
on a charge of extortion. About 75 B.C. he was continuing his studies at
Rhodes, then a famous school of eloquence. Obtaining the quaestorship in
67 B.C., he was assigned to duty in the province of Further Spain. Two
years later he became aedile. At the age of thirty-seven he was elected
_pontifex maximus_ over two powerful competitors. Entirely without
religious belief, as far as we can judge, he recognized the importance
of this portion of the civil order, and mastered the intricate lore of
the established ceremonial. In this office, which he held for life, he
busied himself with a Digest of the Auspices and wrote an essay on
Divination.
After filling the praetorship in 62 B.C., he obtained, as propraetor, the
governorship of his old province of Further Spain, which he was destined
to visit twice in later years as conqueror in civil war. His military
success at this time against the native tribes was such as to entitle
him to the honor of a triumph. This he was obliged to forego in order to
stand at once for the consulship, which office he held for the year 59
B.C. He had previously entered into a private agreement with Pompey and
Crassus, known as the First Triumvirate. Caesar had always presented
himself as the friend of the people; Pompey was the most famous man of
the time, covered with military laurels, and regarded, though not with
perfect confidence, as the champion of the Senatorial party. Crassus, a
man of ordinary ability, was valuable to the other two on account of his
enormous wealth. These three men agreed to unite their interests and
their influence. In accordance with this arrangement Caesar obtained the
consulship, and then the command for five years, afterward extended to
ten, of the provinces of Gaul and Illyricum. It was while proconsul of
Gaul in the years 58-50 B.C. that he subjugated and organized "All
Gaul," which was far greater in extent than the country which is now
France; increased his own political and material resources; and above
all formed an army, the most highly trained and efficient the world had
yet seen, entirely faithful to himself, by means of which he was able in
the years 49-46 B.C. to defeat all his political antagonists and to gain
absolute power over the State.
He held the consulship again in 48 and 46 B.C., and was consul without a
colleague in 45 and 44 B.C., as well as dictator with authority to
remodel the Constitution. While his far-reaching plans of organization
and improvement were incomplete, and when he was about to start upon a
war against the Parthians on the eastern frontier of the empire, he was
murdered March 15th, 44 B.C., by a band of conspirators headed by Brutus
and Cassius.
For purposes of a literary judgment of Caesar we have of his own works in
complete or nearly complete form his military memoirs only. His
specifically literary works have all perished. A few sentences from his
speeches, a few of his letters, a few wise or witty sayings, an anecdote
or two scattered about in the pages of other authors, and six lines of
hexameter verse, containing a critical estimate of the dramatist
Terence, are all that remain as specimens of what is probably forever
lost to us.
[Illustration: JULIUS CAESAR.]
An enumeration of his works, so far as their titles are known, is the
best evidence of his versatility. A bit of criticism here and there
shows the estimation in which Caesar the writer and orator was held by
his countrymen and contemporaries. Besides the military memoirs and the
works spoken of above in connection with his pontificate, we may
mention, as of a semi-official character, his astronomical treatise On
the Stars (De Astris), published in connection with his reform of the
calendar, when dictator, shortly before the end of his life.
Cicero alludes to a collection of witty sayings (Apophthegms) made by
Caesar, with evident satisfaction at the latter's ability to distinguish
the real and the false Ciceronian _bons mots_.
Like most Roman gentlemen, Caesar wrote in youth several poems, of which
Tacitus grimly says that they were not better than Cicero's. This list
includes a tragedy, 'Oedipus,' 'Laudes Herculis' (the Praises of
Hercules), and a metrical account of a journey into Spain (Iter).
A grammatical treatise in two books (De Analogia), dedicated to Cicero,
to the latter's immense gratification, was written on one of the
numerous swift journeys from Italy to headquarters in Gaul. Passages
from it are quoted by several subsequent writers, and an anecdote
preserved by Aulus Gellius in his Noctes Atticae I. 10. 4, wherein a
young man is warned by Caesar to avoid unusual and far-fetched language
"like a rock," is supposed to be very characteristic of his general
attitude in matters of literary taste. The 'Anticatones' were a couple
of political pamphlets ridiculing Cato, the idol of the republicans.
This was small business for Caesar, but Cato had taken rather a mean
advantage by his dramatic suicide at Utica, and deprived Caesar of the
"pleasure of pardoning him."
Of Caesar's orations we have none but the most insignificant
fragments--our judgment of them must be based on the testimony of
ancient critics. Quintilian speaks in the same paragraph (Quintilian X.
1, 114) of the "wonderful elegance of his language" and of the "force"
which made it "seem that he spoke with the same spirit with which he
fought." Cicero's phrase "_magnifica et generosa_" (Cicero, Brutus,
261), and Fronto's "_facultas dicendi imperatoria_" (Fronto, Ep. p.
123), indicate "some kind of severe magnificence."
Collections of his letters were extant in the second century, but
nothing now remains except a few brief notes to Cicero, copied by the
latter in his correspondence with Atticus. This loss is perhaps the one
most to be regretted. Letters reveal their author's personality better
than more formal species of composition, and Caesar was almost the last
real letter-writer, the last who used in its perfection the polished,
cultivated, conversational language, the _Sermo urbanus_.
But after all, we possess the most important of his writings, the
Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars. The first may be considered
as a formal report to the Senate and the public on the conduct of his
Gallic campaigns; the latter, as primarily intended for a defense of his
constitutional position in the Civil War.
They are memoirs, half way between private notes and formal history.
Cicero says that while their author "desired to give others the material
out of which to create a history, he may perhaps have done a kindness to
conceited writers who wish to trick them out with meretricious graces"
(to "crimp with curling-irons"), "but he has deterred all men of sound
taste from ever touching them. For in history a pure and brilliant
conciseness of style is the highest attainable beauty." "They are worthy
of all praise, for they are simple, straightforward and elegant, with
all rhetorical ornament stripped from them as a garment is stripped."
(Cicero, Brutus, 262.)
The seven books of the Gallic War are each the account of a year's
campaigning. They were written apparently in winter quarters. When Caesar
entered on the administration of his province it was threatened with
invasion. The Romans had never lost their dread of the northern
barbarians, nor forgotten the capture of Rome three centuries before.
Only a generation back, Marius had become the national hero by
destroying the invading hordes of Cimbri and Teutones. Caesar purposed to
make the barbarians tremble at the Roman name. This first book of the
Commentaries tells how he raised an army in haste, with which he
outmarched, outmanoeuvred and defeated the Helvetian nation. This
people, urged by pressure behind and encouragement in front, had
determined to leave its old home in the Alpine valleys and to settle in
the fairer regions of southeastern France. Surprised and dismayed by
Caesar's terrific reception of their supposed invincible host, they had
to choose between utter destruction and a tame return, with sadly
diminished numbers, to their old abodes. Nor was this all the work of
the first year. Ariovistus, a German king, also invited by a Gallic
tribe, and relying on the terror of his nation's name, came to establish
himself and his people on the Gallic side of the Rhine. He too was
astonished at the tone with which Caesar ordered him to depart, but soon
found himself forced to return far more quickly than he had come.
Having thus vindicated the Roman claim to the frontiers of Gaul against
other invaders, the proconsul devoted his second summer to the
subjugation of the Belgae, the most warlike and the most remote of the
Gauls. The second book tells how this was accomplished. There was one
moment when the conqueror's career came near ending prematurely. One of
the Belgian tribes, the valiant Nervii, surprised and nearly defeated
the Roman army. But steady discipline and the dauntless courage of the
commander, never so great as in moments of mortal peril, saved the day,
and the Nervii are immortalized as the people who nearly destroyed
Caesar.
These unprecedented successes all round the eastern and northern
frontiers thoroughly established Roman prestige and strengthened Rome's
supremacy over the central Gauls, who were already her allies, at least
in name. But much yet remained to do. The work was but fairly begun. The
third book tells of the conquest of the western tribes. The most
interesting episode is the creation of a fleet and the naval victory
over the Veneti on the far-away coast of Brittany. In the fourth year
Caesar crossed the Rhine, after building a wonderful wooden bridge in ten
days, carried fire and sword among the Germans on the further bank, and
returned to his side of the river, destroying the bridge behind him.
Modern schoolboys wish he had never built it. Later in the season he
made an expedition into Britain. This was followed in the fifth year by
an invasion of the island in greater force. To people of our race this
portion of the Commentaries is especially interesting. The southern part
of the country was overrun, the Thames was crossed some miles above
London, and several victories were gained, but no organized conquest was
attempted. That remained for the age of Claudius and later emperors.
During the ensuing winter, on account of the scarcity of provisions, the
Roman troops had to be quartered in separate detachments at long
distances. One of these was treacherously destroyed by the Gauls, and
the others were saved only by the extraordinary quickness with which
Caesar marched to their relief on hearing of their imminent danger. The
chief part in this rising had been taken by the Eburones, led by their
king Ambiorix. A large part of the sixth book is occupied with the
recital of Caesar's vengeance upon these people and their abettors, and
with the vain pursuit of Ambiorix. The remainder contains an elaborate
contrast of the manners and customs of the Gauls and Germans, which
forms an important source for the history of the primitive institutions
of these nations. The seventh book is the thrilling tale of the
formidable rising of all the Gauls against their conquerors, under the
leadership of Vercingetorix, an Arvernian chief. This man was a real
hero,--brave, patriotic, resourceful, perhaps the only worthy antagonist
that Caesar ever met. This war strained to the utmost Caesar's abilities
and the disciplined valor of his legions. The Gauls nearly succeeded in
undoing all the work of six years, in destroying the Roman army and in
throwing off the Roman yoke. In this campaign, more conspicuously than
ever before, Caesar's success was due to the unexampled rapidity of his
movements. So perfect had become the training of his troops and their
confidence in his ability to win under all circumstances, that after a
campaign of incredible exertions they triumphed over the countless hosts
of their gallant foes, and in the next two years the last embers of
Gaulish independence were finally stamped out. In all his later wars,
Caesar never had anything to fear from Gaul. As we read the story of
Avaricum, of Gergovia, of Alesia, our sympathy goes out to the brave
barbarians who were fighting for liberty--but we have to remember that
though the cause of freedom failed, the cause of civilization triumphed.
The eighth book, containing the account of the next two years, 51 and 50
B.C., was written by one of Caesar's officers, Aulus Hirtius.
The first book of the Civil War begins with the year 49 B.C., where the
struggle between Caesar and the Senatorial party opens with his crossing
of the Rubicon, attended by the advanced guard of his legions. Pompey
proved a broken reed to those who leaned upon him, and Caesar's conquest
of the Italian peninsula was little else than a triumphal progress
through the country. The enemy retired to the eastern shore of the
Adriatic to muster the forces of the East on the side of the
aristocracy, leaving Caesar in possession of the capital and of the
machinery of government. The latter part of the book contains the
account of the campaign against Pompey's lieutenants in Spain, which was
won almost without bloodshed, by masterly strategy, and which ended with
the complete possession of the peninsula. The second book describes the
capture of Marseilles after a long siege, and the tragic defeat and
death of Curio, a brave but rash young officer sent by Caesar to secure
the African province. In the third book (48 B.C.) we have the story of
the campaign against Pompey; first the audacious blockade for months of
Pompey's greatly superior forces near Dyrrachium on the Illyrian coast;
and when that failed, of the long march into Thessaly, where Pompey was
at last forced into battle, against his judgment, by his own officers,
on the fatal plains of Pharsalia; of the annihilation of the Senatorial
army; of Pompey's flight to Egypt; of his treacherous murder there; of
Caesar's pursuit. The books on the Alexandrian, the African, and the
Spanish wars, which continue the narrative down to Caesar's final victory
at Munda in southern Spain, are by other and inferior hands. The
question of their authorship has been the subject of much controversy
and conjecture.
Under this modest title of 'Commentaries,' in the guise of a simple
narrative of events, Caesar puts forth at once an inimitable history and
a masterly apology. The author speaks of himself in the third person,
tells of the circumstances of each situation in a quiet moderate way,
which carries with it the conviction on the reader's part of his entire
truthfulness, accuracy, and candor. We are persuaded that the Caesar
about whom he tells could not have acted otherwise than he did. In
short, he exercises the same spell over our minds that he cast over the
hearts of men twenty centuries ago.
There is nothing that so fascinates and enchains the imagination of men
as power in another man. This man could captivate a woman by his
sweetness or tame an angry mob of soldiers with a word; could mold the
passions of a corrupt democracy or exterminate a nation in a day; could
organize an empire or polish an epigram. His strength was terrible. But
all this immense power was marvelously balanced and under perfect
control. Nothing was too small for his delicate tact. Nothing that he
did was so difficult but we feel he could have done more. Usually his
means seemed inadequate to his ends. But it was Caesar who used them.
The Commentaries show us this man at his work. They show him as an
organizer of armies and alliances, a wily diplomatist, an intrepid
soldier, an efficient administrator, a strategist of inspired audacity,
a tactician of endless resources, an engineer of infinite inventiveness,
an unerring judge of men. But he never boasts, except in speeches to
hearten discouraged troops. He does not vilify or underrate his enemies.
His soldiers trusted him implicitly; there was no limit to their zeal.
They found in him a generous appreciation of their deeds. Many a soldier
and centurion has received immortality at his hands as the guerdon of
valor. He describes a victory of Labienus with as much satisfaction as
if it had been his own, and praises another lieutenant for his prudent
self-restraint when tempted by a prospect of success. And he tells with
hearty admiration of the devoted Gauls who sacrificed their lives one
after another in a post of danger at Avaricum. Even in the Civil War no
officers deserted him except Labienus and two Gaulish chiefs.
It was difficult to deceive him. His analysis of other men's motives is
as merciless as it is passionless. He makes us disapprove the course of
his antagonists with the same moderate but convincing statement with
which he recommends his own. Few men can have had as few illusions as
he. One would scarcely care to possess such an insight into the hearts
of others. He seems to feel little warmth of indignation, and never
indulges in invective. But woe to those who stood in the way of the
accomplishment of his objects. Dreadful was the punishment of those who
revolted after making peace. Still, even his vengeance seems dictated by
policy rather than by passion. He is charged with awful cruelty because
he slew a million men and sold another million into slavery. But he did
not enjoy human suffering. These were simply necessary incidents in the
execution of his plans. It is hard to see how European civilization
could have proceeded without the conquest of Gaul, and it is surely
better to make a conquest complete, rapid, overpowering, that the work
may have to be done but once.
It is hard not to judge men by the standards of our own age. The
ancients rarely felt an international humanity, and in his own time
"Caesar's clemency" was proverbial. As he was always careful not to waste
in useless fighting the lives of his soldiers, so he was always true to
his own precept, "Spare the citizens." The way in which he repeatedly
forgave his enemies when they were in his power was an example to many a
Christian conqueror. The best of his antagonists showed themselves
bloodthirsty in word or act; and most of them, not excepting Cicero,
were basely ungrateful for his forbearance. His treatment of Cicero was
certainly most handsome--our knowledge of it is derived mainly from
Cicero's letters. Perhaps this magnanimity was dashed with a tinge of
kindly contempt for his fellow-citizens; but whatever its motives, it
was certainly wise and benign at the beginning of the new era he was
inaugurating. He was no vulgar destroyer, and did not desire to ruin in
order to rule.
He is charged with ambition, the sin by which the angels fell. It is not
for us to fathom the depths of his mighty mind. Let us admit the charge.
But it was not an ignoble ambition. Let us say that he was so ambitious
that he laid the foundations of the Roman Empire and of modern France;
that his services to civilization and his plans for humanity were so
broad that patriots were driven to murder him.
Some of Caesar's eulogists have claimed for him a moral greatness
corresponding to his transcendent mental power. This is mistaken zeal.
He may stand as the supreme representative of the race in the way of
practical executive intellect. It is poor praise to put him into another
order of men, with Plato or with Paul. Their greatness was of another
kind. We cannot speak of degrees. He is the exponent of creative force
in political history--not of speculative or ethical power.
Moreover, with all his originality of conception and power of execution,
Caesar lacked that kind of imagination which makes the true poet, the
real creative artist in literature. Thus we observe the entire absence
of the pictorial element in his writings. There is no trace of his ever
being affected by the spectacular incidents of warfare nor by the
grandeur of the natural scenes through which he passed. The reason may
be that his intellect was absorbed in the contemplation of men and
motives, of means and ends. We cannot conceive of his ever having been
carried out of himself by the rapture of inspiration. Such clearness of
mental perception is naturally accompanied by a certain coolness of
temperament. A man of superlative greatness must live more or less alone
among his fellows. With his immense grasp of the relations of things in
the world, Caesar cannot have failed to regard men to some extent as the
counters in a great game--himself the player. So he used men, finding
them instruments--efficient and zealous, often--of his far-reaching
plans. He was just in rewarding their services--more than just: he was
generous and kind. But he did not have real associates, real friends;
therefore it is not surprising that he met with so little gratitude.
Even his diction shows this independence, this isolation. It would be
difficult to find an author of any nation in a cultivated age so free
from the influence of the language of his predecessors. Caesar was unique
among the great Roman writers in having been born at the capital.
Appropriately he is the incarnation of the specifically Roman spirit in
literature, as Cicero was the embodiment of the Italian, the Hellenic,
the cosmopolitan spirit.
Toward the close of Caesar's career there are some signs of weariness
observable--a certain loss of serenity, a suspicion of vanity, a dimming
of his penetrating vision into the men about him. The only wonder is
that mind and body had not succumbed long before to the prodigious
strain put upon them. Perhaps it is well that he died when he did,
hardly past his prime. So he went to his setting, like the other "weary
Titan," leaving behind him a brightness which lasted all through the
night of the Dark Ages. Caesar died, but the imperial idea of which he
was the first embodiment has proved the central force of European
political history even down to our time.
Such is the man who speaks to us from his pages still. He was a man who
did things rather than a man who said things. Yet who could speak so
well? His mastery of language was perfect, but in the same way as his
mastery of other instruments. Style with him was a means rather than an
end. He had the training which others of his kind enjoyed. Every Roman
noble had to learn oratory. But Caesar wrote and spoke with a faultless
taste and a distinction that no training could impart. So we find in his
style a beauty which does not depend upon ornament, but upon perfect
proportion; a diction plain and severe almost to baldness; absolute
temperateness of expression. The descriptions are spirited, but never
made so by strained rhetoric; the speeches are brief, manly,
business-like; the arguments calm and convincing; always and everywhere
the language of a strong man well inside the limits of his power.
The chief ancient authorities for the life of Caesar, besides his own
works, are Suetonius in Latin, Plutarch and Appian in Greek. Among
modern works of which he is made the subject may be mentioned 'Jules
Cesar,' by Napoleon III. (Paris, 1865); continued by Colonel Stoffel,
with an Atlas; 'Caesar, a Sketch,' by J. A. Froude (London, 1886);
'Caesar,' by A. Trollope (London, 1870); 'Caesar,' by T. A. Dodge, U.S.A.
(Boston, 1893).
[Illustration: Signature: J. H. Westcott]