It remains to offer a few general remarks on the person whose life and
actions I have endeavored to describe in the preceding pages.
In all conditions of human society distinguished men are the subjects
of legend; but the character of the legend varies with the disposition
of the time. In ages which we call heroic the saint works miracles, the
warrior performs exploits beyond the strength of natural man. In ages
less visionary which are given to ease and enjoyment the tendency is to
bring a great man down to the common level, and to discover or invent
faults which shall show that he is or was but a little man after all.
Our vanity is soothed by evidence that those who have eclipsed us in
the race of life are no better than ourselves, or in some respects are
worse than ourselves; and if to these general impulses be added
political or personal animosity, accusations of depravity are
circulated as surely about such men, and are credited as readily, as
under other influences are the marvellous achievements of a Cid or a
St. Francis. In the present day we reject miracles and prodigies; we
are on our guard against the mythology of hero worship, just as we
disbelieve in the eminent superiority of any one of our contemporaries
to another. We look less curiously into the mythology of scandal; we
accept easily and willingly stories disparaging to illustrious persons
in history, because similar stories are told and retold with so much
confidence and fluency among the political adversaries of those who
have the misfortune to be their successful rivals. The absurdity of a
calumny may be as evident as the absurdity of a miracle; the ground for
belief may be no more than a lightness of mind, and a less pardonable
wish that it may be true. But the idle tale floats in society, and by
and by is written down in books and passes into the region of
established realities.
The tendency to idolize great men and the tendency to depreciate them
arises alike in emotion; but the slanders of disparagement are as truly
legends as the wonder-tales of saints and warriors; and anecdotes
related of Caesar at patrician dinner-parties at Rome as little deserve
attention as the information so freely given upon the habits of modern
statesmen in the _salons_ of London and Paris. They are read now by us
in classic Latin, but they were recorded by men who hated Caesar and
hated all that he had done; and that a poem has survived for two
thousand years is no evidence that the author of it, even though he
might be a Catullus, was uninfluenced by the common passions of
humanity.
Caesar, it is allowed, had extraordinary talents, extraordinary energy,
and some commendable qualities; but he was, as the elder Curio said,
"omnium mulierum vir et omnium virorum mulier;" he had mistresses in
every country which he visited, and he had _liaisons_ with half the
ladies in Rome. That Caesar's morality was altogether superior to that
of the average of his contemporaries is in a high degree improbable. He
was a man of the world, peculiarly attractive to women, and likely to
have been attracted by them. On the other hand, the undiscriminating
looseness attributed to him would have been peculiarly degrading in a
man whose passions were so eminently under control, whose calmness was
never known to be discomposed, and who, in everything which he did,
acted always with deliberate will. Still worse would it be if, by his
example, he made ridiculous his own laws against adultery and indulged
himself in vices which he punished in others. What, then, is the
evidence? The story of Nicomedes may be passed over. All that is
required on that subject has been already said. It was never heard of
before Caesar's consulship, and the proofs are no more than the libels
of Bibulus, the satire of Catullus, and certain letters of Cicero's
which were never published, but were circulated privately in Roman
aristocratic society.[1] A story is suspicious which is first produced
after twenty years in a moment of political excitement. Caesar spoke of
it with stern disgust. He replied to Catullus with an invitation to
dinner; otherwise he passed it over in silence--the only answer which
an honorable man could give. Suetonius quotes a loose song sung by
Caesar's soldiers at his triumph. We know in what terms British sailors
often speak of their favorite commanders. Affection, when it expresses
itself most emphatically, borrows the language of its opposites. Who
would dream of introducing into a serious life of Nelson catches
chanted in the forecastle of the "Victory"? But which of the soldiers
sang these verses? Does Suetonius mean that the army sang them in
chorus as they marched in procession? The very notion is preposterous.
It is proved that during Caesar's lifetime scandal was busy with his
name; and that it would be so busy, whether justified or not, is
certain from the nature of things. Cicero says that no public man in
Rome escaped from such imputations. He himself flung them broadcast,
and they were equally returned upon himself. The surprise is rather
that Caesar's name should have suffered so little, and that he should
have been admitted on reflection by Suetonius to have been
comparatively free from the abominable form of vice which was then so
common.
As to his _liaisons_ with women, the handsome, brilliant Caesar,
surrounded by a halo of military glory, must have been a Paladin of
romance to any woman who had a capacity of admiration in her. His own
distaste for gluttony and hard drinking, and for the savage amusements
in which the male Romans so much delighted, may have made the society
of cultivated ladies more agreeable to him than that of men, and if he
showed any such preference the coarsest interpretation would be
inevitably placed upon it. These relations, perhaps, in so loose an age
assumed occasionally a more intimate form; but it is to be observed
that the first public act recorded of Caesar was his refusal to divorce
his wife at Sylla's bidding; that he was passionately attached to his
sister; that his mother, Aurelia, lived with him till she died, and
that this mother was a Roman matron of the strictest and severest type.
Many names were mentioned in connection with him, yet there is no
record of any natural child save Brutus, and one other whose claims
were denied and disproved.
Two intrigues, it may be said, are beyond dispute. His connection with
the mother of Brutus was notorious. Cleopatra, in spite of Oppius, was
living with him in his house at the time of his murder. That it was so
believed a hundred years after his death is, of course, indisputable;
but in both these cases the story is entangled with legends which show
how busily imagination had been at work. Brutus was said to be Caesar's
son, though Caesar was but fifteen when he was born; and Brutus, though
he had the temper of an Orestes, was devotedly attached to his mother
in spite of the supposed adultery, and professed to have loved Caesar
when he offered him as a sacrifice to his country's liberty. Cleopatra
is said to have joined Caesar at Rome after his return from Spain, and
to have resided openly with him as his mistress. Supposing that she did
come to Rome, it is still certain that Calpurnia was in Caesar's house
when he was killed. Cleopatra must have been Calpurnia's guest as well
as her husband's; and her presence, however commented upon in society,
could not possibly have borne the avowed complexion which tradition
assigned to it. On the other hand, it is quite intelligible that the
young Queen of Egypt, who owed her position to Caesar, might have come,
as other princes came, on a visit of courtesy, and that Caesar after
their acquaintance at Alexandria should have invited her to stay with
him. But was Cleopatra at Rome at all? The only real evidence for her
presence there is to be found in a few words of Cicero: "Reginae fuga
mihi non molesta."--"I am not sorry to hear of the flight of the
queen." [2] There is nothing to show that the "queen" was the Egyptian
queen. Granting that the word Egyptian is to be understood, Cicero may
have referred to Arsinoë, who was called Queen as well as her sister,
and had been sent to Rome to be shown at Caesar's triumph.
But enough and too much on this miserable subject. Men will continue to
form their opinions about it, not upon the evidence, but according to
their preconceived notions of what is probable or improbable. Ages of
progress and equality are as credulous of evil as ages of faith are
credulous of good, and reason will not modify convictions which do not
originate in reason.
Let us pass on to surer ground.
In person Caesar was tall and slight. His features were more refined
than was usual in Roman faces; the forehead was wide and high, the nose
large and thin, the lips full, the eyes dark gray like an eagle's, the
neck extremely thick and sinewy. His complexion was pale. His beard and
mustache were kept carefully shaved. His hair was short and naturally
scanty, falling off toward the end of his life and leaving him
partially bald. His voice, especially when he spoke in public, was high
and shrill. His health was uniformly strong until his last year, when
he became subject to epileptic fits. He was a great bather, and
scrupulously clean in all his habits, abstemious in his food, and
careless in what it consisted, rarely or never touching wine, and
noting sobriety as the highest of qualities when describing any new
people. He was an athlete in early life, admirable in all manly
exercises, and especially in riding. In Gaul, as has been said already,
he rode a remarkable horse, which he had bred himself, and which would
let no one but Caesar mount him. From his boyhood it was observed of
him that he was the truest of friends, that he avoided quarrels, and
was most easily appeased when offended. In manner he was quiet and
gentlemanlike, with the natural courtesy of high-breeding. On an
occasion when he was dining somewhere the other guests found the oil
too rancid for them. Caesar took it without remark, to spare his
entertainer's feelings. When on a journey through a forest with his
friend Oppius, he came one night to a hut where there was a single bed.
Oppius being unwell, Caesar gave it up to him, and slept on the ground.
In his public character he may be regarded under three aspects, as a
politician, a soldier, and a man of letters.
Like Cicero, Caesar entered public life at the bar. He belonged by
birth to the popular party, but he showed no disposition, like the
Gracchi, to plunge into political agitation. His aims were practical.
He made war only upon injustice and oppression; and when he commenced
as a pleader he was noted for the energy with which he protected a
client whom he believed to have been wronged. At a later period, before
he was praetor, he was engaged in defending Masintha, a young Numidian
prince, who had suffered some injury from Hiempsal, the father of Juba.
Juba himself came to Rome on the occasion, bringing with him the means
of influencing the judges which Jugurtha had found so effective. Caesar
in his indignation seized Juba by the beard in the court; and when
Masintha was sentenced to some unjust penalty Caesar carried him off,
concealed him in his house, and took him to Spain in his carriage. When
he rose into the Senate, his powers as a speaker became strikingly
remarkable. Cicero, who often heard him, and was not a favorable judge,
said that there was a pregnancy in his sentences and a dignity in his
manner which no orator in Rome could approach. But he never spoke to
court popularity; his aim from first to last was better government, the
prevention of bribery and extortion, and the distribution among
deserving citizens of some portion of the public land which the rich
were stealing. The Julian laws, which excited the indignation of the
aristocracy, had no other objects than these; and had they been
observed they would have saved the Constitution. The obstinacy of
faction and the civil war which grew out of it obliged him to extend
his horizon, to contemplate more radical reforms--a large extension of
the privileges of citizenship, with the introduction of the provincial
nobility into the Senate, and the transfer of the administration from
the Senate and annually elected magistrates to the permanent chief of
the army. But his objects throughout were purely practical. The purpose
of government he conceived to be the execution of justice; and a
constitutional liberty under which justice was made impossible did not
appear to him to be liberty at all.
The practicality which showed itself in his general aims appeared also
in his mode of working. Caesar, it was observed, when anything was to
be done, selected the man who was best able to do it, not caring
particularly who or what he might be in other respects. To this faculty
of discerning and choosing fit persons to execute his orders may be
ascribed the extraordinary success of his own provincial
administration, the enthusiasm which was felt for him in the North of
Italy, and the perfect quiet of Gaul after the completion of the
conquest. Caesar did not crush the Gauls under the weight of Italy. He
took the best of them into the Roman service, promoted them, led them
to associate the interests of the Empire with their personal
advancement and the prosperity of their own people. No act of Caesar's
showed more sagacity then the introduction of Gallic nobles into the
Senate; none was more bitter to the Scipios and Metelli, who were
compelled to share their august privileges with these despised
barbarians.
It was by accident that Caesar took up the profession of a soldier; yet
perhaps no commander who ever lived showed greater military genius. The
conquest of Gaul was effected by a force numerically insignificant,
which was worked with the precision of a machine. The variety of uses
to which it was capable of being turned implied, in the first place,
extraordinary forethought in the selection of materials. Men whose
nominal duty was merely to fight were engineers, architects, mechanics
of the highest order. In a few hours they could extemporize an
impregnable fortress on an open hillside. They bridged the Rhine in a
week. They built a fleet in a month. The legions at Alesia held twice
their number pinned within their works, while they kept at bay the
whole force of insurgent Gaul, entirely by scientific superiority. The
machine, which was thus perfect, was composed of human beings who
required supplies of tools, and arms, and clothes, and food, and
shelter, and for all these it depended on the forethought of its
commander. Maps there were none. Countries entirely unknown had to be
surveyed; routes had to be laid out; the depths and courses of rivers,
the character of mountain passes, had all to be ascertained. Allies had
to be found among tribes as yet unheard of. Countless contingent
difficulties had to be provided for, many of which must necessarily
arise, though the exact nature of them could not be anticipated. When
room for accidents is left open, accidents do not fail to be heard of.
Yet Caesar was never defeated when personally present, save once at
Gergovia, and once at Durazzo; and the failure at Gergovia was caused
by the revolt of the Aedui; and the manner in which the failure at
Durazzo was retrieved showed Caesar's greatness more than the most
brilliant of his victories. He was rash, but with a calculated
rashness, which the event never failed to justify. His greatest
successes were due to the rapidity of his movements, which brought him
on the enemy before they heard of his approach. He travelled sometimes
a hundred miles a day, reading or writing in his carriage, through
countries without roads, and crossing rivers without bridges. No
obstacles stopped him when he had a definite end in view. In battle he
sometimes rode; but he was more often on foot, bareheaded, and in a
conspicuous dress, that he might be seen and recognized. Again and
again by his own efforts he recovered a day that was half lost. He once
seized a panic-stricken standard-bearer, turned him round, and told him
that he had mistaken the direction of the enemy. He never misled his
army as to an enemy's strength, or if he mis-stated their numbers it
was only to exaggerate. In Africa, before Thapsus, when his officers
were nervous at the reported approach of Juba, he called them together
and said briefly, "You will understand that within a day King Juba will
be here with the legions, thirty thousand horse, a hundred thousand
skirmishers, and three hundred elephants. You are not to think or ask
questions. I tell you the truth, and you must prepare for it. If any of
you are alarmed, I shall send you home."
Yet he was singularly careful of his soldiers. He allowed his legions
rest, though he allowed none to himself. He rarely fought a battle at a
disadvantage. He never exposed his men to unnecessary danger, and the
loss by wear and tear in the campaigns in Gaul was exceptionally and
even astonishingly slight. When a gallant action was performed, he knew
by whom it had been done, and every soldier, however humble, might feel
assured that if he deserved praise he would have it. The army was
Caesar's family. When Sabinus was cut off, he allowed his beard to
grow, and he did not shave it till the disaster was avenged. If Quintus
Cicero had been his own child, he could not have run greater personal
risk to save him when shut up at Charleroy. In discipline he was
lenient to ordinary faults, and not careful to make curious inquiries
into such things. He liked his men to enjoy themselves. Military
mistakes in his officers too he always endeavored to excuse, never
blaming them for misfortunes, unless there had been a defect of courage
as well as judgment. Mutiny and desertion only he never overlooked. And
thus no general was ever more loved by, or had greater power over, the
army which served under him. He brought the insurgent 10th legion into
submission by a single word. When the civil war began and Labienus left
him, he told all his officers who had served under Pompey that they
were free to follow if they wished. Not another man forsook him.
Suetonius says that he was rapacious, that he plundered tribes in Spain
who were allies of Rome, that he pillaged shrines and temples in Gaul,
and destroyed cities merely for spoil. He adds a story which Cicero
would not have left untold and uncommented on if he had been so
fortunate as to hear of it: that Caesar when first consul took three
thousand pounds weight of gold out of the Capitol and replaced it with
gilded brass. A similar story is told of the Cid and of other heroes of
fiction. How came Cicero to be ignorant of an act which, if done at
all, was done under his own eyes? When praetor Caesar brought back
money from Spain to the treasury; but he was never charged at the time
with peculation or oppression there. In Gaul the war paid its own
expenses; but what temples were there in Gaul which were worth
spoiling? Of temples, he was, indeed, scrupulously careful. Varro had
taken gold from the Temple of Hercules at Cadiz. Caesar replaced it.
Metellus Scipio had threatened to plunder the Temple of Diana at
Ephesus. Caesar protected it. In Gaul the Druids were his best friends;
therefore he certainly had not outraged religion there; and the quiet
of the province during the civil war is a sufficient answer to the
accusation of gratuitous oppression.
The Gauls paid the expenses of their conquest in the prisoners taken in
battle, who were sold to the slave merchants; and this is the real blot
on Caesar's career. But the blot was not personally upon Caesar, but
upon the age in which he lived. The great Pomponius Atticus himself was
a dealer in human chattels. That prisoners of war should be sold as
slaves was the law of the time, accepted alike by victors and
vanquished; and the crowds of libertini who assisted at Caesar's
funeral proved that he was not regarded as the enemy of these
unfortunates, but as their special friend.
His leniency to the Pompeian faction has already been spoken of
sufficiently. It may have been politic, but it arose also from the
disposition of the man. Cruelty originates in fear, and Caesar was too
indifferent to death to fear anything. So far as his public action was
concerned, he betrayed no passion save hatred of injustice; and he
moved through life calm and irresistible, like a force of nature.
Cicero has said of Caesar's oratory that he surpassed those who had
practised no other art. His praise of him as a man of letters is yet
more delicately and gracefully emphatic. Most of his writings are lost;
but there remain seven books of commentaries on the wars in Gaul (the
eighth was added by another hand), and three books upon the civil war,
containing an account of its causes and history. Of these it was that
Cicero said, in an admirable image, that fools might think to improve
on them, but that no wise man would try it; they were _nudi omni ornatu
orationis, tanquam veste detractâ_--bare of ornament, the dress of
style dispensed with, like an undraped human figure perfect in all its
lines as nature made it. In his composition, as in his actions, Caesar
is entirely simple. He indulges in no images, no labored descriptions,
no conventional reflections. His art is unconscious, as the highest art
always is. The actual fact of things stands out as it really was, not
as mechanically photographed, but interpreted by the calmest
intelligence, and described with unexaggerated feeling. No military
narrative has approached the excellence of the history of the war in
Gaul. Nothing is written down which could be dispensed with; nothing
important is left untold; while the incidents themselves are set off by
delicate and just observations on human character. The story is
rendered attractive by complimentary anecdotes of persons; while
details of the character and customs of an unknown and remarkable
people show the attention which Caesar was always at leisure to bestow
on anything which was worthy of interest, even when he was surrounded
with danger and difficulty. The books on the civil war have the same
simplicity and clearness, but a vein runs through them of strong if
subdued emotion. They contain the history of a great revolution related
by the principal actor in it; but no effort can be traced to set his
own side in a favorable light, or to abuse or depreciate his
adversaries. The coarse invectives which Cicero poured so freely upon
those who differed from him are conspicuously absent. Caesar does not
exult over his triumphs or parade the honesty of his motives. The facts
are left to tell their own story; and the gallantry and endurance of
his own troops are not related with more feeling than the contrast
between the confident hopes of the patrician leaders at Pharsalia and
the luxury of their camp with the overwhelming disaster which fell upon
them. About himself and his own exploits there is not one word of
self-complacency or self-admiration. In his writings, as in his life,
Caesar is always the same--direct, straightforward, unmoved save by
occasional tenderness, describing with unconscious simplicity how the
work which had been forced upon him was accomplished. He wrote with
extreme rapidity in the intervals of other labor; yet there is not a
word misplaced, not a sign of haste anywhere, save that the conclusion
of the Gallic war was left to be supplied by a weaker hand. The
Commentaries, as an historical narrative, are as far superior to any
other Latin composition of the kind as the person of Caesar himself
stands out among the rest of his contemporaries.
His other compositions have perished, in consequence, perhaps, of the
unforgiving republican sentiment which revived among men of letters
after the death of Augustus--which rose to a height in the "Pharsalia"
of Lucan--and which leaves so visible a mark in the writings of Tacitus
and Suetonius. There was a book "De Analogiâ," written by Caesar after
the conference at Lucca, during the passage of the Alps. There was a
book on the Auspices, which, coming from the head of the Roman
religion, would have thrown a light much to be desired on this curious
subject. In practice Caesar treated the auguries with contempt. He
carried his laws in open disregard of them. He fought his battles
careless whether the sacred chickens would eat or the calves' livers
were of the proper color. His own account of such things in his
capacity of Pontifex would have had a singular interest.
From the time of his boyhood he kept a common-place book, in which he
entered down any valuable or witty sayings, inquiring carefully, as
Cicero takes pains to tell us, after any smart observation of his own.
Niebuhr remarks that no pointed sentences of Caesar's can have come
down to us. Perhaps he had no gift that way, and admired in others what
he did not possess.
He left in verse "an account of the stars"--some practical almanac,
probably, in a shape to be easily remembered; and there was a journal
in verse also, written on the return from Munda. Of all the lost
writings, however, the most to be regretted is the "Anti-Cato." After
Cato's death Cicero published a panegyric upon him. To praise Cato was
to condemn Caesar; and Caesar replied with a sketch of the Martyr of
Utica as he had himself known him. The pamphlet, had it survived, would
have shown how far Caesar was able to extend the forbearance so
conspicuous in his other writings to the most respectable and the most
inveterate of his enemies. The verdict of fact and the verdict of
literature on the great controversy between them have been summed up in
the memorable line of Lucan--
Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni.
Was Cato right, or were the gods right? Perhaps both. There is a legend
that at the death of Charles V. the accusing angel appeared in heaven
with a catalogue of deeds which no advocate could palliate--countries
laid desolate, cities sacked and burnt, lists of hundreds of thousands
of widows and children brought to misery by the political ambition of a
single man. The evil spirit demanded the offender's soul, and it seemed
as if mercy itself could not refuse him the award. But at the last
moment the Supreme Judge interfered. The Emperor, He said, had been
sent into the world at a peculiar time, for a peculiar purpose, and was
not to be tried by the ordinary rules. Titian has painted the scene:
Charles kneeling before the Throne, with the consciousness, as became
him, of human infirmities, written upon his countenance, yet neither
afraid nor abject, relying in absolute faith that the Judge of all
mankind would do right.
Of Caesar, too, it may be said that he came into the world at a special
time and for a special object. The old religions were dead, from the
Pillars of Hercules to the Euphrates and the Nile, and the principles
on which human society had been constructed were dead also. There
remained of spiritual conviction only the common and human sense of
justice and morality; and out of this sense some ordered system of
government had to be constructed, under which quiet men could live and
labor and eat the fruit of their industry. Under a rule of this
material kind there can be no enthusiasm, no chivalry, no saintly
aspirations, no patriotism of the heroic type. It was not to last
forever. A new life was about to dawn for mankind. Poetry, and faith,
and devotion were to spring again out of the seeds which were sleeping
in the heart of humanity. But the life which is to endure grows slowly;
and as the soil must be prepared before the wheat can be sown, so
before the Kingdom of Heaven could throw up its shoots there was needed
a kingdom of this world where the nations were neither torn in pieces
by violence nor were rushing after false ideals and spurious ambitions.
Such a kingdom was the Empire of the Caesars--a kingdom where peaceful
men could work, think, and speak as they pleased, and travel freely
among provinces ruled for the most part by Gallios, who protected life
and property, and forbade fanatics to tear each other in pieces for
their religious opinions. "It is not lawful for us to put any man to
death," was the complaint of the Jewish priests to the Roman governor.
Had Europe and Asia been covered with independent nations, each with a
local religion represented in its ruling powers, Christianity must have
been stifled in its cradle. If St. Paul had escaped the Sanhedrim at
Jerusalem, he would have been torn to pieces by the silver-smiths at
Ephesus. The appeal to Caesar's judgment-seat was the shield of his
mission, and alone made possible his success.
And this spirit, which confined government to its simplest duties,
while it left opinion unfettered, was especially present in Julius
Caesar himself. From cant of all kinds he was totally free. He was a
friend of the people, but he indulged in no enthusiasm for liberty. He
never dilated on the beauties of virtue, or complimented, as Cicero
did, a Providence in which he did not believe. He was too sincere to
stoop to unreality. He held to the facts of this life and to his own
convictions; and as he found no reason for supposing that there was a
life beyond the grave he did not pretend to expect it. He respected the
religion of the Roman State as an institution established by the laws.
He encouraged or left unmolested the creeds and practices of the
uncounted sects or tribes who were gathered under the eagles. But his
own writings contain nothing to indicate that he himself had any
religious belief at all. He saw no evidence that the gods practically
interfered in human affairs. He never pretended that Jupiter was on his
side. He thanked his soldiers after a victory, but he did not order _Te
Deums _to be sung for it; and in the absence of these conventionalisms
he perhaps showed more real reverence than he could have displayed by
the freest use of the formulas of pietism.
He fought his battles to establish some tolerable degree of justice in
the government of this world; and he succeeded, though he was murdered
for doing it.
Strange and startling resemblance between the fate of the founder of
the kingdom of this world and of the Founder of the kingdom not of this
world, for which the first was a preparation. Each was denounced for
making himself a king. Each was maligned as the friend of publicans and
sinners; each was betrayed by those whom he had loved and cared for;
each was put to death; and Caesar also was believed to have risen again
and ascended into heaven and become a divine being.
[1] Suetonius, _Julius Caesar_, 49.
[2] _To Atticus_, xiv. 8.
[Illustration: GALLIA in the time of Caesar]
Transcriber's note: A sidenote in chapter nine gives Caesar's age as 32
in B.C. 77. I have corrected this evident misprint to 23.