CHAPTER I.

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THE CÆSARS.

By Thomas De Quincey

THE CÆSARS.

The condition of the Roman Emperors has never yet been fully

appreciated; nor has it been sufficiently perceived in what respects it

was absolutely unique. There was but one Rome: no other city, as we are

satisfied by the collation of many facts, either of ancient or modern

times, has ever rivalled this astonishing metropolis in the grandeur

of magnitude; and not many--if we except the cities of Greece, none at

all--in the grandeur of architectural display. Speaking even of London,

we ought in all reason to say--the _Nation of London,_ and not the City

of London; but of Rome in her palmy days, nothing less could be said

in the naked severity of logic. A million and a half of souls--that

population, apart from any other distinctions, is _per se_ for London a

justifying ground for such a classification; _à fortiori_, then, will it

belong to a city which counted from one horn to the other of its mighty

suburbs not less than four millions of inhabitants [Footnote: Concerning

this question--once so fervidly debated, yet so unprofitably for the

final adjudication, and in some respects, we may add, so erroneously--on

a future occasion.] at the very least, as we resolutely maintain after

reviewing all that has been written on that much vexed theme, and very

probably half as many more. Republican Rome had her _prerogative_ tribe;

the earth has its _prerogative_ city; and that city was Rome.

As was the city, such was its prince--mysterious, solitary, unique. Each

was to the other an adequate counterpart, each reciprocally that

perfect mirror which reflected, as it were _in alia materia,_ those

incommunicable attributes of grandeur, that under the same shape and

denomination never upon this earth were destined to be revived. Rome has

not been repeated; neither has Cæsar. _Ubi Cæsar, ibi Roma_--was a maxim

of Roman jurisprudence. And the same maxim may be translated into

a wider meaning; in which it becomes true also for our historical

experience. Cæsar and Rome have flourished and expired together. The

illimitable attributes of the Roman prince, boundless and comprehensive

as the universal air,--like that also bright and apprehensible to the

most vagrant eye, yet in parts (and those not far removed) unfathomable

as outer darkness, (for no chamber in a dungeon could shroud in more

impenetrable concealment a deed of murder than the upper chambers of the

air,)--these attributes, so impressive to the imagination, and which all

the subtlety of the Roman [Footnote: Or even of modern wit; witness the

vain attempt of so many eminent sort, and illustrious _Antecessors_, to

explain in self-consistency the differing functions of the Roman

Cæsar, and in what sense he was _legibus solutus_. The origin of this

difficulty we shall soon understand.] wit could as little fathom as the

fleets of Cæsar could traverse the Polar basin, or unlock the gates

of the Pacific, are best symbolized, and find their most appropriate

exponent, in the illimitable city itself--that Rome, whose centre, the

Capitol, was immovable as Teneriffe or Atlas, but whose circumference

was shadowy, uncertain, restless, and advancing as the frontiers of

her all-conquering empire. It is false to say, that with Cæsar came the

destruction of Roman greatness. Peace, hollow rhetoricians! Until Cæsar

came, Rome was a minor; by him, she attained her majority, and fulfilled

her destiny. Caius Julius, you say, deflowered the virgin purity of her

civil liberties. Doubtless, then, Rome had risen immaculate from the

arms of Sylla and of Marius. But, if it were Caius Julius who deflowered

Rome, if under him she forfeited her dowery of civic purity, if to him

she first unloosed her maiden zone, then be it affirmed boldly--that she

reserved her greatest favors for the noblest of her wooers, and we may

plead the justification of Falconbridge for his mother's trangression

with the lion-hearted king--such a sin was self-ennobled. Did Julius

deflower Rome? Then, by that consummation, he caused her to fulfill the

functions of her nature; he compelled her to exchange the imperfect and

inchoate condition of a mere _fæmina_ for the perfections of a _mulier_.

And, metaphor apart, we maintain that Rome lost no liberties by

the mighty Julius. That which in tendency, and by the spirit of

her institutions--that which, by her very corruptions and abuses

co-operating with her laws, Rome promised and involved in the germ--even

that, and nothing less or different, did Rome unfold and accomplish

under this Julian violence. The rape [if such it were] of Cæsar, her

final Romulus, completed for Rome that which the rape under Romulus, her

earliest Cæsar, had prosperously begun. And thus by one godlike man was

a nation-city matured; and from the everlasting and nameless [Footnote:

"_Nameless city_."--The true name of Rome it was a point of religion

to conceal; and, in fact, it was never revealed.] city was a man

produced--capable of taming her indomitable nature, and of forcing her

to immolate her wild virginity to the state best fitted for the destined

"Mother of empires." Peace, then, rhetoricians, false threnodists of

false liberty! hollow chanters over the ashes of a hollow republic!

Without Cæsar, we affirm a thousand times that there would have been no

perfect Rome; and, but for Rome, there could have been no such man as

Cæsar.

Both then were immortal; each worthy of each. And the _Cui viget nihil

simile aut secundum_ of the poet, was as true of one as of the other.

For, if by comparison with Rome other cities were but villages, with

even more propriety it may be asserted, that after the Roman Cæsars all

modern kings, kesars, or emperors, are mere phantoms of royalty. The

Cæsar of Western Rome--he only of all earthly potentates, past or to

come, could be said to reign as a _monarch_, that is, as a solitary

king. He was not the greatest of princes, simply because there was

no other but himself. There were doubtless a few outlying rulers, of

unknown names and titles upon the margins of his empire, there were

tributary lieutenants and barbarous _reguli_, the obscure vassals of his

sceptre, whose homage was offered on the lowest step of his throne, and

scarcely known to him but as objects of disdain. But these feudatories

could no more break the unity of his empire, which embraced the whole

_oichomeni_;--the total habitable world as then known to geography, or

recognised by the muse of History--than at this day the British empire

on the sea can be brought into question or made conditional, because

some chief of Owyhee or Tongataboo should proclaim a momentary

independence of the British trident, or should even offer a transient

outrage to her sovereign flag. Such a _tempestas in matulâ_ might raise

a brief uproar in his little native archipelago, but too feeble to reach

the shores of Europe by an echo--or to ascend by so much as an infantine

_susurrus_ to the ears of the British Neptune. Parthia, it is true,

might pretend to the dignity of an empire. But her sovereigns, though

sitting in the seat of the great king, (_o basileus_,) were no longer

the rulers of a vast and polished nation. They were regarded as

barbarians--potent only by their standing army, not upon the larger

basis of civic strength; and, even under this limitation, they were

supposed to owe more to the circumstances of their position--their

climate, their remoteness, and their inaccessibility except through

arid and sultry deserts--than to intrinsic resources, such as could be

permanently relied on in a serious trial of strength between the two

powers. The kings of Parthia, therefore, were far enough from being

regarded in the light of antagonist forces to the majesty of Rome. And,

these withdrawn from the comparison, who else was there--what prince,

what king, what potentate of any denomination, to break the universal

calm, that through centuries continued to lave, as with the quiet

undulations of summer lakes, the sacred footsteps of the Cæsarean

throne? The Byzantine court, which, merely as the inheritor of some

fragments from that august throne, was drunk with excess of pride,

surrounded itself with elaborate expressions of a grandeur beyond what

mortal eyes were supposed able to sustain.

These fastidious, and sometimes fantastic ceremonies, originally devised

as the very extremities of anti-barbarism, were often themselves but too

nearly allied in spirit to the barbaresque in taste. In reality, some

parts of the Byzantine court ritual were arranged in the same spirit as

that of China or the Birman empire; or fashioned by anticipation, as one

might think, on the practice of that Oriental Cham, who daily proclaims

by sound of trumpet to the kings in the four corners of the earth--that

they, having dutifully awaited the close of _his_ dinner, may now with

his royal license go to their own.

From such vestiges of _derivative_ grandeur, propagated to ages so

remote from itself, and sustained by manners so different from the

spirit of her own,--we may faintly measure the strength of the original

impulse given to the feelings of men by the _sacred_ majesty of the

Roman throne. How potent must that splendor have been, whose mere

reflection shot rays upon a distant crown, under another heaven, and

across the wilderness of fourteen centuries! Splendor, thus transmitted,

thus sustained, and thus imperishable, argues a transcendent in the

basis of radical power. Broad and deep must those foundations have

been laid, which could support an "arch of empire" rising to that giddy

altitude--an altitude which sufficed to bring it within the ken of

posterity to the sixtieth generation.

Power is measured by resistance. Upon such a scale, if it were applied

with skill, the _relations_ of greatness in Rome to the greatest of all

that has gone before her, and has yet come after her, would first be

adequately revealed. The youngest reader will know that the grandest

forms in which the _collective_ might of the human race has manifested

itself, are the four monarchies. Four times have the distributive forces

of nations gathered themselves, under the strong compression of the

sword, into mighty aggregates--denominated _Universal Empires_, or

Monarchies. These are noticed in the Holy Scriptures; and it is upon

_their_ warrant that men have supposed no fifth monarchy or universal

empire possible in an earthly sense; but that, whenever such an empire

arises, it will have Christ for its head; in other words, that no fifth

_monarchia_ can take place until Christianity shall have swallowed up

all other forms of religion, and shall have gathered the whole family

of man into one fold under one all-conquering Shepherd. Hence [Footnote:

This we mention, because a great error has been sometimes committed

in exposing _their_ error, that consisted, not in supposing that for a

fifth time men were to be gathered under one sceptre, and that sceptre

wielded by Jesus Christ, but in supposing that this great era had then

arrived, or that with no deeper moral revolution men could be fitted for

that yoke.] the fanatics of 1650, who proclaimed Jesus for their king,

and who did sincerely anticipate his near advent in great power,

and under some personal manifestation, were usually styled

_Fifth-Monarchists_.

However, waiving the question (interesting enough in itself)--Whether

upon earthly principles a fifth universal empire could by possibility

arise in the present condition of knowledge for man individually, and

of organization for man in general--this question waived, and confining

ourselves to the comparison of those four monarchies which actually have

existed,--of the Assyrian or earliest, we may remark, that it found

men in no state of cohesion. This cause, which came in aid of its first

foundation, would probably continue; and would diminish the _intensity_

of the power in the same proportion as it promoted its _extension_. This

monarchy would be absolute only by the personal presence of the monarch;

elsewhere, from mere defect of organization, it would and must

betray the total imperfections of an elementary state, and of a first

experiment. More by the weakness inherent in such a constitution, than

by its own strength, did the Persian spear prevail against the Assyrian.

Two centuries revolved, seven or eight generations, when Alexander found

himself in the same position as Cyrus for building a third monarchy,

and aided by the selfsame vices of luxurious effeminacy in his enemy,

confronted with the self-same virtues of enterprise and hardihood in

his compatriot soldiers. The native Persians, in the earliest and very

limited import of that name, were a poor and hardy race of mountaineers.

So were the men of Macedon; and neither one tribe nor the other found

any adequate resistance in the luxurious occupants of Babylonia. We may

add, with respect to these two earliest monarchies, that the Assyrian

was undefined with regard to space, and the Persian fugitive with regard

to time. But for the third--the Grecian or Macedonian--we know that the

arts of civility, and of civil organization, had made great progress

before the Roman strength was measured against it. In Macedon, in

Achaia, in Syria, in Asia Minor, in Egypt,--every where the members

of this empire had begun to knit; the cohesion was far closer, the

development of their resources more complete; the resistance therefore

by many hundred degrees more formidable: consequently, by the fairest

inference, the power in that proportion greater which laid the

foundations of this last great monarchy. It is probable, indeed, both

_à priori_, and upon the evidence of various facts which have survived,

that each of the four great empires successively triumphed over an

antagonist, barbarous in comparison of itself, and each _by_ and through

that very superiority in the arts and policy of civilization.

Rome, therefore, which came last in the succession, and swallowed up

the three great powers that had _seriatim_ cast the human race into one

mould, and had brought them under the unity of a single will, entered

by inheritance upon all that its predecessors in that career had

appropriated, but in a condition of far ampler development. Estimated

merely by longitude and latitude, the territory of the Roman empire was

the finest by much that has ever fallen under a single sceptre. Amongst

modern empires, doubtless, the Spanish of the sixteenth century, and the

British of the present, cannot but be admired as prodigious growths

out of so small a stem. In that view they will be endless monuments

in attestation of the marvels which are lodged in civilization. But

considered in and for itself, and with no reference to the proportion of

the creating forces, each of these empires has the great defect of being

disjointed, and even insusceptible of perfect union. It is in fact no

_vinculum_ of social organization which held them together, but the

ideal _vinculum_ of a common fealty, and of submission to the same

sceptre. This is not like the tie of manners, operative even where it is

not perceived, but like the distinctions of geography--existing to-day,

forgotten to-morrow--and abolished by a stroke of the pen, or a trick

of diplomacy. Russia, again, a mighty empire, as respects the simple

grandeur of magnitude, builds her power upon sterility. She has it in

her power to seduce an invading foe into vast circles of starvation,

of which the radii measure a thousand leagues. Frost and snow are

confederates of her strength. She is strong by her very weakness. But

Rome laid a belt about the Mediterranean of a thousand miles in breadth;

and within that zone she comprehended not only all the great cities of

the ancient world, but so perfectly did she lay the garden of the world

in every climate, and for every mode of natural wealth, within her own

ring-fence, that since that era no land, no part and parcel of the Roman

empire, has ever risen into strength and opulence, except where unusual

artificial industry has availed to counteract the tendencies of nature.

So entirely had Rome engrossed whatsoever was rich by the mere bounty of

native endowment.

Vast, therefore, unexampled, immeasurable, was the basis of natural

power upon which the Roman throne reposed. The military force which

put Rome in possession of this inordinate power, was certainly in some

respects artificial; but the power itself was natural, and not subject

to the ebbs and flows which attend the commercial empires of our days,

(for all are in part commercial.) The depression, the reverses, of Rome,

were confined to one shape--famine; a terrific shape, doubtless, but one

which levies its penalty of suffering, not by elaborate processes that

do not exhaust their total cycle in less than long periods of years.

Fortunately for those who survive, no arrears of misery are allowed by

this scourge of ancient days; [Footnote: "_Of ancient days_."--For it

is remarkable, and it serves to mark an indubitable progress of mankind,

that, before the Christian era, famines were of frequent occurrence in

countries the most civilized; afterwards they became rare, and latterly

have entirely altered their character into occasional dearths.] the

total penalty is paid down at once. As respected the hand of man, Rome

slept for ages in absolute security. She could suffer only by the wrath

of Providence; and, so long as she continued to be Rome, for many a

generation she only of all the monarchies has feared no mortal hand

[Footnote: Unless that hand were her own armed against herself; upon

which topic there is a burst of noble eloquence in one of the ancient

Panegyrici, when haranguing the Emperor Theodosius: "Thou, Rome! that,

having once suffered by the madness of Cinna, and of the cruel Marius

raging from banishment, and of Sylla, that won his wreath of prosperity

from thy disasters, and of Cæsar, compassionate to the dead, didst

shudder at every blast of the trumpet filled by the breath of civil

commotion,--thou, that, besides the wreck of thy soldiery perishing on

either side, didst bewail, amongst thy spectacles of domestic woe, the

luminaries of thy senate extinguished, the heads of thy consuls fixed

upon a halberd, weeping for ages over thy self-slaughtered Catos, thy

headless Ciceros (_truncosque Cicerones_), and unburied Pompeys;--to

whom the party madness of thy own children had wrought in every age

heavier woe than the Carthaginian thundering at thy gates, or the Gaul

admitted within thy walls; on whom OEmathia, more fatal than the day

of Allia,--Collina, more dismal than Cannæ,--had inflicted such deep

memorials of wounds, that, from bitter experience of thy own valor, no

enemy was to thee so formidable as thyself;--thou, Rome! didst now for

the first time behold a civil war issuing in a hallowed prosperity, a

soldiery appeased, recovered Italy, and for thyself liberty established.

Now first in thy long annals thou didst rest from a civil war in such

a peace, that righteously, and with maternal tenderness, thou mightst

claim for it the honors of a civic triumph."]

--"God and his Son except,

Created thing nought valued she nor shunned."

That the possessor and wielder of such enormous power--power alike

admirable for its extent, for its intensity, and for its consecration

from all counterforces which could restrain it, or endanger it--should

be regarded as sharing in the attributes of supernatural beings, is no

more than might naturally be expected. All other known power in human

hands has either been extensive, but wanting in intensity--or intense,

but wanting in extent--or, thirdly, liable to permanent control and

hazard from some antagonist power commensurate with itself. But the

Roman power, in its centuries of grandeur, involved every mode of

strength, with absolute immunity from all kinds and degrees of weakness.

It ought not, therefore, to surprise us that the emperor, as the

depositary of this charmed power, should have been looked upon as a

_sacred_ person, and the imperial family considered a "_divina_ domus."

It is an error to regard this as excess of adulation, or as built

_originally_ upon hypocrisy. Undoubtedly the expressions of this

feeling are sometimes gross and overcharged, as we find them in the very

greatest of the Roman poets: for example, it shocks us to find a fine

writer in anticipating the future canonization of his patron, and his

instalment amongst the heavenly hosts, begging him to keep his distance

warily from this or that constellation, and to be cautious of throwing

his weight into either hemisphere, until the scale of proportions were

accurately adjusted. These doubtless are passages degrading alike to the

poet and his subject. But why? Not because they ascribe to the emperor a

sanctity which he had not in the minds of men universally, or which even

to the writer's feeling was exaggerated, but because it was expressed

coarsely, and as a _physical_ power: now, every thing physical is

measurable by weight, motion, and resistance; and is therefore

definite. But the very essence of whatsoever is supernatural lies in the

indefinite. That power, therefore, with which the minds of men invested

the emperor, was vulgarized by this coarse translation into the region

of physics. Else it is evident, that any power which, by standing above

all human control, occupies the next relation to superhuman modes

of authority, must be invested by all minds alike with some dim and

undefined relation to the sanctities of the next world. Thus, for

instance, the Pope, as the father of Catholic Christendom, could not

_but_ be viewed with awe by any Christian of deep feeling, as standing

in some relation to the true and unseen Father of the spiritual body.

Nay, considering that even false religions, as those of Pagan mythology,

have probably never been utterly stripped of all vestige of truth, but

that every such mode of error has perhaps been designed as a process,

and adapted by Providence to the case of those who were capable of

admitting no more perfect shape of truth; even the heads of such

superstitions (the Dalai Lama, for instance) may not unreasonably be

presumed as within the cognizance and special protection of Heaven.

Much more may this be supposed of him to whose care was confided the

weightier part of the human race; who had it in his power to promote

or to suspend the progress of human improvement; and of whom, and the

motions of whose will, the very prophets of Judea took cognizance. No

nation, and no king, was utterly divorced from the councils of God.

Palestine, as a central chamber of God's administration, stood in some

relation to all. It has been remarked, as a mysterious and significant

fact, that the founders of the great empires all had some connection,

more or less, with the temple of Jerusalem. Melancthon even observes

it in his Sketch of Universal History, as worthy of notice--that

Pompey died, as it were, within sight of that very temple which he

had polluted. Let us not suppose that Paganism, or Pagan nations, were

therefore excluded from the concern and tender interest of Heaven. They

also had their place allowed. And we may be sure that, amongst them, the

Roman emperor, as the great accountant for the happiness of more men,

and men more cultivated, than ever before were intrusted to the motions

of a single will, had a special, singular, and mysterious relation to

the secret counsels of Heaven.

Even we, therefore, may lawfully attribute some sanctity to the Roman

emperor. That the Romans did so with absolute sincerity is certain. The

altars of the emperor had a twofold consecration; to violate them, was

the double crime of treason and heresy, In his appearances of state and

ceremony, the fire, the sacred fire _epompeue_ was carried in ceremonial

solemnity before him; and every other circumstance of divine worship

attended the emperor in his lifetime. [Footnote: The fact is, that the

emperor was more of a sacred and divine creature in his lifetime than

after his death. His consecrated character as a living ruler was a

truth; his canonization, a fiction of tenderness to his memory.]

To this view of the imperial character and relations must be added one

single circumstance, which in some measure altered the whole for the

individual who happened to fill the office. The emperor _de facto_

might be viewed under two aspects: there was the man, and there was

the office. In his office he was immortal and sacred: but as a question

might still be raised, by means of a mercenary army, as to the claims

of the particular individual who at any time filled the office, the very

sanctity and privilege of the character with which he was clothed might

actually be turned against himself; and here it is, at this point, that

the character of Roman emperor became truly and mysteriously awful.

Gibbon has taken notice of the extraordinary situation of a subject in

the Roman empire who should attempt to fly from the wrath of the crown.

Such was the ubiquity of the emperor that this was absolutely hopeless.

Except amongst pathless deserts or barbarous nomads, it was impossible

to find even a transient sanctuary from the imperial pursuit. If he went

down to the sea, there he met the emperor: if he took the wings of the

morning, and fled to the uttermost parts of the earth, there also was

the emperor or his lieutenants. But the same omnipresence of imperial

anger and retribution which withered the hopes of the poor humble

prisoner, met and confounded the emperor himself, when hurled from his

giddy elevation by some fortunate rival. All the kingdoms of the earth,

to one in that situation, became but so many wards of the same infinite

prison. Flight, if it were even successful for the moment, did but a

little retard his inevitable doom. And so evident was this, that hardly

in one instance did the fallen prince _attempt_ to fly; but passively

met the death which was inevitable, in the very spot where ruin had

overtaken him. Neither was it possible even for a merciful conqueror to

show mercy; for, in the presence of an army so mercenary and factious,

his own safety was but too deeply involved in the extermination of rival

pretenders to the crown.

Such, amidst the sacred security and inviolability of the office, was

the hazardous tenure of the individual. Nor did his dangers always arise

from persons in the rank of competitors and rivals. Sometimes it menaced

him in quarters which his eye had never penetrated, and from enemies too

obscure to have reached his ear. By way of illustration we will cite a

case from the life of the Emperor Commodus, which is wild enough to have

furnished the plot of a romance--though as well authenticated as any

other passage in that reign. The story is narrated by Herodian, and the

circumstances are these: A slave of noble qualities, and of magnificent

person, having liberated himself from the degradations of bondage,

determined to avenge his own wrongs by inflicting continual terror upon

the town and neighborhood which had witnessed his humiliation. For this

purpose he resorted to the woody recesses of the province, (somewhere in

the modern Transylvania,) and, attracting to his wild encampment as many

fugitives as he could, by degrees he succeeded in forming and training a

very formidable troop of freebooters. Partly from the energy of his own

nature, and partly from the neglect and remissness of the provincial

magistrates, the robber captain rose from less to more, until he had

formed a little army, equal to the task of assaulting fortified cities.

In this stage of his adventures, he encountered and defeated several

of the imperial officers commanding large detachments of troops; and at

length grew of consequence sufficient to draw upon himself the emperor's

eye, and the honor of his personal displeasure. In high wrath and

disdain at the insults offered to his eagles by this fugitive slave,

Commodus fulminated against him such an edict as left him no hope of

much longer escaping with impunity.

Public vengeance was now awakened; the imperial troops were marching

from every quarter upon the same centre; and the slave became sensible

that in a very short space of time he must be surrounded and destroyed.

In this desperate situation he took a desperate resolution: he assembled

his troops, laid before them his plan, concerted the various steps

for carrying it into effect, and then dismissed them as independent

wanderers. So ends the first chapter of the tale.

The next opens in the passes of the Alps, whither by various routes, of

seven or eight hundred miles in extent, these men had threaded their

way in manifold disguises through the very midst of the emperor's camps.

According to this man's gigantic enterprise, in which the means were as

audacious as the purpose, the conspirators were to rendezvous, and first

to recognise each other at the gates of Rome. From the Danube to the

Tiber did this band of robbers severally pursue their perilous routes

through all the difficulties of the road and the jealousies of the

military stations, sustained by the mere thirst of vengeance--vengeance

against that mighty foe whom they knew only by his proclamations against

themselves. Every thing continued to prosper; the conspirators met under

the walls of Rome; the final details were arranged; and those also

would have prospered but for a trifling accident. The season was one of

general carnival at Rome; and, by the help of those disguises which

the license of this festal time allowed, the murderers were to have

penetrated as maskers to the emperor's retirement, when a casual word

or two awoke the suspicions of a sentinel. One of the conspirators was

arrested; under the terror and uncertainty of the moment, he made much

ampler discoveries than were expected of him; the other accomplices were

secured: and Commodus was delivered from the uplifted daggers of those

who had sought him by months of patient wanderings, pursued through all

the depths of the Illyrian forests, and the difficulties of the Alpine

passes. It is not easy to find words commensurate to the energetic

hardihood of a slave--who, by way of answer and reprisal to an edict

which consigned him to persecution and death, determines to cross Europe

in quest of its author, though no less a person than the master of the

world--to seek him out in the inner recesses of his capital city and

his private palace--and there to lodge a dagger in his heart, as the

adequate reply to the imperial sentence of proscription against himself.

Such, amidst his superhuman grandeur and consecrated powers of the

Roman emperor's office, were the extraordinary perils which menaced

the individual, and the peculiar frailties of his condition. Nor is it

possible that these circumstances of violent opposition can be better

illustrated than in this tale of Herodian. Whilst the emperor's mighty

arms were stretched out to arrest some potentate in the heart of Asia,

a poor slave is silently and stealthily creeping round the base of the

Alps, with the purpose of winning his way as a murderer to the imperial

bedchamber; Cæsar is watching some mighty rebel of the Orient, at a

distance of two thousand leagues, and he overlooks the dagger which is

at his own heart. In short, all the heights and the depths which

belong to man as aspirers, all the contrasts of glory and meanness, the

extremities of what is his highest and lowest in human possibility,--all

met in the situation of the Roman Cæsars, and have combined to make them

the most interesting studies which history has furnished.

This, as a general proposition, will be readily admitted. But meantime,

it is remarkable that no field has been less trodden than the private

memorials of those very Cæsars; whilst at the same time it is equally

remarkable, in concurrence with that subject for wonder, that precisely

with the first of the Cæsars commences the first page of what in modern

times we understand by anecdotes. Suetonius is the earliest writer in

that department of biography; so far as we know, he may be held first

to have devised it as a mode of history. The six writers, whose sketches

are collected under the general title of the _Augustan History_,

followed in the same track. Though full of entertainment, and of the

most curious researches, they are all of them entirely unknown, except

to a few elaborate scholars. We purpose to collect from these obscure,

but most interesting memorialists, a few sketches and biographical

portraits of these great princes, whose public life is sometimes known,

but very rarely any part of their private and personal history. We must

of course commence with the mighty founder of the Cæsars. In his case

we cannot expect so much of absolute novelty as in that of those who

succeed. But if, in this first instance, we are forced to touch a little

upon old things, we shall confine ourselves as much as possible to those

which are susceptible of new aspects. For the whole gallery of those

who follow, we can undertake that the memorials which we shall bring

forward, may be looked upon as belonging pretty much to what has

hitherto been a sealed book.

CHAPTER I.

The character of the first Cæsar has perhaps never been worse

appreciated than by him who in one sense described it best--that is,

with most force and eloquence wherever he really _did_ comprehend it.

This was Lucan, who has nowhere exhibited more brilliant rhetoric, nor

wandered more from the truth, than in the contrasted portraits of Cæsar

and Pompey. The famous line, "_Nil actum reputans si quid superesset

agendum_," is a fine feature of the real character, finely expressed.

But if it had been Lucan's purpose (as possibly, with a view to Pompey's

benefit, in some respects it was) utterly and extravagantly to falsify

the character of the great Dictator, by no single trait could he more

effectually have fulfilled that purpose, nor in fewer words, than by

this expressive passage, "_Gaudensque viam fecisse ruina_." Such a trait

would be almost extravagant applied even to Marius, who (though in

many respects a perfect model of Roman grandeur, massy, columnar,

imperturbable, and more perhaps than any one man recorded in history

capable of justifying the bold illustration of that character in Horace,

"_Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinæ_") had, however, a

ferocity in his character, and a touch of the devil in him, very

rarely united with the same tranquil intrepidity. But for Cæsar, the

all-accomplished statesman, the splendid orator, the man of elegant

habits and polished taste, the patron of the fine arts in a degree

transcending all example of his own or the previous age, and as a man

of general literature so much beyond his contemporaries, except Cicero,

that he looked down even upon the brilliant Sylla as an illiterate

person,--to class such a man with the race of furious destroyers

exulting in the desolations they spread, is to err not by an individual

trait, but by the whole genus. The Attilas and the Tamerlanes, who

rejoice in avowing themselves the scourges of God, and the special

instruments of his wrath, have no one feature of affinity to the

polished and humane Cæsar, and would as little have comprehended his

character, as he could have respected theirs. Even Cato, the unworthy

hero of Lucan, might have suggested to him a little more truth in this

instance, by a celebrated remark which he made on the characteristic

distinction of Cæsar, in comparison with other revolutionary disturbers;

for, whereas others had attempted the overthrow of the state in a

continued paroxysm of fury, and in a state of mind resembling the lunacy

of intoxication, that Cæsar, on the contrary, among that whole class of

civil disturbers, was the only one who had come to the task in a temper

of sobriety and moderation, (_unum accessisse sobrium ad rempublicam

delendam_.)

In reality, Lucan did not think as he wrote. He had a purpose to serve;

and in an age when to act like a freeman was no longer possible, he

determined at least to write in that character. It is probable, also,

that he wrote with a vindictive or a malicious feeling towards Nero;

and, as the single means he had for gratifying _that_, resolved upon

sacrificing the grandeur of Cæsar's character wherever it should be

found possible. Meantime, in spite of himself, Lucan for ever betrays

his lurking consciousness of the truth. Nor are there any testimonies

to Cæsar's vast superiority more memorably pointed, than those which

are indirectly and involuntarily extorted from this Catonic poet, by the

course of his narration. Never, for example, was there within the same

compass of words, a more emphatic expression of Cæsar's essential and

inseparable grandeur of thought, which could not be disguised or be

laid aside for an instant, than is found in the three casual

words--_Indocilis privata loqui_. The very mould, it seems, by Lucan's

confession, of his trivial conversation was regal; nor could he, even to

serve a purpose, abjure it for so much as a casual purpose. The acts of

Cæsar speak also the same language; and as these are less susceptible of

a false coloring than the features of a general character, we find this

poet of liberty, in the midst of one continuous effort to distort

the truth, and to dress up two scenical heroes, forced by the mere

necessities of history into a reluctant homage to Cæsar's supremacy of

moral grandeur.

Of so great a man it must be interesting to know all the well attested

opinions which bear upon topics of universal interest to human nature;

as indeed no others stood much chance of preservation, unless it were

from as minute and curious a collector of _anecdotage_ as Suetonius.

And, first, it would be gratifying to know the opinion of Cæsar, if he

had any peculiar to himself, on the great theme of Religion. It has been

held, indeed, that the constitution of his mind, and the general cast

of his character, indisposed him to religious thoughts. Nay, it has been

common to class him amongst deliberate atheists; and some well known

anecdotes are current in books, which illustrate his contempt for the

vulgar class of auguries. In this, however, he went no farther than

Cicero, and other great contemporaries, who assuredly were no atheists.

One mark perhaps of the wide interval which, in Cæsar's age, had begun

to separate the Roman nobility from the hungry and venal populace who

were daily put up to sale, and bought by the highest bidder, manifested

itself in the increasing disdain for the tastes and ruling sympathies of

the lowest vulgar. No mob could be more abjectly servile than was that

of Rome to the superstition of portents, prodigies, and omens. Thus far,

in common with his order, and in this sense, Julius Cæsar was naturally

a despiser of superstition. Mere strength of understanding would,

perhaps, have made him so in any age, and apart from the circumstances

of his personal history. This natural tendency in him would doubtless

receive a further bias in the same direction from the office of Pontifex

Maximus, which he held at an early stage of his public career. This

office, by letting him too much behind the curtain, and exposing too

entirely the base machinery of ropes and pulleys, which sustained the

miserable jugglery played off upon the popular credulity, impressed him

perhaps even unduly with contempt for those who could be its dupes. And

we may add--that Cæsar was constitutionally, as well as by accident of

position, too much a man of the world, had too powerful a leaning to the

virtues of active life, was governed by too partial a sympathy with the

whole class of _active_ forces in human nature, as contradistinguished

from those which tend to contemplative purposes, under any

circumstances, to have become a profound believer, or a steadfast

reposer of his fears and anxieties, in religious influences. A man of

the world is but another designation for a man indisposed to religious

awe or contemplative enthusiasm. Still it is a doctrine which we

cherish--that grandeur of mind in any one department whatsoever,

supposing only that it exists in excess, disposes a man to some degree

of sympathy with all other grandeur, however alien in its quality

or different in its form. And upon this ground we presume the great

Dictator to have had an interest in religious themes by mere compulsion

of his own extraordinary elevation of mind, after making the fullest

allowance for the special quality of that mind, which did certainly, to

the whole extent of its characteristics, tend entirely to estrange him

from such themes. We find, accordingly, that though sincerely a despiser

of superstition, and with a frankness which must sometimes have been

hazardous in that age, Cæsar was himself also superstitious. No man

could have been otherwise who lived and conversed with that generation

and people. But if superstitious, he was so after a mode of his own.

In his very infirmities Cæsar manifested his greatness: his very

littlenesses were noble.

"Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre."

That he placed some confidence in dreams, for instance, is certain:

because, had he slighted them unreservedly, he would not have dwelt upon

them afterwards, or have troubled himself to recall their circumstances.

Here we trace his human weakness. Yet again we are reminded that it was

the weakness of Cæsar; for the dreams were noble in their imagery,

and Cæsarean (so to speak) in their tone of moral feeling. Thus, for

example, the night before he was assassinated, he dreamt at intervals

that he was soaring above the clouds on wings, and that he placed his

hand within the right hand of Jove. It would seem that perhaps some

obscure and half-formed image floated in his mind, of the eagle, as

the king of birds; secondly, as the tutelary emblem under which his

conquering legions had so often obeyed his voice; and, thirdly, as the

bird of Jove. To this triple relation of the bird his dream covertly

appears to point. And a singular coincidence appears between this dream

and a little anecdote brought down to us, as having actually occurred in

Rome about twenty-four hours before his death. A little bird, which by

some is represented as a very small kind of sparrow, but which, both to

the Greeks and the Romans, was known by a name implying a regal station

(probably from the ambitious courage which at times prompted it to

attack the eagle), was observed to direct its flight towards the

senate-house, consecrated by Pompey, whilst a crowd of other birds were

seen to hang upon its flight in close pursuit. What might be the object

of the chase, whether the little king himself, or a sprig of laurel

which he bore in his mouth, could not be determined. The whole train,

pursuers and pursued, continued their flight towards Pompey's hall.

Flight and pursuit were there alike arrested; the little king was

overtaken by his enemies, who fell upon him as so many conspirators, and

tore him limb from limb.

If this anecdote were reported to Cæsar, which is not at all improbable,

considering the earnestness with which his friends labored to dissuade

him from his purpose of meeting the senate on the approaching Ides of

March, it is very little to be doubted that it had a considerable effect

upon his feelings, and that, in fact, his own dream grew out of the

impression which it had made. This way of linking the two anecdotes,

as cause and effect, would also bring a third anecdote under the same

_nexus_. We are told that Calpurnia, the last wife of Cæsar, dreamed

on the same night, and to the same ominous result. The circumstances

of _her_ dream are less striking, because less figurative; but on that

account its import was less open to doubt: she dreamed, in fact, that

after the roof of their mansion had fallen in, her husband was stabbed

in her bosom. Laying all these omens together, Cæsar would have been

more or less than human had he continued utterly undepressed by them.

And if so much superstition as even this implies, must be taken to argue

some little weakness, on the other hand let it not be forgotten, that

this very weakness does but the more illustrate the unusual force of

mind, and the heroic will, which obstinately laid aside these concurring

prefigurations of impending destruction; concurring, we say, amongst

themselves—and concurring also with a prophecy of older date, which was

totally independent of them all.

There is another and somewhat sublime story of the same class, which

belongs to the most interesting moment of Cæsar's life; and those who

are disposed to explain all such tales upon physiological principles,

will find an easy solution of this, in particular, in the exhaustion

of body, and the intense anxiety which must have debilitated even Cæsar

under the whole circumstances of the case. On the ever memorable night

when he had resolved to take the first step (and in such a case the

first step, as regarded the power of retreating, was also the final

step) which placed him in arms against the state, it happened that his

headquarters were at some distance from the little river Rubicon, which

formed the boundary of his province. With his usual caution, that no

news of his motions might run before himself, on this night Cæsar gave

an entertainment to his friends, in the midst of which he slipped away

unobserved, and with a small retinue proceeded through the woods to the

point of the river at which he designed to cross. The night [Footnote:

It is an interesting circumstance in the habits of the ancient Romans,

that their journeys were pursued very much in the night-time, and by

torchlight. Cicero, in one of his letters, speaks of passing through

the towns of Italy by night, as a serviceable scheme for some political

purpose, either of avoiding too much to publish his motions, or of

evading the necessity (else perhaps not avoidable), of drawing out the

party sentiments of the magistrates in the circumstances of honor or

neglect with which they might choose to receive him. His words, however,

imply that the practice was by no means an uncommon one. And, indeed,

from some passages in writers of the Augustan era, it would seem that

this custom was not confined to people of distinction, but was familiar

to a class of travellers so low in rank as to be capable of abusing

their opportunities of concealment for the infliction of wanton injury

upon the woods and fences which bounded the margin, of the high-road.

Under the cloud of night and solitude, the mischief-loving traveller

was often in the habit of applying his torch to the withered boughs of

woods, or to artificial hedges; and extensive ravages by fire, such as

now happen, not unfrequently in the American woods, (but generally from

carelessness in scattering the glowing embers of a fire, or even the

ashes of a pipe,) were then occasionally the result of mere wantonness

of mischief. Ovid accordingly notices, as one amongst the familiar

images of daybreak, the half-burnt torch of the traveller; and,

apparently, from the position which it holds in his description,

where it is ranked with the most familiar of all circumstances in

all countries,--that of the rural laborer going out to his morning

tasks,--it must have been common indeed:

"Semiustamque facem vigilatâ nocte viator

Ponet; et ad solitum rusticus ibit opus."

This occurs in the _Fasti_;--elsewhere he notices it for its danger:

"Ut facibus sepes ardent, cum forte viator

Vel nimis admovit, vel jam sub luce reliquit."

He, however, we see, good-naturedly ascribes the danger to mere

carelessness, in bringing the torch too near to the hedge, or tossing

it away at daybreak. But Varro, a more matter-of-fact observer, does not

disguise the plain truth, that these disasters were often the product of

pure malicious frolic. For instance, in recommending a certain kind of

quickset fence, he insists upon it, as one of its advantages, that it

will not readily ignite under the torch of the mischievous wayfarer:

"Naturale sepimentum," says he, "quod obseri solet virgultis aut spinis,

_prætereuntis lascivi non metuet facem._" It is not easy to see the

origin or advantage of this practice of nocturnal travelling (which must

have considerably increased the hazards of a journey), excepting only in

the heats of summer. It is probable, however, that men of high rank

and public station may have introduced the practice by way of releasing

corporate bodies in large towns from the burdensome ceremonies of public

receptions; thus making a compromise between their own dignity and

the convenience of the provincial public. Once introduced, and the

arrangements upon the road for meeting the wants of travellers once

adapted to such a practice, it would easily become universal. It is,

however, very possible that mere horror of the heats of day-time may

have been the original ground for it. The ancients appear to have shrunk

from no hardship so trying and insufferable as that of heat. And in

relation to that subject, it is interesting to observe the way in which

the ordinary use of language has accommodated itself to that feeling.

Our northern way of expressing effeminacy is derived chiefly from the

hardships of cold. He that shrinks from the trials and rough experience

of real life in any department, is described by the contemptuous prefix

of _chimney-corner_, as if shrinking from the cold which he would

meet on coming out into the open air amongst his fellow-men. Thus,

a _chimney-corner_ politician, for a mere speculator or unpractical

dreamer. But the very same indolent habit of aerial speculation, which

courts no test of real life and practice, is described by the ancients

under the term _umbraticus_, or seeking the cool shade, and shrinking

from the heat. Thus, an _umbraticus doctor_ is one who has no practical

solidity in his teaching. The fatigue and hardship of real life, in

short, is represented by the ancients under the uniform image of heat,

and by the moderns under that of cold.] was stormy, and by the violence

of the wind all the torches of his escort were blown out, so that the

whole party lost their road, having probably at first intentionally

deviated from the main route, and wandered about through the whole

night, until the early dawn enabled them to recover their true course.

The light was still gray and uncertain, as Cæsar and his retinue rode

down upon the banks of the fatal river--to cross which with arms in his

hands, since the further bank lay within the territory of the Republic,

_ipso facto_ proclaimed any Roman a rebel and a traitor. No man, the

firmest or the most obtuse, could be otherwise than deeply agitated,

when looking down upon this little brook--so insignificant in

itself, but invested by law with a sanctity so awful, and so dire a

consecration. The whole course of future history, and the fate of every

nation, would necessarily be determined by the irretrievable act of the

next half hour.

In these moments, and with this spectacle before him, and contemplating

these immeasurable consequences consciously for the last time that

could allow him a retreat,--impressed also by the solemnity and deep

tranquillity of the silent dawn, whilst the exhaustion of his night

wanderings predisposed him to nervous irritation,--Cæsar, we may be

sure, was profoundly agitated. The whole elements of the scene were

almost scenically disposed; the law of antagonism having perhaps never

been employed with so much effect: the little quiet brook presenting a

direct, antithesis to its grand political character; and the innocent

dawn, with its pure, untroubled repose, contrasting potently, to a

man of any intellectual sensibility, with the long chaos of bloodshed,

darkness, and anarchy, which was to take its rise from the apparently

trifling acts of this one morning. So prepared, we need not much wonder

at what followed. Cæsar was yet lingering on the hither bank, when

suddenly, at a point not far distant from himself, an apparition was

descried in a sitting posture, and holding in its hand what seemed a

flute. This phantom was of unusual size, and of beauty more than human,

so far as its lineaments could be traced in the early dawn. What is

singular, however, in the story, on any hypothesis which would explain

it out of Cæsar's individual condition, is, that others saw it as well

as he; both pastoral laborers, (who were present, probably, in the

character of guides,) and some of the sentinels stationed at the passage

of the river. These men fancied even that a strain of music issued

from this aerial flute. And some, both of the shepherds and the Roman

soldiers, who were bolder than the rest, advanced towards the figure.

Amongst this party, it happened that there were a few Roman trumpeters.

From one of these, the phantom, rising as they advanced nearer, suddenly

caught a trumpet, and blowing through it a blast of superhuman strength,

plunged into the Rubicon, passed to the other bank, and disappeared

in the dusky twilight of the dawn. Upon which Cæsar exclaimed:--"It is

finished--the die is cast--let us follow whither the guiding portents

from Heaven, and the malice of our enemy, alike summon us to go." So

saying, he crossed the river with impetuosity; and, in a sudden rapture

of passionate and vindictive ambition, placed himself and his retinue

upon the Italian soil; and, as if by inspiration from Heaven, in

one moment involved himself and his followers in treason, raised

the standard of revolt, put his foot upon the neck of the invincible

republic which had humbled all the kings of the earth, and founded an

empire which was to last for a thousand and half a thousand years. In

what manner this spectral appearance was managed--whether Cæsar were its

author, or its dupe--will remain unknown for ever. But undoubtedly this

was the first time that the advanced guard of a victorious army was

headed by an apparition; and we may conjecture that it will be the last.

[Footnote: According to Suetonius, the circumstances of this memorable

night were as follows:--As soon as the decisive intelligence was

received, that the intrigues of his enemies had prevailed at Rome, and

that the interposition of the popular magistrates (the tribunes) was

set aside, Cæsar sent forward the troops, who were then at his

head-quarters, but in as private a manner as possible. He himself, by

way of masque, (_per dissimulationem_,) attended a public spectacle,

gave an audience to an architect who wished to lay before him a plan

for a school of gladiators which Cæsar designed to build, and finally

presented himself at a banquet, which was very numerously attended. From

this, about sunset, he set forward in a carriage, drawn by mules, and

with a small escort (_modico comitatu_.) Losing his road, which was the

most private he could find (_occultissimum_), he quitted his carriage

and proceeded on foot. At dawn he met with a guide; after which followed

the above incidents.]

In the mingled yarn of human life, tragedy is never far asunder from

farce; and it is amusing to retrace in immediate succession to this

incident of epic dignity, which has its only parallel by the way in the

case of Vasco de Gama, (according to the narrative of Camoens,) when met

and confronted by a sea phantom, whilst attempting to double the Cape

of Storms, (Cape of Good Hope,) a ludicrous passage, in which one

felicitous blunder did Cæsar a better service than all the truths which

Greece and Rome could have furnished. In our own experience, we once

witnessed a blunder about as gross. The present Chancellor, in his first

electioneering contest with the Lowthers, upon some occasion where he

was recriminating upon the other party, and complaining that stratagems,

which _they_ might practise with impunity, were denied to him and his,

happened to point the moral of his complaint, by alleging the old adage,

that one man might steal a horse with more hope of indulgence than

another could look over the hedge. Whereupon, by benefit of the

universal mishearing in the outermost ring of the audience, it became

generally reported that Lord Lowther had once been engaged in an affair

of horse stealing; and that he, Henry Brougham, could (had he pleased)

have lodged an information against him, seeing that he was then looking

over the hedge. And this charge naturally won the more credit, because

it was notorious and past denying that his lordship was a capital

horseman, fond of horses, and much connected with the turf. To this

hour, therefore, amongst some worthy shepherds and others, it is a

received article of their creed, and (as they justly observe in northern

pronunciation,) a _sham_ful thing to be told, that Lord Lowther was

once a horse stealer, and that he escaped _lagging_ by reason of Harry

Brougham's pity for his tender years and hopeful looks. Not less was

the blunder which, on the banks of the Rubicon, befriended Cæsar.

Immediately after crossing, he harangued the troops whom he had sent

forward, and others who there met him from the neighboring garrison

of Ariminium. The tribunes of the people, those great officers of the

democracy, corresponding by some of their functions to our House of

Commons, men personally, and by their position in the state, entirely in

his interest, and who, for his sake, had fled from home, there and then

he produced to the soldiery; thus identified his cause, and that of the

soldiers, with the cause of the people of Rome and of Roman liberty; and

perhaps with needless rhetoric attempted to conciliate those who were

by a thousand ties and by claims innumerable, his own already; for never

yet has it been found, that with the soldier, who, from youth upwards,

passes his life in camps, could the duties or the interests of citizens

survive those stronger and more personal relations connecting him with

his military superior. In the course of this harangue, Cæsar often

raised his left hand with Demosthenic action, and once or twice he drew

off the ring, which every Roman gentleman--simply _as_ such--wore as the

inseparable adjunct and symbol of his rank. By this action he wished to

give emphasis to the accompanying words, in which he protested, that,

sooner than fail in satisfying and doing justice to any the least of

those who heard him and followed his fortunes, he would be content to

part with his own birthright, and to forego his dearest claims. This

was what he really said; but the outermost circle of his auditors, who

rather saw his gestures than distinctly heard his words, carried off

the notion, (which they were careful every where to disperse amongst the

legions afterwards associated with them in the same camps,) that Cæsar

had vowed never to lay down his arms until he had obtained for every

man, the very meanest of those who heard him, the rank, privileges and

appointments of a Roman knight. Here was a piece of sovereign good luck.

Had he really made such a promise, Cæsar might have found that he had

laid himself under very embarrassing obligations; but, as the case

stood, he had, through all his following campaigns, the total benefit of

such a promise, and yet could always absolve himself from the penalties

of responsibility which it imposed, by appealing to the evidence of

those who happened to stand in the first ranks of his audience. The

blunder was gross and palpable; and yet, with the unreflecting and

dull-witted soldier, it did him service greater than all the subtilties

of all the schools could have accomplished, and a service which

subsisted to the end of the war.

Great as Cæsar was by the benefit of his original nature, there can--be

no doubt that he, like others, owed something to circumstances; and

perhaps, amongst these which were most favorable to the premature

development of great self-dependence, we must reckon the early death

of his father. It is, or it is not, according to the nature of men, an

advantage to be orphaned at an early age. Perhaps utter orphanage is

rarely or never such: but to lose a father betimes profits a strong mind

greatly. To Cæsar it was a prodigious benefit that he lost his father

when not much more than fifteen. Perhaps it was an advantage also to his

father that he died thus early. Had he stayed a year longer, he would

have seen himself despised, baffled, and made ridiculous. For where, let

us ask, in any age, was the father capable of adequately sustaining that

relation to the unique Caius Julius--to him, in the appropriate language

of Shakspeare,

"The foremost man of all this world?"

And, in this fine and Cæsarean line, "this world" is to be understood

not of the order of co-existences merely, but also of the order of

successions; he was the foremost man not only of his contemporaries, but

also of men generally--of all that ever should come after him, or should

sit on thrones under the denominations of Czars, Kesars, or Cæsars of

the Bosphorus and the Danube; of all in every age that should inherit

his supremacy of mind, or should subject to themselves the generations

of ordinary men by qualities analogous to his. Of this infinite

superiority some part must be ascribed to his early emancipation from

paternal control. There are very many cases in which, simply from

considerations of sex, a female cannot stand forward as the head of

a family, or as its suitable representative. If they are even ladies

paramount, and in situations of command, they are also women. The staff

of authority does not annihilate their sex; and scruples of female

delicacy interfere for ever to unnerve and emasculate in their hands the

sceptre however otherwise potent. Hence we see, in noble families,

the merest boys put forward to represent the family dignity, as fitter

supporters of that burden than their mature mothers. And of Cæsar's

mother, though little is recorded, and that little incidentally, this

much at least, we learn--that, if she looked down upon him with maternal

pride and delight, she looked up to him with female ambition as the

re-edifier of her husband's honors, with reverence as to a column of

the Roman grandeur, and with fear and feminine anxieties as to one

whose aspiring spirit carried him but too prematurely into the fields

of adventurous honor. One slight and evanescent sketch of the relations

which subsisted between Cæsar and his mother, caught from the wrecks of

time, is preserved both by Plutarch and Suetonius. We see in the

early dawn the young patrician standing upon the steps of his paternal

portico, his mother with her arms wreathed about his neck, looking up to

his noble countenance, sometimes drawing auguries of hope from features

so fitted for command, sometimes boding an early blight to promises so

prematurely magnificent. That she had something of her son's aspiring

character, or that he presumed so much in a mother of his, we learn from

the few words which survive of their conversation. He addressed to her

no language that could tranquillize her fears. On the contrary, to any

but a Roman mother his valedictory words, taken in connection with the

known determination of his character, were of a nature to consummate her

depression, as they tended to confirm the very worst of her fears. He

was then going to stand his chance in a popular election for an office

of dignity, and to launch himself upon the storms of the Campus Martius.

At that period, besides other and more ordinary dangers, the bands of

gladiators, kept in the pay of the more ambitious amongst the Roman

nobles, gave a popular tone of ferocity and of personal risk to the

course of such contests; and either to forestall the victory of an

antagonist, or to avenge their own defeat, it was not at all impossible

that a body of incensed competitors might intercept his final triumph

by assassination. For this danger, however, he had no leisure in his

thoughts of consolation; the sole danger which _he_ contemplated, or

supposed his mother to contemplate, was the danger of defeat, and for

that he reserved his consolations. He bade her fear nothing; for that

without doubt he would return with victory, and with the ensigns of the

dignity he sought, or would return a corpse.

Early indeed did Cæsar's trials commence; and it is probable, that, had

not the death of his father, by throwing him prematurely upon his

own resources, prematurely developed the masculine features of his

character, forcing him whilst yet a boy under the discipline of civil

conflict and the yoke of practical life, even _his_ energies would have

been insufficient to sustain them. His age is not exactly ascertained,

but it is past a doubt that he had not reached his twentieth year when

he had the hardihood to engage in a struggle with Sylla, then Dictator,

and exercising the immoderate powers of that office with the license

and the severity which history has made so memorable. He had neither

any distinct grounds of hope, nor any eminent example at that time, to

countenance him in this struggle--which yet he pushed on in the most

uncompromising style, and to the utmost verge of defiance. The subject

of the contrast gives it a further interest. It was the youthful wife

of the youthful Cæsar who stood under the shadow of the great Dictator's

displeasure; not personally, but politically, on account of her

connections: and her it was, Cornelia, the daughter of a man who had

been four times consul, that Cæsar was required to divorce: but

he spurned the haughty mandate, and carried his determination to a

triumphant issue, notwithstanding his life was at stake, and at one time

saved only by shifting his place of concealment every night; and this

young lady it was who afterwards became the mother of his only daughter.

Both mother and daughter, it is remarkable, perished prematurely, and at

critical periods of Cæsar's life; for it is probable enough that these

irreparable wounds to Cæsar's domestic affections threw him with more

exclusiveness of devotion upon the fascinations of glory and ambition

than might have happened under a happier condition of his private life.

That Cæsar should have escaped destruction in this unequal contest with

an enemy then wielding the whole thunders of the state, is somewhat

surprising; and historians have sought their solution of the mystery in

the powerful intercessions of the vestal virgins, and several others

of high rank amongst the connections of his great house. These may have

done something; but it is due to Sylla, who had a sympathy with every

thing truly noble, to suppose him struck with powerful admiration

for the audacity of the young patrician, standing out in such severe

solitude among so many examples of timid concession; and that to this

magnanimous feeling in the Dictator, much of his indulgence was due. In

fact, according to some accounts, it was not Sylla, but the creatures

of Sylla (_adjutores_), who pursued Cæsar. We know, at all events, that

Sylla formed a right estimate of Cæsar's character, and that, from

the complexion of his conduct in this one instance, he drew his famous

prophecy of his future destiny; bidding his friends beware of that

slipshod boy, "for that in him lay couchant many a Marius." A grander

testimony to the awe which Cæsar inspired, or from one who knew better

the qualities of that man by whom he measured him, cannot be imagined.

It is not our intention, or consistent with our plan, to pursue this

great man through the whole circumstances of his romantic career; though

it is certain that many parts of his life require investigation much

keener than has ever been applied to them, and that many might easily be

placed in a new light. Indeed, the whole of this most momentous section

of ancient history ought to be recomposed with the critical scepticism

of a Niebuhr, and the same comprehensive collation of authorities. In

reality it is the hinge upon which turned the future destiny of the

whole earth, and having therefore a common relation to all modern

nations whatsoever, should naturally have been cultivated with the zeal

which belongs to a personal concern. In general, the anecdotes which

express most vividly the splendid character of the first Cæsar, are

those which illustrate his defiance of danger in extremity,--the

prodigious energy and rapidity of his decisions and motions in the

field; the skill with which he penetrated the designs of his enemies,

and the exemplary speed with which he provided a remedy for disasters;

the extraordinary presence of mind which he showed in turning adverse

omens to his own advantage, as when, upon stumbling in coming on shore,

(which was esteemed a capital omen of evil,) he transfigured as it

were in one instant its whole meaning by exclaiming, "Thus do I take

possession of thee, oh Africa!" in that way giving to an accident the

semblance of a symbolic purpose; the grandeur of fortitude with which he

faced the whole extent of a calamity when palliation could do no good,

"non negando, minuendove, sed insuper amplificando, _ementiendoque_;"

as when, upon finding his soldiery alarmed at the approach of Juba, with

forces really great, but exaggerated by their terrors, he addressed them

in a military harangue to the following effect: "Know that within a few

days the king will come up with us, bringing with him sixty thousand

legionaries, thirty thousand cavalry, one hundred thousand light troops,

besides three hundred elephants. Such being the case, let me hear no

more of conjectures and opinions, for you have now my warrant for the

fact, whose information is past doubting. Therefore, be satisfied;

otherwise, I will put every man of you on board some crazy old fleet,

and whistle you down the tide--no matter under what winds, no matter

towards what shore." Finally, we might seek for the _characteristic_

anecdotes of Cæsar in his unexampled liberalities and contempt of money.

[Footnote: Middleton's Life of Cicero, which still continues to be the

most readable digest of these affairs, is feeble and contradictory. He

discovers that Cæsar was no general! And the single merit which his work

was supposed to possess, viz. the better and more critical arrangement

of Cicero's Letters, in respect to their chronology, has of late years

been detected as a robbery from the celebrated Bellenden, of James the

First's time.]

Upon this last topic it is the just remark of Casaubon, that some

instances of Cæsar's munificence have been thought apocryphal, or to

rest upon false readings, simply from ignorance of the heroic scale upon

which the Roman splendors of that age proceeded. A forum which Cæsar

built out of the products of his last campaign, by way of a present

to the Roman people, cost him--for the ground merely on which it

stood--nearly eight hundred thousand pounds. To the _citizens_ of Rome

(perhaps 300,000 persons) he presented, in one _congiary_, about two

guineas and a half a head. To his army, in one _donation_, upon the

termination of the civil war, he gave a sum which allowed about two

hundred pounds a man to the infantry, and four hundred to the cavalry.

It is true that the legionary troops were then much reduced by the sword

of the enemy, and by the tremendous hardships of their last campaigns.

In this, however, he did perhaps no more than repay a debt. For it is

an instance of military attachment, beyond all that Wallenstein or any

commander, the most beloved amongst his troops, has ever experienced,

that, on the breaking out of the civil war, not only did the centurions

of every legion severally maintain a horse soldier, but even the

privates volunteered to serve without pay--and (what might seem

impossible) without their daily rations. This was accomplished by

subscriptions amongst themselves, the more opulent undertaking for the

maintenance of the needy. Their disinterested love for Cæsar appeared in

another and more difficult illustration: it was a traditionary anecdote

in Rome, that the majority of those amongst Cæsar's troops, who had the

misfortune to fall into the enemy's hands, refused to accept their lives

under the condition of serving against _him_.

In connection with this subject of his extraordinary munificence,

there is one aspect of Cæsar's life which has suffered much from the

misrepresentations of historians, and that is--the vast pecuniary

embarrassments under which he labored, until the profits of war had

turned the scale even more prodigiously in his favor. At one time of his

life, when appointed to a foreign office, so numerous and so clamorous

were his creditors, that he could not have left Rome on his public

duties, had not Crassus come forward with assistance in money, or by

promises, to the amount of nearly two hundred thousand pounds. And at

another, he was accustomed to amuse himself with computing how much

money it would require to make him worth exactly nothing (_i. e._ simply

to clear him of debts); this, by one account, amounted to upwards of two

millions sterling. Now the error of historians has been--to represent

these debts as the original ground of his ambition and his revolutionary

projects, as though the desperate condition of his private affairs had

suggested a civil war to his calculations as the best or only mode of

redressing it. But, on the contrary, his debts were the product of

his ambition, and contracted from first to last in the service of his

political intrigues, for raising and maintaining a powerful body of

partisans, both in Rome and elsewhere. Whosoever indeed will take the

trouble to investigate the progress of Cæsar's ambition, from such

materials as even yet remain, may satisfy himself that the scheme of

revolutionizing the Republic, and placing himself at its head, was no

growth of accident or circumstances; above all, that it did not arise

upon any so petty and indirect an occasion as that of his debts; but

that his debts were in their very first origin purely ministerial to his

ambition; and that his revolutionary plans were at all periods of his

life a direct and foremost object. In this there was in reality no want

of patriotism; it had become evident to every body that Rome, under its

present constitution, must fall; and the sole question was--by whom?

Even Pompey, not by nature of an aspiring turn, and prompted to his

ambitious course undoubtedly by circumstances and the friends who

besieged him, was in the habit of saying, "Sylla potuit, ego non

potero?" And the fact was, that if, from the death of Sylla, Rome

recovered some transient show of constitutional integrity, that happened

not by any lingering virtue that remained in her republican forms, but

entirely through the equilibrium and mechanical counterpoise of rival

factions.

In a case, therefore, where no benefit of choice was allowed to Rome as

to the thing, but only as to the person--where a revolution was certain,

and the point left open to doubt simply by whom that revolution should

be accomplished--Cæsar had (to say the least) the same right to enter

the arena in the character of candidate as could belong to any one of

his rivals. And that he _did_ enter that arena constructively, and by

secret design, from his very earliest manhood, may be gathered from

this--that he suffered no openings towards a revolution, provided they

had any hope in them, to escape his participation. It is familiarly

known that he was engaged pretty deeply in the conspiracy of Catiline,

[Footnote: Suetonius, speaking of this conspiracy, says, that Cæsar was

_nominatos inter socios Catilinæ_, which has been erroneously understood

to mean that he was _talked of_ as an accomplice; but in fact, as

Casaubon first pointed out, _nominatus_ is a technical term of the Roman

jurisprudence, and means that he was formally denounced.] and that he

incurred considerable risk on that occasion; but it is less known, and

has indeed escaped the notice of historians generally, that he was

a party to at least two other conspiracies. There was even a fourth,

meditated by Crassus, which Cæsar so far encouraged as to undertake a

journey to Rome from a very distant quarter, merely with a view to such

chances as it might offer to him; but as it did not, upon examination,

seem to him a very promising scheme, he judged it best to look coldly

upon it, or not to embark in it by any personal co-operation. Upon these

and other facts we build our inference--that the scheme of a revolution

was the one great purpose of Cæsar, from his first entrance upon public

life. Nor does it appear that he cared much by whom it was undertaken,

provided only there seemed to be any sufficient resources for carrying

it through, and for sustaining the first collision with the regular

forces of the existing government. He relied, it seems, on his own

personal superiority for raising him to the head of affairs eventually,

let who would take the nominal lead at first. To the same result, it

will be found, tended the vast stream of Cæsar's liberalities. From the

senator downwards to the lowest _fæx Romuli_, he had a hired body of

dependents, both in and out of Rome, equal in numbers to a nation. In

the provinces, and in distant kingdoms, he pursued the same schemes.

Every where he had a body of mercenary partisans; kings are known to

have taken his pay. And it is remarkable that even in his character of

commander in chief, where the number of legions allowed to him for the

accomplishment of his mission raised him for a number of years above all

fear of coercion or control, he persevered steadily in the same plan of

providing for the day when he might need assistance, not from the state,

but _against_ the state. For amongst the private anecdotes which came

to light under the researches made into his history after his death, was

this--that, soon after his first entrance upon his government in Gaul,

he had raised, equipped, disciplined, and maintained, from his own

private funds, a legion amounting, perhaps, to six or seven thousand

men, who were bound by no sacrament of military obedience to the state,

nor owed fealty to any auspices except those of Cæsar. This legion, from

the fashion of their crested helmets, which resembled the crested heads

of a small bird of the lark species, received the popular name of

the _Alauda_ (or Lark) legion. And very singular it was that Cato,

or Marcellus, or some amongst those enemies of Cæsar, who watched his

conduct during the period of his Gaulish command with the vigilance of

rancorous malice, should not have come to the knowledge of this fact;

in which case we may be sure that it would have been denounced to the

senate.

Such, then, for its purpose and its uniform motive, was the sagacious

munificence of Cæsar. Apart from this motive, and considered in and for

itself, and simply with a reference to the splendid forms which it often

assumed, this munificence would furnish the materials for a volume. The

public entertainments of Cæsar, his spectacles and shows, his naumachiæ,

and the pomps of his unrivalled triumphs, (the closing triumphs of the

Republic,) were severally the finest of their kind which had then been

brought forward. Sea-fights were exhibited upon the grandest scale,

according to every known variety of nautical equipment and mode of

conflict, upon a vast lake formed artificially for that express purpose.

Mimic land-fights were conducted, in which all the circumstances of real

war were so faithfully rehearsed, that even elephants "indorsed with

towers," twenty on each side, took part in the combat. Dramas

were represented in every known language, (_per omnium linguarum

histriones_.) And hence [that is, from the conciliatory feeling thus

expressed towards the various tribes of foreigners resident in

Rome] some have derived an explanation of what is else a mysterious

circumstance amongst the ceremonial observances at Cæsar's funeral--that

all people of foreign nations then residing at Rome, distinguished

themselves by the conspicuous share which they took in the public

mourning; and that, beyond all other foreigners, the Jews for night

after night kept watch and ward about the emperor's grave. Never before,

according to traditions which lasted through several generations in

Rome, had there been so vast a conflux of the human race congregated to

any one centre, on any one attraction of business or of pleasure, as to

Rome, on occasion of these spectacles exhibited by Cæsar.

In our days, the greatest occasional gatherings of the human race are

in India, especially at the great fair of the _Hurdwar_, in the northern

part of Hindostan; a confluence of many millions is sometimes seen at

that spot, brought together under the mixed influences of devotion and

commercial business, and dispersed as rapidly as they had been convoked.

Some such spectacle of nations crowding upon nations, and some such

Babylonian confusion of dresses, complexions, languages, and jargons,

was then witnessed at Rome. Accommodations within doors, and under roofs

of houses, or of temples, was altogether impossible. Myriads encamped

along the streets, and along the high-roads in the vicinity of Rome.

Myriads of myriads lay stretched on the ground, without even the slight

protection of tents, in a vast circuit about the city. Multitudes of

men, even senators, and others of the highest rank, were trampled to

death in the crowds. And the whole family of man seemed at that time

gathered together at the bidding of the great Dictator. But these, or

any other themes connected with the public life of Cæsar, we notice

only in those circumstances which have been overlooked, or partially

represented by historians. Let us now, in conclusion, bring forward,

from the obscurity in which they have hitherto lurked, the anecdotes

which describe the habits of his private life, his tastes, and personal

peculiarities.

In person, he was tall, fair, and of limbs distinguished for their

elegant proportions and gracility. His eyes were black and piercing.

These circumstances continued to be long remembered, and no doubt were

constantly recalled to the eyes of all persons in the imperial palaces,

by pictures, busts, and statues; for we find the same description of his

personal appearance three centuries afterwards, in a work of the

Emperor Julian's. He was a most accomplished horseman, and a master

(_peritissimus_) in the use of arms. But, notwithstanding his skill in

horsemanship, it seems that, when he accompanied his army on marches, he

walked oftener than he rode; no doubt, with a view to the benefit of his

example, and to express that sympathy with his soldiers which gained him

their hearts so entirely. On other occasions, when travelling apart from

his army, he seems more frequently to have rode in a carriage than on

horseback. His purpose, in making this preference, must have been with

a view to the transport of luggage. The carriage which he generally

used was a _rheda_, a sort of gig, or rather curricle, for it was

a four-wheeled carriage, and adapted (as we find from the imperial

regulations for the public carriages, &c.) to the conveyance of about

half a ton. The mere personal baggage which Cæsar carried with him, was

probably considerable, for he was a man of the most elegant habits, and

in all parts of his life sedulously attentive to elegance of personal

appearance. The length of journeys which he accomplished within a given

time, appears even to us at this day, and might well therefore appear to

his contemporaries, truly astonishing. A distance of one hundred miles

was no extraordinary day's journey for him in a _rheda_, such as we have

described it. So elegant were his habits, and so constant his demand

for the luxurious accommodations of polished life, as it then existed in

Rome, that he is said to have carried with him, as indispensable parts

of his personal baggage, the little lozenges and squares of ivory, and

other costly materials, which were wanted for the tessellated flooring

of his tent. Habits such as these will easily account for his travelling

in a carriage rather than on horseback.

The courtesy and obliging disposition of Cæsar were notorious, and both

were illustrated in some anecdotes which survived for generations

in Rome. Dining on one occasion at a table, where the servants had

inadvertently, for salad-oil, furnished some sort of coarse lamp-oil,

Cæsar would not allow the rest of the company to point out the mistake

to their host, for fear of shocking him too much by exposing the

mistake. At another time, whilst halting at a little _cabaret_, when

one of his retinue was suddenly taken ill, Cæsar resigned to his use

the sole bed which the house afforded. Incidents, as trifling as these,

express the urbanity of Cæsar's nature; and, hence, one is the more

surprised to find the alienation of the senate charged, in no trifling

degree, upon a failure in point of courtesy. Cæsar neglected to rise

from his seat, on their approaching him in a body with an address of

congratulation. It is said, and we can believe it, that he gave deeper

offence by this one defect in a matter of ceremonial observance, than

by all his substantial attacks upon their privileges. What we find it

difficult to believe, however, is not that result from the offence, but

the possibility of the offence itself, from one so little arrogant as

Cæsar, and so entirely a man of the world. He was told of the disgust

which he had given, and we are bound to believe his apology, in which

he charged it upon sickness, which would not at the moment allow him to

maintain a standing attitude. Certainly the whole tenor of his life was

not courteous only, but kind; and, to his enemies, merciful in a

degree which implied so much more magnanimity than men in general could

understand, that by many it was put down to the account of weakness.

Weakness, however, there was none in Caius Cæsar; and, that there might

be none, it was fortunate that conspiracy should have cut him off in the

full vigor of his faculties, in the very meridian of his glory, and on

the brink of completing a series of gigantic achievements. Amongst these

are numbered--a digest of the entire body of laws, even then become

unwieldy and oppressive; the establishment of vast and comprehensive

public libraries, Greek as well as Latin; the chastisement of Dacia; the

conquest of Parthia; and the cutting a ship canal through the Isthmus

of Corinth. The reformation of the calendar he had already accomplished.

And of all his projects it may be said, that they were equally patriotic

in their purpose, and colossal in their proportions.

As an orator, Cæsar's merit was so eminent, that, according to the

general belief, had he found time to cultivate this department of

civil exertion, the precise supremacy of Cicero would have been made

questionable, or the honors would have been divided. Cicero himself

was of that opinion; and on different occasions applied the epithet

_Splendidus_ to Cæsar, as though in some exclusive sense, or with a

peculiar emphasis, due to him. His taste was much simpler, chaster, and

disinclined to the _florid_ and ornamental, than that of Cicero. So far

he would, in that condition of the Roman culture and feeling, have been

less acceptable to the public; but, on the other hand, he would have

compensated this disadvantage by much more of natural and Demosthenic

fervor.

In literature, the merits of Cæsar are familiar to most readers. Under

the modest title of _Commentaries_, he meant to offer the records of his

Gallic and British campaigns, simply as notes, or memoranda, afterwards

to be worked up by regular historians; but, as Cicero observes, their

merit was such in the eyes of the discerning, that all judicious writers

shrank from the attempt to alter them. In another instance of his

literary labors, he showed a very just sense of true dignity. Rightly

conceiving that every thing patriotic was dignified, and that to

illustrate or polish his native language, was a service of real

patriotism, he composed a work on the grammar and orthoepy of the Latin

language. Cicero and himself were the only Romans of distinction in

that age, who applied themselves with true patriotism to the task of

purifying and ennobling their mother tongue. Both were aware of the

transcendent quality of the Grecian literature; but that splendor did

not depress their hopes of raising their own to something of the same

level. As respected the natural wealth of the two languages, it was

the private opinion of Cicero, that the Latin had the advantage; and if

Cæsar did not accompany him to that length, he yet felt that it was but

the more necessary to draw forth any single advantage which it really

had. [Footnote: Cæsar had the merit of being the first person to propose

the daily publication of the acts and votes of the senate. In the form

of public and official dispatches, he made also some useful innovations;

and it may be mentioned, for the curiosity of the incident, that the

cipher which he used in his correspondence, was the following very

simple one:--For every letter of the alphabet he substituted that which

stood fourth removed from it in the order of succession. Thus, for A, he

used D; for D, G, and so on.]

Was Cæsar, upon the whole, the greatest of men? Dr. Beattie once

observed, that if that question were left to be collected from the

suffrages already expressed in books, and scattered throughout the

literature of all nations, the scale would be found to have turned

prodigiously in Cæsar's favor, as against any single competitor; and

there is no doubt whatsoever, that even amongst his own countrymen, and

his own contemporaries, the same verdict would have been returned, had

it been collected upon the famous principle of Themistocles, that _he_

should be reputed the first, whom the greatest number of rival voices

had pronounced the second.