CHAP. XLVI.

DEATH OF CATO.

365

wound was not immediately mortal, and he rolled groaning upon the floor. The noise summoned his anxious attendants. Means were hastily employed to restore him; but on coming to himself he repulsed his disconsolate friends, and, tearing open the fatal wound, expired with the same dogged resolution which had marked every action of his life. Cato had no cause to despair of retaining life under the new tyranny. At an earlier period he had meditated, in such an event, seeking refuge in retirement and philosophical study. But his views of the Highest Good had deepened and saddened with the fall of the men and things he had most admired. He now calmly persuaded himself that with the loss of free action he had lost the true end of being. He regarded his career as prematurely closed, and deemed it his duty to extinguish an abortive existence. Cæsar, when he heard of his self-destruction, lamented that he had been robbed of the pleasure of pardoning him; and to his comrades he extended, according to the most credible accounts, the same clemency he had always shown to his fellow-citizens. But it is mortifying to learn that with all this apparent generosity he could at a later period write under trifling provocation a petulant volume which he called the "Anti-Cato," ridiculing the sage's vain pretensions, and raking up unworthy stories against him.

CHAPTER XLVI.

Honors showered upon Cæsar at Rome.-His four triumphs, his games and largesses.-Campaign in Spain. -Battle of Munda.-Defeat and death of Cnæus Pompeius.-Cæsar's fifth triumph.-Representatives of all nations at Rome.-Cæsar introduces foreigners into the Senate.-Further distinctions heaped upon him.-Dictatorship and consulship for five years; the imperium, tribunate, principate, and chief pontificate for life also.-Cæsar's policy of unification.-He plans the redaction of a code of laws.— He reforms the calendar. - His great constructive works completed or only designed. Cæsar's private life and manners. His irreligion and superstition. Cleopatra at Rome. Her influence over Cæsar. -The people resent it.-Cæsar finds himself ill at ease in the city, and makes preparations for a great war in the East. (B.c. 46-44.)

THE honors which a cringing Senate now heaped upon Cæsar have degraded him in the eyes of posterity far more than they exalted him in those of his contemporaries. A Supplication of forty days had already been decreed in honor of his victory when he appeared once more in Italy at the end of July. A .c.708. statue was erected to him in the Capitol; another was

B.C. 46.

inscribed to "Cæsar the demigod." He was to use a golden chair in the Senate-house, his image was to be borne in the procession of the gods, and laid with theirs at their solemn banquet. The seventh month of the year-the fifth of the ancient calendarchanged its name from Quintilis to Julius, which, strange to say, it has ever since retained among us. Temples were dedicated to "Cæsar's Clemency," a transparent abstraction which readily lapsed into the direct worship of his own divinity. The dictatorship was now conferred upon him for ten years, a limitation which was speedily dispensed with. He was invested for three years with the powers of the censorship without a colleague, under the title of Guardianship of Manners, whereby he acquired the right of revising at his sole discretion the lists of the knights and senators. He was to nominate to one half of the curule magistracies, the consulships only excepted, and appoint to the prætorian provinces; that is to say, he was to strip the people so far of their prerogative of election, and the Senate of that of administration. In the Senate he was to take his seat between the consuls, and be the first to pronounce his opinion; that is to say, he was to be paramount in the assembly both in station and influence. If the diadem, the symbol of kingly rule, and the name of king itself was still withheld from him, he was allowed to wreathe his bald temples with the laurel, the badge of martial greatness, and to prefix to his name the title of Imperator. Yet he was not ashamed to combine with these unseemly decorations the title of "Father of his country," the most glorious appellation a free people can bestow, conferred by a decree upon Camillus, by acclamation upon Cicero. He celebrated four triumphs-over the Gauls, over Ptolemæus, over Pharnaces, and over Juba; but he claimed none for the victory of Pharsalia. The soldiers who followed his car shouted with the usual military license derisive songs in the ears of their commander; while the citizens gazed with wonder, perhaps with alarm, on the children of Gaul and Spain, of Epirus and Africa, who served under his banner, and who could hardly fail to know that they were really the masters of the city. Cæsar's first care was to gratify his armed followers with liberal largesses, his next to compliment the people generally with corresponding munificence. They were feasted at a splendid banquet, at which the mighty multitude reclined before 22,000 tables, each table having three couches, and each couch, we may suppose, its three guests. The feast was followed by the shows of the circus and the theatre. The combats of wild beasts and gladiators outdid all previous exhibitions, and the Romans were shocked at the leave Cæsar gave to several of their knights to descend into the crena. It is recorded that he stretched over the circus an awning of silk, the rarest and most precious production

CHAP. XLVI.

CÆSAR'S FIFTH TRIUMPH.

367

of the East. He also opened a new Forum, and worshipped publicly in the temple of "Venus, his ancestress," the patroness of his house, for whom he had woven a breastplate of British pearls, and whose name he had made his watchword on the days of his greatest victories.

These ceremonies took place in September. As soon as they were completed the imperator quitted Rome once more to suppress the last revolt of the vanquished republicans in Spain. While the event of the African campaign was yet undecided Cnæus had repaired to the province of the West, where his father's name was still held in the highest reverence, and raised the banner, not of "Rome" or the "Senate," but of "Pietas," or "filial duty." He had gathered around him adventurers from all camps; and Cæsar, who regarded the war as an affair with outlaws and banditti, had left it to the care of his lieutenants, till their ill-success roused him at last to make an effort in person. The cruelty he exercised upon these hateful enemies shows how little title they possessed to be treated as Romans. The struggle, protracted for several months, was closed at last on the field of Munda, where Cæsar, after being reduced to great extremity, gained at last a crowning victory. Thirty thousand of the vanquished perished on that fatal day, and among them were Varus and Labienus, and many other nobles. Cnæus escaped from the scene of disaster, gained the coast and put to sea, but was discovered on casually landing, and killed. Of all the republican chiefs Sextus, the younger son of the great Pompeius, was now the sole survivor in arms. He hid himself in the wildest districts of the peninsula, and put himself at the head of roving bands of natives, who refused sub- v.0.709. jection to Rome, till occasion served for reappearing on the public scene. Cæsar devoted some months to disposing the affairs of the Western provinces. The battle of Munda was fought on the 17th of March, 45; but the conqueror was not at liberty to re-enter Rome till September.

B.C. 45.

On his return the conqueror celebrated a fresh triumph over the Iberians; the miserable outcasts whom Cnæus had banded together under the common title of strangers and enemies. The triumph was followed as usual by games and festivals, which kept the populace in a fever of delight and admiration. Plays, it is said, were represented in various languages for the benefit of every people domiciled in the great city. The subjects of the empire had entered Rome in Cæsar's train, and thus inaugurated the union of the capital with the provinces. Kings and commonwealths sent their ambassadors in this mighty congress of nations. Among them were the Moors and the Numidians, the Gauls and the Iberians, the Britons and the Armenians, the Germans and the

Scythians. The Jews, insulted by Pompeius and plundered by Crassus, offered their willing homage to the champion who alone. of all the Romans had addressed them in the language of kindliness and respect. Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, came, her crown in her hand, offering her treasure and her favors to her admirer and preserver. Meanwhile it is Cæsar's glory that his hand fell heavily upon none of his fellow-citizens. His affront to the knight Laberius, whom he degraded by making him enact on the stage one of his own comic pieces, though exciting among the citizens some remark and pretended indignation, hardly deserves to be remembered against the nephew of Marius, who forgot the banishment of his uncle, the ruins of Carthage, and the marshes of Minturnæ; the avenger of the Sullan revolution, who scorned to retaliate the proscriptions; the advocate of Cathegus and Lentulus, who refrained from demanding blood for blood. It is worth remarking that Cicero, the most humane perhaps of his own party, could hardly persuade himself of the possibility of Cæsar abstaining from massacre. Far from approving the taste of his flatterers in removing the statues of Sulla and Pompeius, the victor caused them to be restored to their places before the rostra among the effigies of the noblest champions of the free state. Towards the institutions of the commonwealth he evinced a similar spirit of deference. While making himself an autocrat in every essential exercise of power, he maintained at least in outward seeming the ancient landmarks of freedom-the Senate, the comitia, and the magistracies. But he had long before said that the republic was no more than a shadow, and these very institutions had been the instruments by which tyrants had worked out their own ambitious projects. Cæsar could sway the Roman world unchecked by the interference of a Senate of which two thirds perhaps were nominees of his own. He had raised the number of the assembly to 900, thus degrading the honor by making it cheap; and he lowered its estimation still more by pouring into it his allies from the provinces, his soldiers, and perhaps even his captives. The Romans made a jest of these upstart strangers losing themselves amid the forest of columns in the public places, and placards were posted recommending no good citizen to guide them to the Senate-house. The Council thus constituted acted, as might be expected, with gross servility, which made Cæsar himself blush. He refused many of the prerogatives it would have thrust upon him; but he retained, as the avowed champion of the people, the appropriate distinction of the tribunician power, which also rendered his person inviolable. To the reality of power he added its outward signs. In the Senate, the theatre, and the circus he seated himself on a golden chair in a robe of regal magnificence. Apart from

CHAP. XLVI. CÆSAR'S POLITICAL MEASURES.

369

the title of king, no token of royalty was more marked among the ancients than the hereditary descent of offices and distinctions. The imperium, or military rule, which had been granted to Cæsar for life, was rendered transmissible to his children, and together with it the transcendent dignity of the sovereign pontificate.

The dictatorship for life, the consulship for five years, with the full command of the public treasure, secured to Cæsar the executive power of the state: the imperium gave him the command of its forces; the tribunate intrusted him with a veto upon its legislation. As princeps, or first man of the Senate, he guided the debates of the great council of the nation; as controller of manners, even the personal composition of that assembly depended on his will. As chief pontiff he interpreted the religion of the state, and made omens and auguries declare themselves at his bidding. He was constituted, in fact, the autocrat of the Roman commonwealth. Nevertheless he had assumed no title inconsistent with the principles of the republic, and the precedents of its ancient or contemporary history.

We find it hard to conceive that while laying the foundations of his empire thus carefully and discreetly Cæsar could have looked merely to the gratification of a selfish ambition. Surely indications of a higher aim are not wanting. To combine the various elements of his world-wide dominion into one national body was necessarily a slow and tentative process, nor did he seek to hasten it by violent or even vigorous measures. It sufficed him to give it a first impulse, by attaching to his own person distinguished foreigners, and promoting them to places of trust and dignity in the city; by introducing Gauls and others into the Senate; by opening the franchise to whole classes of useful subjects, as, for instance, to the medical profession, who were mostly of Grecian origin; by founding great colonies at Carthage and Corinth, and preparing, as we are given to believe, the enfranchisement of the population of Sicily, as the province nearest to Italy. Cæsar refrained from pampering his veterans, after the manner of Sulla and Pompeius, with estates which they knew not how to cultivate, and his military colonies were few and obscure. But he repaid their services by ample largesses, and he preferred to retain them still for the most part under his standards for further conquests, which he did not cease to contemplate. He proceeded to develop the material unity of the vast regions before him by an elaborate geographical survey, a work which would require the labors of an extensive commission for many years. Another work which he undertook with the same view to general and permanent utility was the combination in a compact code of the fragments of Roman law dispersed in thousands of precedents,