feated his adversaries. When the legions showed backwardness the dictator ran, bareheaded, to meet the enemy, exclaiming, "You mean, then, to give up your general to children?" Only 1000 men fell on Cæsar's side, but 30,000 of the enemy strewed the field, and Cneius flying, wounded, was overtaken and slain. His brother hid in the Pyrenees, and remained there till Cæsar's death.

On Cæsar's return to Rome there was an explosion of adulation. The senate decreed fifty days' supplications; after Manda he was made a demi-god, and now a full god. A statue was raised to him in the Temple of Quirinus, with the inscription, "To the invincible god." A college of Julian priests was inaugurated, and a new series of banquets and spectacles were instituted. Theatrical pieces and sham fights took place in all quarters of Rome and all languages; senators and even tribunes acted and fought, and Laberius, forced to play the buffoon, said in his prologue, "Alas! after sixty years of a spotless life, issued as a knight from my family, I shall go back to it a buffoon! Ah! I have lived a day too long!" Cæsar gave him back his golden ring; he did not wish to strike the man, but the order.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

CESAR IMPERATOR.

He

Fi

No one made a nobler use of his great power than Cæsar. was made imperator for life, being already dictator, princeps senatus, sovereign pontiff, prefect of manners, consul, etc. nance, army, religion, all were in his hands; but, unlike Sulla, he pardoned everywhere.

He filled the senate with Gauls and new men, and greatly augmented the number of officials. At the same time he formed grand designs, like Alexander. He proposed war against the Parthians and the Germans; he intended to cut through the Isthmus of Corinth, to drain the Pomptine marshes, to make Ostia a better port, to embellish Rome. He was about to give the right of Roman citizenship to multitudes; a great code of laws was projected; a vast library was to be established; 80,000 colonists carried the Roman customs and tongue beyond the seas; Transpadine Italy received the jus civitatis; Corinth and Carthage were to rise from their ruins; three Greek geometers were to measure the empire; when death struck him, and showed him to be no more than man.

DEATH OF CESAR (B.C. 44).

Cæsar aimed at the royal power, and Antony offered it him. But it was odious to the Romans, and he set aside the idea for the present. The scheme, however, led to his assassination, by raising a conspiracy among the republicans. At the head of this conspiracy were Brutus, and Cassius Longinus, a private enemy of Cæsar.

The Ides, or 15th of March, was the day fixed for the deed. It is probable their intention was not kept secret, and Calpurnia, Cæsar's wife, seems to have suspected it, and used all her influence, but in vain, to deter him from going to the senate that day. But the great man, not to appear superstitious or pusillanimous, went, as usual, to the senate, notwithstanding the warnings he had received. To an augur who had prognosticated that this would be a fatal day for him, he answered, smiling, at the entrance of the senate: "Now, friend, the Ides of March are come!" Yes," answered the soothsayer, "but are not yet

passed!"

66

As soon as Cæsar had taken his seat, the conspirators pressed round him by a common accord, and one of them, Tullius Cimber, stepped up to beg that his banished brother might be allowed to return. This was refused by Cæsar, and was, at the same time, a signal to the conspirators. Tullius began by seizing Cæsar's cloak; Cassius struck him a blow on the shoulder; when Cæsar, grasping the hilt of his dagger, exclaimed: "Wretch! what art thou doing?" But, as soon as he saw Brutus raise his dagger to strike him, he dropped the hand of Cassius, uttering in Greek the words, "And thou, my son?" (kai du vie), and covering his head with his toga, gave up his body to the blows of the conspirators. He fell, struck by twenty-three wounds, under the statue of Pompey, and, as the conspirators were striking, Brutus received a slight wound in the hand; the others were covered with blood.

Such was the end of Rome's greatest man, forty years before our Saviour was born.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE (B.C. 44).

WHILE the majority of the senators favoured the murder of

Cæsar, the people, in whom the sense of freedom had long been extinguished, were very dissatisfied with the bloody deed, and the soldiers in the legions demanded to be led to Rome to avenge the death of their general. Under these circumstances, the senate gave its first attention to preserve the peace, and to reconcile the adverse parties. It decreed, therefore, that no person should be brought to judgment for that which had occurred, and confirmed all the measures carried out by Cæsar. Meanwhile, the murderers of the great man betook themselves to the provinces of Macedonia and Syria that were assigned to them, because they did not feel safe at Rome.

One of the friends of Cæsar, Marc Antony, held sway now at Rome with unlimited power; and Shakespere, in his play of "Julius Cæsar," represents him as stirring up the passions of the populace against the murderers, with masterly insinuation. Marc Antony seized the state treasure that had been left by Cæsar, surrounded himself with a body-guard of 6000 men, and aimed openly at making himself monarch. But, while he made himself universally disliked by his capricious and selfish procedure, a dangerous rival appeared in a young man of eighteen, Cæsar's grandnephew and sole heir, Cæsar Octavianus. By affecting moderation and justice, this Octavianus gained over most of the senators; by magnanimity and liberality, the people and the soldiers. After a short delay, he was given the supreme command against Marc Antony, who had been declared the enemy of his country by the measures he had adopted. But scarcely was Antony defeated, when Octavianus threw off the mask, returned to Rome at the head of his legions, and compelled the Romans to give him the consulship, at the age of nineteen. Thereupon he marched with his troops to Upper Italy; but, instead of pursuing Antony, he united with him and a friend, named Lepidus, to regulate the affairs of the state by their combination, as they professed. This pact received the name of the Second Triumvirate, and when Rome heard of it, all well-disposed men were in despair. It was not long before their worst apprehensions were confirmed; the triumvirs not only proscribed all the murderers of Cæsar, but all who at any time had taken up a hostile attitude against themselves, and they set a price on the heads of some of the most respected men of the republic. And now massacres ensued in Rome and throughout Italy, recalling the worst times of Sulla and Marius. Above 200 senators and twice that number of equites were slain in Rome alone; and thousands were robbed of their property, which was

then divided among the soldiers; the inhabitants of eighteen flourishing cities were driven out of their possessions, and the latter given to the troops, and burial was even refused to the bodies of the slain. Among the men who fell victims to the revenge of the triumvirs, was Cicero, the great orator, who had been hailed by Rome, at the time of Catiline's conspiracy, as father of his country. Cicero had ventured to displease Marc Antony, by a series of powerful speeches, full of invectives, styled his philippics; and Antony determined to punish him, nor was Octavianus. generous enough to shield him. Cicero was at that time staying at his beautiful country house of Formiæ, when the news reached him that he was proscribed and condemned to die. He determined to fly to Greece, and entered a sort of sedan chair to be carried by his slaves to the shore; but he had not proceeded far when the murderers appeared who were commissioned by the triumvirs to carry out the sentence. At their head was a man whose life had been saved in a trial by the great orator.

The slaves were preparing to defend their master at the risk of their lives; but Cicero bade them put down the chair, stretched forth his head to address his enemies, and received at the same moment the fatal stroke. His bloody head was presented to Antony, whose revengeful wife is said to have pierced the great orator's tongue with a red-hot needle.*

CHAPTER XXX.

THE BATTLE OF PHILIPPI (B.C. 42).

WHEN Brutus and Cassius received the intelligence that they were proscribed by the triumvirs, and rewards offered for their heads, they met at Smyrna, to devise measures for the protection of the republic and for their own safety. The military force under their control amounted to 80,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry. But this army increased daily by refugees from Italy, who had escaped the executioners of the triumvirate, and many distinguished men joined them from the provinces, who wished to defend the freedom of the republic against the despotism of the triumvirs. Cassius and Brutus possessed, moreover, a considera ble fleet, by which their army was furnished with supplies of all kinds, and these could be cut off from their enemies.

* In Mömmsen and Napoleon the Third's work, injustice appears to be done to Cicero.

While the republicans were bringing over their army from Macedonia and Asia Minor the triumvirs, whose number were less, poured into the former territory. Cassius and Brutus had established a camp at Philippi, a post strong by nature, and were resolved not to be drawn into a fight, as the distress increased daily in the camp of their opponents, from which the republican fleet cut off all supplies. For this reason the triumvirs were driven to the necessity of a decisive battle, and they accordingly marshalled their men to attack the republican camp.

The engagement that ensued was disastrous for Cassius and Brutus, and naturally so, for they had no confidence in themselves. It so happened that while Octavianus, who stood opposite Brutus, was driven from his ground and had his camp taken, Antony penetrated into the camp of Cassius, and when Brutus, perceiving the distress of his partner, sent a body of horse to his assistance, Cassius thought these were hostile cavalry who wished to capture him, and caused himself to be slain by a slave to whom he had given his freedom. Brutus was overcome with grief when he learnt this mistake, and exclaimed with many tears: "Thus, then, the last Roman has fallen." He now assumed the direction of the whole army, and sought to waste his enemy's force by delay. But the triumvirs succeeded in forcing Brutus to a second battle twenty days after the first, and in gaining a complete victory.

When the republicans took to flight many of them, unwilling to see the destruction of their cause, slew themselves. Brutus, too, fell on his sword when he witnessed the flight of his legions. An old historian relates that when Brutus was about to pass from Asia to Europe, as he sat in his tent alone in the quiet of the night, a figure of preternatural size appeared to him, and when asked who he was, uttered the words: "I am thy evil genius, and I'll meet thee at Philippi." Before the battle the form appeared to him again, and some have said it was the ghost of Cæsar. any rate, the story testifies the anticipations of evil that filled the soul of Brutus.

At

Antony caused the body of Brutus to be burned with solemn rites, and sent his ashes to the mother of the fallen patriot. Octavianus, on the other hand, acted an unworthy part towards the vanquished. He insulted the prisoners, sneered at them when they begged for mercy, and then let them be led out for execution. Nay, when a father and son came before him, each pleading for the other's life, he ordered them to settle the question by a single combat, whereupon they both slew themselves.