Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

93

The victor was detained by further victories in Egypt and Syria until near the close of the following year, when, already invested a second time with the dictatorship, as well as with the consulate for five years, 94 he returned to restrain the disorders of his followers, particularly of Mark Antony, to whom, as Master of the Knights, he had intrusted the government of Italy.95 The more obedient of his partisans, of every rank and every race, were rewarded with the highest honors; the old offices being enlarged to provide them with places, and the very temple of the Senate being opened wide to the crowd of aliens and soldiers pressing in. It was but carrying out the doctrines which determined Cæsar's whole life, to prove that devotion to him, as the highest duty of his adherents, deserved the most abundant recompense. He was again, for the third time, elected Dic tator, before the year expired.

During eight months more," Cæsar was occupied in reducing the forces which, in alliance with Juba, the Numidian, still held out against his officers in Northern Africa. On his return, the Senate, totally his own, decreed a general thanksgiving of forty days, as well as the triumphs he had not yet celebrated for his various victories. At the same time, he was ap

93 A. C. 47.

94 Dion Cass., XLII. 20.

95 Ibid., 27 et seq. Plut., Ant., 9; Cæs., 51. Appian especially relates the suppression of a mutiny. Bell. Civ., II. 92 et seq.

96 Suet.. Cæs., 40, 41. Dion

Cass., XLII. 51. So in the next year. XLIII. 27. The number of Senators was then increased to nearly nine hundred. See the story in Suet., 80, alluding to the number of strangers amongst them.

97 To the middle of A. C. 46.

98

pointed Prefect of Morals for three, and Dictator for ten years, with multiplied distinctions at the games and the elections, in the Senate, and even in the Capitol, where his statue in bronze was to be set, inscribed, "The Demigod!"" His triumphal processions, one for Gaul, another for Egypt, a third for Syria, and a fourth for Numidia,100 bore him four times, in the highest state which mortal could sustain, up to the temple where his image testified to his immortality; while, below, the highest and the lowest of his countrymen, soldiers, citizens, women, slaves, were revelling in the games he ordered and the bounties he distributed unsparingly." 101 Even when these ceased, or rather paused, the erection of theatres, temples, and works too vast for the Commonwealth, as it was yet called, to have commanded, went on, as if the power and the wealth of the Dictator were supernatural. One more campaign was fought against the forces commanded by Pompey's sons in Spain; and for his final victory at Munda,102 though it was won over his own compatriots, he triumphed for the fifth time in the face of the confounded, but still exulting, people.

Nor did the Senate stay their votes in completing the measure of his apparent glories. They hailed him

66

98" So styled," says Dion Cassius (XLIII. 14), as if the title of Censor were too mean for him."

99 Ημίθεός ἐστι. Dion Cass., XLIII. 14.

100 Ibid., XLIII. 19. Plut., Cæs.,

101 Suet., Cæs., 37-39. Dion Cass., XLIII. 21-24.

102 In the spring of A. C. 45. Cæsar returned to Rome in the autumn.

their Liberator, and ordered a temple to be built to Liberty, at the same moment that they gave him the title of Imperator, once temporarily assumed by victorious generals, as if it meant Commander, but now, as signifying Emperor, more solemnly appropriated to the Consul for ten years, the Sole Censor for life, and the Perpetual Dictator of Rome.103 Still further decrees, declaring him Father of his Country, and pledging both Senate and people to his safety, finally broke beyond the bounds of human homage, acknowledging him as the Julian Jupiter, and ordering a temple and a priesthood to be consecrated to his worship.10 So fell the liberty, and so trembled the religion, of Rome and of the Roman world. In those "wide walks" through which the conquerors of heathen civilization had marched from east to west and from north to south upon the earth, there was now but one man for those "that talked of Rome" to praise as their sovereign and to confess their deity.

Thus by their vices were the Roman people brought to servitude, not as if they were unwilling, but as if bondage had become more acceptable to them than liberty.105 Seldom as they have appeared in the course of this history, drawn from writings but little concerned with their passions or their virtues, they vanish more utterly than ever in the persons of their

103 Dion Cass., XLIII. 44, 45. App., Bell. Civ., II. 106. Suet., Cæs., 76.

104 Ibid., and Dion Cass., XLIV.

105 "But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt, And by their vices brought to servitude, Than to love bondage more than liberty?" Milton, Samson Agonistes.

first Emperor 106 and his successors.

Whether there were eyes wet with unseen tears for the loss of freedom and of honor, or whether the lips of the whole nation to which Cæsar belonged raised one unbroken shout for his magnificence, is no longer to be known. And in the few pages which will close our work we have only individual names to trace, in endeavouring to learn the extent and the character of the subjugation that has been achieved.

The power which Cæsar obtained as Emperor was yet to be used for many other purposes than the entertainment or the bewilderment of the multitude. His work of plunder and massacre 107 had ceased; but the humiliation on which he was employed by Providence, in retribution for the past and in mercy to the future, still waited its completion by him or by others after him. The laws, however, which remain recorded as of his enactment, though carefully devised, some to prevent the needy from sedition or the rich from extravagant accumulation, and others to provide new posts of authority or to lay restrictions on existing offices, can scarcely be regarded as any fair representation of his policy.' Neither were

[blocks in formation]

47, with Plin., Nat. Hist., VII. 25, concerning Gaul; and App., Bell. Civ., II. 102, with Plut., Cæs., 55, 56, for the Civil War. At such

horrors, as the same poet continues,

"Fear, pity, justice, indignation start."

108 The details may be found in Dion Cass., XLI. 36-38, XLII. 51, XLIII. 25-27, 47, 50; Suet., Cæs., 40-43. The division of laws into

For the massacre, see Vell. Pat., II. those affecting the lower and those

such measures as the encouragement of marriage, the honor appointed to scholars, the reform of the Calendar, nor even such as the gift of citizenship to the people beyond the Po and in part to the Sicilians,109 much more than the crumbs he brushed from a table spread with plans and far-extending aims. Only thrice after his first dictatorship of eleven days did he reside in Rome; once for three months, when he came back from the East; again, for a shorter time, on his return from Africa; and once more, during the five short final months of his empire and his life. Even in these brief sojourns, there were other cares on Cæsar's mind than such as any legislation for Rome or the provinces could put to rest. He may have resolved upon possessing these, as his dominions, in security; but his visions of power reached from the known and measured world about him into yet unvisited realms. The sway he already possessed, in the midst of that multitude of men and women fed at public cost, whose numbers, even as limited by his own law, amounted still to one hundred and fifty thousand,110 was only the beginning of a wider empire over subjects as fresh as these he ruled were weary and corrupted. Yet he was fifty-five years old. The past, however, to such a man, was exhausted

relating to the higher classes is easily made. But the time is passed when the changes in the forms or the statutes of the Commonwealth required to be successively enumerated.

109 Cic., Ad Att., XIV. 12.

om

Tac., Ann., XI. 24. Dion Cass.,
XLI. 36. For the scholars -"
nes medicinam professos et libera-
lium artium doctores' see Suet.,
Cæs., 42.

110 Suet., Cæs., 41.

« НазадПродовжити »