party, the section represented by Antony, Dolabella, and Lepidus, reaped the advantage of Cæsar's death, and the military domination re-established itself without the redeeming features of Cæsar's personal ability and generosity. Further, the circumstances of the assassination were such as to shock ordinary public opinion. To strike in order to avenge personal injuries and personal quarrels seems natural and venial to the popular intelligence; but, that men who had transgressed the laws of gratitude towards a personal benefactor should appeal in justification of their deed to a supposed higher law of duty and patriotism, was a presumption which the masses could not tolerate.* Brutus and Cassius only succeeded in consecrating a martyr for the cause of monarchy. Still, as we look back on that day, 'crudi adhuc servitii libertatisque improspere repetita,' we feel that some sympathy is due to the men who killed Cæsar. They were carrying out what the moral judgment of the ancient world imposed as a sacred duty, the extinction, by whatever means, of the man who dared to make himself despot in a free state. When Talleyrand was told of the assassination of the Emperor Paul, he replied, 'I understand that is the constitutional mode of resignation in Russia.' Such a 'constitutional mode' was not only sanctioned by the precepts of Greek philosophers and the practice of Greek states, but was directly held up for the instruction of the Romans in the law which provided that any one who set up a power without appeal was by that very act consecrated as a victim to the infernal gods, and that the hand of every citizen was armed to complete the sacrifice. We have seen how, for a time, Cicero and his friends were fain to hope for some revival of liberty. Only when this hope died out, only when it became evident that Cæsar had spoken his last word in politics, and that the yoke which they abhorred was to be fixed on their necks for ever, did the Republican party appeal to the dagger as to their last resort. It is noticeable that the best members of the Cæsarean party, Hirtius, Pansa, P. Servilius Isauricus, and Servius Sulpicius Rufus, though they may not have approved the assassination, at least condoned it, and threw in their lot with Cicero and the liberators in their struggle against Antony. The rank and file of the Senate, notwithstanding that it consisted, for the most * 'Inter ludos cantata sunt quædam ad miserationem et invidiam cædis ejus accommodata ex Pacuvi Armorum judicio : 'Men, servasse, ut essent qui me perderent?' Suet. Jul. 84. Senatum fortem habemus, sed infimo quemque honore fortissimum.' Ad'Fam. XII. iv. 1. Vol. 148.-No. 296. 2 K part, The part, of men of Cæsar's creation, took the same side. Italians were also eager to give their services against Antony. The legions of recruits, of which there were eight in the camp of Decimus Brutus alone,* were no match in the field for the veterans of the civil war. But their forwardness is an evidence that the feeling of Italy was still Republican. The bitterness with which citizens saw themselves degraded to the rank of subjects finds ample illustration in contemporary utterances. Pollio, who had been a thorough Cæsarean, complains that, though he had no choice but to obey Cæsar's commands, this had not shielded him from the blame of his fellow-citizens: The unpopularity which attached to my conduct, most undeserved though it was, gave me a lesson how delightful liberty is, and how wretched a life passed under the dominion of another. Therefore, if the question is of the revival of the absolute power of one man, whosoever that man may be, I profess myself his enemy.'† To Servius Sulpicius, a Cæsarean so moderate that he may be counted as a neutral, Cicero, even during the lifetime of the dictator, avows with perfect confidence of sympathy his abhorrence of the situation. Servius always speaks in the same tone. This is the burden of his touching letter of consolation to Cicero on the death of his daughter:— 'Do you grieve for her lot, who is taken away from the evil to come? who has seen the great days of the Republic, and has expired with its expiration? Does it not often occur to you, as it does to me, that we have fallen on times in which those are to be congratulated who can pass painlessly from life to death? Why be so deeply stirred by a private grief? Consider how fortune has buffeted us already. We have seen snatched from us those things which men should hold not less dear than their children--our country, our reputation, our dignity-everything which made life honourable. What can one blow more add to our pain? Schooled in such a fate as ours, ought not the mind to become callous, and hold whatever may befal as insignificant?' In sentences such as these we seem to catch the note of dull passive despair with which Tacitus has made us so familiar. The inexorable unapproachable despotism already throws its chill shadow over the scene, and the 'petty men''peep about to find themselves dishonourable graves.' Every incident of monarchy was galling and degrading to those who had been nurtured in the proud atmosphere of aristocratic republicanism, and Cæsar himself was not blind to the feelings which his + Ib. xxxi. 3. Ad Fam. X. xxiv. 3. Abridged and re-arranged from ad Fam. IV. v. system system inspired. Cicero (who speaks elsewhere of the 'infinita molestia' of approaching Cæsar) was dancing attendance one day in the ante-chamber of the dictator, waiting for his turn to be summoned. "Can I doubt,' exclaimed Cæsar, that I am cordially hated, when Marcus Cicero has to sit there waiting and cannot see me at his own convenience? Well, if any one is easy-tempered, it is Cicero; but, no doubt, he must hate me bitterly.' Cicero had certainly no personal reason for disliking Cæsar, and there is abundant evidence that personally he revered and admired him. What he hated was not the man but the monarch. Most significant, then, is the tone in which Cicero speaks of Cæsar's assassination. He not only accepts it as a necessary measure, but triumphs over it as a righteous retribution. Even when he doubts whether its practical results will not prove worthless, he sets down as clear gain the exultation in the deed, and the exaction of the penalty desired by our hatred and indignation.'t Even this same easy-tempered man' had felt the iron enter into his soul. As we trace the bitterness with which the despotism inspired this mild and amiable heart, we cease to wonder if to men of sterner mould the thrust of the dagger seemed the only reply to the intolerable wrong which they had suffered. It makes a world of difference what his will is,' Cæsar was wont to say of Brutus ; 'whatever he wills, he wills it strongly.' Such wills Cæsar had set in deadly opposition to himself and his policy. 6 Cæsar failed to secure a place for liberty and its life and energy in his system. He has no claim therefore to the title of a great constructive genius. His greatness was as a destroyer; and in what he destroyed there were doubtless vices enough to merit annihilation. The Romans had tried the experiment of a republic organized as a city-state, and ruling a subject-world. The experiment had failed, and failed ignominiously. The Roman Republic in its days of decline wanted strength to protect the civilized world against the barbarians of the North. It wanted elasticity to satisfy the claims of rival classes of its citizens to political power; it could not prevent party contests being decided first by the bludgeon and then by the sword. It wanted, above all, virtue and energy to provide a good government for the subject peoples. It has been well said that the splendour of the great oligarchy is apt to blind our eyes, and to * Ad Att. XIV. i. 2. The hunc ipsum facilem hominem,' quoted below, is from another version of the same story. † Ib. xii. 1. 'Quicquid vult, valde vult.' Ad Att. XIV. i. 1. 2 K 2 lead lead us to forget the amount of human misery implied in its domination:— This contemplation of the Roman world from the heights of the Capitol produces on the historian a certain dazzling effect, which passes from him to the reader. Liberty throws over the scene a magic light, which makes the actors on the immediate stage loom large, and stand displayed by all the shadow in which the rest of the scene is buried. So powerful is the poetic illusion which surrounds aristocracies, that it perpetuates itself even in history. Possessed by the interest of the spectacle, neither reader nor author casts a thought on the price that had to be paid in order that there should be played out in Republican Rome, with the Forum for its theatre, the domestic drama which had for its accessories the slavery of the human race and the devastation of the earth.'* The mere fact of the removal of this weight of oppression which lay on the subjects could not but bring great relief. A Roman despot had no interest in allowing his subordinates to plunder, nor in keeping up the hard line of political distinction which had come to separate Italy and the provinces. The governors were now called to a stern reckoning; the citizenship was again used, as it had been used in the youthful vigour of the Republic, not as the perpetuation of inequality, but as an instrument by which the subjects might be led gradually to incorporate themselves in the cosmopolitan unity of Rome. The military despotism, notwithstanding the intermittent fever-fits of the civil wars, in which its armies fought over the heads of Senate and people for the choice of a master, yet gave long stretches of peace and material prosperity to the Roman world. During these periods the civilization of Rome, already enriched by its acceptance of the heritage of Greece, spread itself over all the surface of the empire. Mommsen attributes it to Cæsar, and not without reason That there is a bridge connecting the past glory of Hellas and Rome with the prouder fabric of modern history; that Western Europe is Romanic and Germanic Europe classic; that the names of Themistocles and Scipio have a very different sound from those of Asoka and Salmanassar: that Homer and Sophocles are not merely like the Vedas and Kalidasa, attractive to the literary botanist, but bloom for us in our own garden.'† A civilization concentrated in the isolated points of cityrepublics could hardly have escaped annihilation in the desolating flood of the barbarian invasion. But the classical * Amadée Thierry, Tableau de l'Empire Romain,' p. 6. civilization, civilization, diffused as the Imperial system diffused it, over a vast area, had more chances of surviving, and exhibited a faint but obstinate vitality in every portion of its organism. The Roman Empire deserves our gratitude for having preserved for us the record of great deeds and great thoughts which it was impotent to create. All this must be freely granted. The downfall of the last free state in the ancient world must be acknowledged to have been, of two deplorable evils, a lesser evil to the world than its continuance or its restoration in its old shape. But none the more should we shut our eyes to the sacrifices by which this relief was bought. All the hopes of freemen, all ideals of political aspiration, all causes worth fighting for, perished along with the Roman Republic. The world enters on a dull period of its history, when all seems 'flat, stale, and unprofitable.' Men might indeed thrive and be comfortable, and grow rich, under the shelter of a power that governed and protected them from above; but to the nobler souls this life of tame subjection was intolerable. The man of original thought and vigorous will found no possibility of an adequate life amongst his peers, no chance of a sphere in which political capacity could breathe freely. Instead of statesmen, we have only professional lawyers and professional soldiers. Art and literature, which so often flourish even amidst the most turbulent storms of a free commonwealth, withered away under the depressing influence of the cosmopolitan despotism.* As in the course of years the tree which Cæsar had planted and Augustus watered bore its full fruits, municipal life shared the fate of political life, and the local magistracies had to be forced as an unwilling burden on the richer citizens. The hopelessness of resistance in presence of the overwhelming power of the Emperor, induced in men's minds the sort of dulness and stupid recklessness, which has been often noticed as the effect of the presence of overwhelming forces of nature in lands of earthquake and hurricane. Ground down by an intolerable weight of taxation, with souls which had lost all nobler interests, no longer capable of managing their own concerns or of striking a blow in defence of their own hearths, the subjects of Diocletian or of Theodosius stagnated in helpless degradation, and all the horrors of the barbarian invasion and all the darkness of the Middle Ages were not a price too heavy to pay for the infusion of fresher and stronger blood, and the revival of the sense of dignity in mankind. Meantime the purer and higher minds took refuge from the A glance at the series of Roman coins from Augustus to Justinian gives a striking view of the process of decadence. hopelessness |