sponsible for the exercise of his delegated authority. Accordingly, he disbanded his veterans, or despatched the legions to distant quarters. He even dismissed a band of Spanish auxiliaries whom he had retained about him for a time as a chosen body-guard.' When his personal friends among the senators and knights offered to arm a select corps of their own number, to watch over the safety of his person, he waived the honour of their services, in the confident assurance that the state had more need of him than he of the state. And such was the impression of its general beneficence which his administration had created in almost every quarter, that he might fully depend upon it to protect him at least from any public enemy. No precaution he well knew could guarantee his life from the insidious attack of the private assassin: but he declared that it was at any time better to die than to live always in fear of dying."

1 Suet. Jul. 86.; Appian, B. C. ii. 109.

2 Plut. Cæs. 57.

* Plut. 7. c. ; Appian, B. C. ii. 108. : ἀμφὶ δὲ αὐτῷ στρατιωτικὸν οὐκ ἦν, οὐ γὰρ δορυφόροις ἠρέσκετο, τῇ δὲ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ὑπηρέσια μόνῃ.

CHAPTER XXI.

TRANQUILLITY OF ROME DURING CÆSAR'S ABSENCE IN SPAIN.-CHARACTER OF HIS PRINCIPAL FRIENDS: BALBUS, OPPIUS, MATIUS, HIRtius.—their EPICUREAN PRINCIPLES.-CÆSAR HIMSelf a free-thinker, but addicted to SUPERSTITION. HIS RETURN TO ROME, AND LAST TRIUMPH.-HARSH TREATMENT OF LABERIUS.-HONOURS AND DIGNITIES SHOWERED UPON CÆSAR.-HE RECEIVES THE APPELLATION OF PATER PATRIÆ, AND THE PRÆNOMEN IMPERATORIS: IS ELECTED CONSUL FOR TEN YEARS, AND CREATED DICTATOR FOR LIFE, ETC.HIS MAGNIFICENT SCHEMES FOR WORKS OF PUBLIC UTILITY.-HE MANIFESTS SYMPTOMS OF INTOLERABLE PRIDE.-CÆSAR'S URBANITY OF CHARACTER.-HE VISITS CICERO AT HIS VILLA.-CICERO EXHORTS HIM TO MAKE WAR ON THE PARTHIANS.-HE PREPARES TO SET OUT ON AN EXPEDITION OF FOREIGN CONQUEST, AND APPOINTS MAGISTRATES FOR THE INTERVAL OF HIS INTENDED ABSENCE. CESAR APPEARS TO COVET THE TITLE OF KING. THE PEOPLE EXPRESS THEIR DISAPPROBATION. HE REFUSES THE DIADEM.-A CONSPIRACY IS FORMED AGAINST HIS LIFE BY MEN OF BOTH PARTIES IN THE STATE.THEY PLACE BRUTUS AT THEIR HEAD.-ASSASSINATION OF CÆSAR ON THE

IDES OF MARCH, BENEATH THE Statue of pompeius (a. u. 709—March 710. B. C. 45, 44.).

THE

absence in

Spain.

HE prudent mildness with which the government was administered during Cæsar's absence in Spain had mainState of Rome tained perfect tranquillity in Rome during a peduring Caesar's riod of unusual anxiety. At the beginning of the year Cæsar had been elected consul for the fourth time, and without a colleague. The old republican office of prætor had been also dispensed with. Lepidus, as master of the horse to the dictator, convened the senate, and presided, with the assistance of six or eight prefects, over the administration of affairs in the city: the higher magistracies were all in abeyance, excepting those of the tribunes of the people and the ædiles. Cæsar had prudently taken with him

Resentment of

against him.

Dolabella, and had invited Antonius also to accompany him. But the latter smarted under the Antonius blow his arrogance and cupidity had recently received from the dictator, and refused to leave Italy in his train.' It does not appear whether he was entrusted with a share in the government, but his mere presence in Rome was enough to keep alive the apprehensions of the most timid of the malcontents, who still foreboded that Cæsar's final triumph in Spain would be the signal for dropping the mask of clemency, and plunging into a career of confiscation and blood.

The

On mature reflection, however, Antonius seems to have felt that it would be imprudent to indulge in animosity towards his patron, from whose generosity he was anxious to obtain the honour of the consulship. He left Rome with the intention of overtaking him. Taking the route of Gaul, he did not proceed further than Narbo, from whence, pleading the insecurity of the roads, he suddenly returned. It was now confidently surmised by Cicero that he came with authority to execute the long delayed vengeance of the conqueror. fact seems to have been simply that having lately taken to wife the notorious Fulvia, who had been left a widow successively by Clodius and Curio, he thus abridged his absence out of passion or jealousy. He possibly may have had some apprehensions lest the government should take advantage of his absence to restore to their owners, or sell for the benefit of the state, the estates of the unfortunate Pompeians, which he had contrived to grasp. Another rumour arose that he had heard in Gaul of Cæsar's defeat and death, and of the impending restoration of the republican party.

Though Lepidus was nominally at the head of the administration of affairs, it would seem that his influence was less

1 Antonius abstained from taking part in Cæsar's campaigns either in Africa or Spain. Plut. Anton. 10.; Cic. Philipp. ii. 29.: "Tam bonus gladiator rudem tam cito accepisti?"

2 Cic. Philipp. ii. 30.

* Cic. Philipp. ii. 31., ad Att. xii. 19.

5 Plut. l. c.

8 Cic. l. c.

6 Cic. ad Att. xii. 18.

The dictator's personal friends: Lepi

dus.

regarded than that of others among his colleagues. The wealth and dignity of his family, his descent from the chief who had been the first to attempt the overthrow of the Sullan ascendency, the favour which his brother, Æmilius Paullus, had acquired with Cæsar by his well-timed defection from the ranks of the Pompeians, had all contributed to raise him nominally to the first place among the dictator's adherents, and elevated him eventually to a position of still greater eminence. But it was through the channel of private friendship that the goodwill of the sovereign of the Roman world was to be conciliated, and it was those who enjoyed his personal intimacy and confidence who were felt to be most influential in the distribution of honours and favours. It may serve to illustrate the character of the central figure itself if we pass rapidly in review the personages who were grouped most closely around him.

lio.

Of these the most conspicuous in the history of the times was C. Asinius Pollio, who had first brought himself into C. Asinius Pol- notice by assailing the tribune C. Cato for his violent proceedings in favour of the senate. He assumed this attitude perhaps in the first instance for the sake of notoriety only; but from that moment he attached himself more and more closely to Cæsar. He attended the proconsul in some of his campaigns in Gaul, and formed one of the scanty band of devoted followers with which he crossed the Rubicon. When Cæsar had so rapidly traversed and conquered Italy, he sent Pollio into Sicily and Africa as lieutenant to Curio. It was under his command that the remnant of that unfortunate expedition had been conveyed home. Throughout the campaigns of Epirus and Thessaly he served by the side of his patron, and was present at the battle of Pharsalia. His fidelity and talents were next charged with the administration of Cæsar's government in Rome, in which he had the merit of opposing Dolabella's seditious movement.' He served again in a military capacity both in Africa and Spain. Pollio was one of the most finished specimens of

1 Plut. Anton. 9.

His great

the man of business and literature combined. work on the history of his own times was the result of the leisure of his latter years. He strode with a bold and firm step over the volcanic ashes of the civil wars.1 Critical in his judgment and impartial in his sentiments, he reflected no less severely on the misrepresentations of Cæsar's personal narrative, than on the exaggerations of Cicero's invectives. But in the most active period of his political and military career he distinguished himself as an accomplished orator, and put forward no mean pretensions to poetical celebrity. The encomiums of Catullus and his youthful admirer Horace represent his character to us in an amiable light: but it was the amiableness of a practical eclectic, of one whose good-humoured selfishness found no difficulty in accommodating itself to the tempers and habits of men of very different principles." His taste was refined and fastidious: the style even of Cicero and Livy did not escape his animadversions. Subsequent critics represented his own as rough and jejune, formed, as it were, rather in the school of the Appii and Menenii than of his more polished Augustan contemporaries.*

3

If Pollio was a familiar associate of Cæsar, Oppius seems to have been one of the most confidential of his friends. It was to him, together with Balbus, that the dictator entrusted the management of his private

1 Hor. Od. ii. 1. 3.:

"Incedis per ignes Suppositos cineri doloso."

C. Oppius.

This work, which was in fact a history of the Civil Wars, commenced with the consulship of Afranius and Metellus, A. U. 694, that is, with the formation of the triumvirate :

"Motum ex Metello consule civicum."

2 His popularity in society may be estimated from the fact recorded of him that he was the first to introduce the practice of an author's reciting his own works to an audience of private acquaintance. Senec. Controv. iv. pref.

Senec. Suasor. vi. vii.; Quintil. i. 5. 56., viii. 1. 3. He discovered Patavinity, or the provincialisms of Patavium, in the language of the great historian, who was born there.

4 Tac. Dial. de Orat. 21.