The Historians' History of the World 05

The judgment of the ancients upon this famous deed varied according to their interests and predilections. If, indeed, the republic had been permanently re-established, its saviour would have been hailed, perhaps, with unmingled applause, and commanded the favour of the Romans to a late posterity. Cicero, though he might have shrunk from participating in the deed, deemed it expedient to justify it, and saluted its authors in exulting accents, as tyrannicides and deliverers. But the courtiers of the later Cæsars branded it as a murder, or passed it over in significant silence. Virgil, who ventures to pay a noble compliment to Cato, and glories in the eternal punishment of Catiline, bestows not a word on the exploit of Brutus. Even Lucan, who beholds in it a stately sacrifice to the gods, admits the detestation with which it was generally regarded. Augustus, indeed, wisely tolerant, allowed Messalla to speak in praise of Cassius; but Tiberius would not suffer Cremutius to call him with impunity the last of the Romans. Velleius, Seneca, and, above all, Valerius Maximus, express their abhorrence of the murder in energetic and manly tones. It was the mortification, they said, of the conspirators at their victim’s superiority, their disappointment at the slowness with which the stream of honours flowed to them, their envy, their vanity, anything rather than their patriotism, that impelled them to it. The Greek writers, who had less of prejudice to urge them to extenuate the deed, speak of it without reserve as a monstrous and abominable crime. Again, while Tacitus casts a philosophic glance on the opinions of others, and abstains from passing any judgment of his own, Suetonius allows that Cæsar was, indeed, justly slain, but makes no attempt to absolve his assassins. From Livy and Florus, and the epitomiser of Trogus, we may infer that the sentiments expressed by Plutarch were the same which the most reasonable of the Romans generally adopted; he declared that the disorders of the body politic required the establishment of monarchy, and that Cæsar was sent by providence, as the mildest physician, for its conservation. On the whole, when we consider the vices of the times and the general laxity of principle justly ascribed to the later ages of Greek and Roman heathenism, it is interesting to observe how little sympathy was extended by antiquity to an exploit which appealed so boldly to it.b

The following extract from Suetonius’ Lives of the Cæsars

is our chief source of knowledge as to Cæsar’s personality.

He is said to have been tall, of a fair complexion, round limbed, rather full faced, with eyes black and lively, very healthful, except that, towards the end of his life, he would suddenly fall into fainting-fits, and be frightened in his sleep. He was likewise twice seized with the falling sickness in the time of battle. He was so nice in the care of his person that he had not only the hair of his head cut and his face shaved with great exactness, but likewise had the hair on other parts of the body plucked out by the roots, a practice with which some persons upbraidingly charged him. His baldness gave him much uneasiness, having often found himself upon that account exposed to the ridicule of his enemies. He therefore used to bring forward his hair from the crown of his head; and of all the honours conferred upon him by the senate and people, there was none which he either accepted or used with greater pleasure than the right of wearing constantly a laurel crown. It is said that he was particular in his dress. For he used the latus clavus

[129] with fringes about the wrists, and always had it girded about him but loosely. This circumstance gave origin to the expression of Sulla, who often advised the nobility to beware of “the loose-coated boy.”

He first lived in Subura in a small house; but, after his advancement to the pontificate, in a house belonging to the state in the Sacred way. Many writers say that he affected neatness in his person, and niceness in his entertainments: that he entirely took down again a country-seat, near the grove of Aricia, which he erected from the foundation, and finished at a vast expense, because it had not exactly suited his fancy, though he was at that time poor and in debt; and that he carried about in his expeditions marble pavement for his tent.

They likewise report that he invaded Britain in hopes of finding pearls, the bigness of which he would compare together, and examine the weight by poising them in his hand; that he would purchase at any cost gems, carved works, and pictures, executed by the eminent masters of antiquity; and that he would give for handsome young slaves a price so extravagant that he was ashamed to have it entered in the diary of his expenses.