The Historians' History of the World 05

The boy was not in such a hurry to come to Rome. He was in the very neighbourhood of Italy in which Cæsar had most endeared himself to his veterans. These negotiations were entered into even at this time with the object of ascertaining the colour of their minds. Young Cæsar then conducted his journey slowly to Tarracina and thence to Rome which he entered in the opening days of May before Antony had had time to return. We still possess to-day in the Museo Chiaramonti a marble bust in a fit condition to bring before our present eye the impression made by the man who was to be so mighty a ruler. The features are distinguished and fine, but energetic too; almost even disquieting.

His first steps in Rome concerned the will of Cæsar. Although his family, and notably his stepfather, strongly dissuaded him, he declared fearlessly, with a premature confidence in his determination that is striking, that his intention was to bid for Cæsar’s inheritance, and this in the presence of Caius Antonius who had taken over the affairs of a town prætor since the flight of Brutus; shortly after this, in about the middle of May, he was presented to the people as Cæsar by the people’s tribune, Lucius Antonius, a brother of Caius. The young Cæsar hereby pledged himself to the Roman people to exclude his adoptive father’s legates, nor could he hope that Mark Antony would be prepared to deliver up to him that adoptive father’s treasure.

Mark Antony indeed after his return did everything in his power to load young Cæsar’s position with difficulty. His conduct to the son of his friend was loveless it is true, yet we can hardly deny that it is explicable. Two things there were especially which separated their interests: Antony would not and could not pay back Cæsar’s treasure to the legitimate heir—equally impossible was it for him to divide the conduct of his party with a boy of nineteen. At the very first personal encounter between the two in the gardens of Pompey, which were then occupied by Antony, the incompatibility of aims which separated them came clearly to light, and the attempts of friends common to them both to bring the two rivals closer to each other could not avail to avert an open breach.

Rightly did Antony oppose the illegal bid of his rival for the tribunate of the people, but nothing but petty spite was the source of his refusal to allow the confirmation by the curiæ of the perfectly valid adoption by Cæsar. Moreover, the young Cæsar, in order to curry favour with the people, had declared his readiness to fulfil a vow of the dictator and to grant games in honour of the victory of Cæsar. Caius Matius and other friends of the dictator gave him every support at these games, from the 20th to the 30th of July; but Mark Antony, who had no power to prohibit games, succeeded in preventing a golden chair with a coronal from being publicly set up in honour of Julius Cæsar. To the friend of Cæsar this Cæsar worship appeared at once of doubtful taste, a worship which his youthful rival sought to organise with all the outward show of an agitator; and before the decisive sentence of the consul the private man had at last to yield. But the later Augustus tells with peculiar satisfaction in his memoirs that, suddenly, in the course of the games, a mighty comet with a long tail was seen, and that it was greeted by the multitude as the star of Cæsar. The star of the Julii was again in the ascendant; and the son who had reared a brazen statue, surmounted with a star of gold, to his father in the temple of Venus, the mother of his stock, secretly hoped to attract the rays from this auspicious talisman upon his own future. A comet always stirs up the imagination of the people mightily, it signifies war; so a contemporary poet mourns: Comets full of foreboding never shone so frequent. This time the people were right; the figure of Nemesis for the murder of Cæsar stood in the doorway.