gance, his resolution with harshness; if he becomes restless, and fretful, and impatient of contradiction; if his conduct is marked with contempt for mankind rather than with indulgence to their weakness, it is to this impure source that the melancholy change is to be traced.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHARACTER OF CÆSAR'S POLICY IN ROME. HE ASSUMES THE DICTATORSHIP FOR THE THIRD TIME.-HE QUELLS A MUTINY AMONG HIS SOLDIERS. THE SENATORIAL PARTY COLLECT THEIR FORCES IN AFRICA.-CATO LANDS AT CYRENE, CROSSES THE LIBYAN DESERT, AND JOINS THE FORCES OF SCIPIO AT UTICA.— CAMPAIGN IN AFRICA DECIDED BY THE VICTORY OF CESAR AT THAPSUS.-DISPERSION OF THE REPUBLICAN FORCES, AND DEATH OF THEIR PRINCIPAL LEADERS.-CATO UNDERTAKES TO DEFEND UTICA.-HIS ADHERENTS ABANDON THE CONTEST.-HE COMMITS SUICIDE. THE DICTATORSHIP FOR TEN YEARS AND OTHER DISTINCTIONS SHOWERED UPON CESAR.-ON HIS RETURN TO ROME HE CELEBRATES FOUR TRIUMPHS, AND GRATIFIES THE PEOPLE WITH SHOWS AND LARGESSES.-DEDICATION OF THE JULIAN FORUM.-THE WAR RENEWED BY CNEUS POMPEIUS IN SPAIN. HE IS SUPPORTED BY CÆSAR'S DISCONTENTED SOLDIERS.-CÆSAR'S FINAL CAMPAIGN, AND DECISIVE VICTORY AT MUNDA.-OF ALL THE SENATORIAL LEADERS SEXTUS ALONE REMAINS IN ARMS.-DISTURBANCES IN SYRIA.

THE

Cæsar arrives

nobles make

their submis

sion to him.

SEPT. A. U. 707.-APRIL, A. u. 709.

HE dictator landed at Tarentum in the month of September, of the year 707. He arrived laden with the spoils or presents of eastern cities and potentates; he in Italy. The had carried off in every quarter the treasures which had been contributed for his rival's use; and to punish the city of Tyre for its devotion to the Pompeian family, he had rifled the great temple of Melcarth or Hercules, not inferior in fame and opulence to the same god's most western shrine at Gades.' He accepted golden crowns, a decorous. expression for large donatives in money, from the chieftains who solicited his favour. Two things, he used to say, were needful for getting and keeping 1 Dion, xlii. 49.

power, soldiers and money, and each of these was to be gained by means of the other. The immense sums he thus amassed were destined to satisfy the demands of his veterans, to provide for the expenses of his triumph, and to amuse the populace of the city with spectacles, largesses and buildings, on a scale of unexampled magnificence. In reassuming the government of Italy, Antonius had received express orders to prevent any partizans of the senate from landing in the Peninsula. Many of the nobles were anxious to make their submission to the new government. They trusted to recover thereby their houses and estates, and escape the proscription and confiscation now generally apprehended. But Cæsar, in the unsettled state of men's minds at Rome, could not admit into the city another possible element of discord.' He insisted that the deserters from the Pompeian standard should repair to him personally at Alexandria; and during his residence in Egypt there were many such who sought him in his quarters, and devoted themselves with professions of zeal to his service. Cicero alone, whose escape from Italy had apparently been connived at by Antonius at an earlier period, now obtained permission to establish himself at Brundisium. Further he was not allowed to proceed, and he remained there for many months in a state of great perplexity and apprehension. On the one hand, cut off from the enjoyment of his estates, and debarred the exercise of his talents in the forum, he was reduced, together no doubt with many others of the proud nobility of Rome, to considerable pecuniary embarrassments;" on the other, he had the mortification to learn that his brother Quintus, who had abandoned his general and patron at the

1 Cic. ad Att. xi. 7.: "Ad me misit Antonius exemplum Cæsaris ad se literarum, in quibus erat, se audisse Catonem et L. Metellum in Italiam venisse, Romæ ut essent palam: id sibi non placere, ne qui motus ex eo fierent; prohiberique omnes Italia nisi quorum ipse causam cognovisset."

2 Cicero urged that he had received an invitation from Dolabella at Antonius's instigation: he goes on to say, "Tum ille edixit ita ut me exciperet et Lælium nominatim. Quod sane nollem. Poterat enim sine nomine res ipsa excipi."

3 Cic. ad Att. xi. 11. 13.

commencement of the war, had now thrown himself at Cæsar's feet, and was trying to regain the favour he had forfeited by calumniating his more scrupulous relative.' Still shaken by every breath of rumour, which at one moment resounded with the successes of the conqueror in the east, and echoed at the next the vaunting anticipations of the republican champion in Africa, the vacillating statesman awaited the result of events in uneasy seclusion. But when he heard of Cæsar's arrival on the coast, he finally yielded to the impulse to which he had been long inclined. He immediately came forward in hopes of being the first to greet the new ruler of the commonwealth, while Cæsar was generously desirous of sparing him the humiliation of mingling with the crowd who were hastening upon the same business. Received with affability, and treated with a show of confidence, Cicero retired with more cheerfulness than he had long experienced to the shades of his Tusculan villa; and whether there or at Rome, his placing himself under the protection of the new government gave it some colour of authority in the eyes of his clients and admirers.

His firmness in protecting them against

3

The conduct of his own friends in the city was a subject of greater anxiety to Cæsar, on assuming his place at the head of affairs, than the intrigues of his adversaries. He rebuked the turbulent proceedings of Dolabella, but abstained from punishing one with whose services he could not well dispense. He maintained firmly the principles of his own recent enactment regarding the debtors' claims; nor could they dispute the

the cupidity of his own party.

4

1 Cic. ad Att. xi. 8.: "Quintus misit filium non solum sui deprecatorem sed etiam oppugnatorem mei" (comp. 12-14.).

2 Cic. ad Att. xi. 10. (xii. Kal. Feb. a. u. 707.): "De Africanis rebus longe alia nobis, ac tu scripseras, nuntiantur. Nihil enim firmius esse dicunt, nihil paratius. Accedit Hispania et alienata Italia; legionum nec vis eadem nec voluntas; urbanæ res perditæ."

3 Plut. Cic. 39.

* Dion's apparent statement to the contrary (xlii. 51.) refers undoubtedly to the compromise which Cæsar effected between the debtors and their creditors in his first dictatorship. Drumann, iii. 567., anm. 67.

fairness of an arbitrator who replied to their clamours by declaring that no man in Rome was more deeply interested in the terms of the compromise than himself. On the other hand, he winked at the private irregularities by which Antonius had disgraced his leader's party hardly less than his own character; nor would he listen to the counsels of those who exhorted him to issue a decree of proscription against his enemies. It may be doubted whether his sentence of confiscation extended further than to the estates of Pompeius himself and his two sons. In making these examples, he probably wished to stigmatize the family of his personal rival as fomenters of a mere private quarrel, and thus to distinguish their cause from that of a great national party. But it was impossible for the citizens, when they saw the house of the illustrious Pompeius on the Palatine sold for Cæsar's own profit, not to attribute such an action to cupidity or vindictiveness. Antonius, with his usual reckless prodigality, outbade every competitor; but he was surprised and offended when he found himself compelled to pay down the stipulated price. He deemed that his services, both past and in prospect, might command the trifling indulgence of release from a paltry debt. He found, however, that his patron was in earnest, and prudently submitted to the affront.

3

It is impossible not to admire the lofty idea which Cæsar conceived of the claims and duties of the monarchy he sought to establish. He felt that he occupied his exalt- Cæsar's policy ed eminence by virtue of his acknowledged supe- services of men in securing the riority to all around him in strength and sagacity of all parties. of character. Obedience he demanded as submission, not to his own arbitrary caprice, but to the principles of reason. He claimed that his word should be law, as the recognized ex

1 Dion, xlii. 50.

2 Cic. de Off. i. 14., Tusc. i. 35., ad Att. xi. 20.; Val. Max. vi. 2. 11.; Dion, xlii. 50.

3 Cic. Philipp. ii. 25. The authority for this part of the anecdote is surely suspicious. That the estates of the Pompeii were sold and purchased partly by Antonius is stated by Dion, xlv. 9.