Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/394

348 mentioned in Cicero's correspondence. Their interest was in truth eclipsed by the presence of the great problem which called on Cæsar and the Romans for solution. The world stood at the parting of two ways; Rome was destined, for good or for evil, to absorb into her citizenship all civilised men; and it rested with Cæsar to decide what should be the nature of the new Cosmopolitan State. The Roman Empire might be organised on one of two systems. The first was the obvious and easy expedient, familiar to the world since the days of the Pyramids, of a despotism, dependent only on the swords of a professional soldiery. This required nothing but a trained army and a skilful general for its inception. Its results were equally sure: the periodical recurrence of civil war whenever the soldiers could not agree on a chief; occasional stretches of decent government when accident brought a skilful administrator to the head of affairs; wild freaks of tyranny when the chances of the succession turned out unluckily; and throughout a steady degradation of character, the loss of manhood, and the destruction of the capacity for self-government in the civilised human being. All hopes of freemen, all ideals of political aspiration, all causes worth fighting for, perished along with the Roman Republic, and the world entered on a period of its history, in which its life seems to be "weary, state, flat, and unprofitable." The unmixed despotism which Cæsar established was somewhat tempered by the wisdom of Augustus; yet the essential