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CAE parted company after Pharsalus. He wisely and generously threw into the fire the correspondence found in the tents of the Pompeian leaders, and thus quashed most effectually all hopes and fears of political prosecutions. Nothing was more foreign to his feelings than cruelty and vindictiveness. He took a pleasure in pardoning. At the beginning of the war he dismissed all captive officers; even after Pharsalus and Thapsus he pardoned freely those who submitted themselves. He shed tears at the sight of Pompey's head, and regretted that by Cato's suicide he had been denied the satisfaction of pardoning him also. When Pompey's statue was pulled down, he caused it to be re-erected, and persevered in this spirit of generous conciliation, though he met with disaffection from both parties, which, unable to attack him openly, found a vent in satires, placards, popular manifestations, and even conspiracies. Cæsar was, de facto, master of the state. His will was law; but it was necessary to find a constitutional form for the actual order of things. The most ready title was that of dictator. A dictator superseded all the republican magistrates, and swayed in his sole hand the whole power of the state. Cæsar took this title, first for a term of years, and at last for life; yet he considered it neither sufficient nor desirable. It was not wise to allow the idea to take root, that any of the republican offices had an existence and rights independent of the new ruler. At the establishment of the republic the royal prerogative had been broken up, and divided among the several republican magistrates. The most natural process, therefore, of restoring the royal authority, was to combine the several titles and functions, and to invest the monarch with them. Cæsar possessed already the highest religious office. As pontifex maximus he was the head of the state religion; he took the title of consul for five and then for ten years; the leadership in the senate he occupied by assuming the title of First of the senate; the power of the censorship, and with it the right of making and unmaking senators and knights, was given him as "præfectus morum;" the tribunician power also was joined to this accumulation of offices, so that he was in almost every respect the representative and bearer of the public authority, and of the majesty of the state. But all these offices were originally and essentially municipal offices of the city of Rome. The civil and military power over a province of the republic might be added by special enactments, but was inherent in none of them. This civil and military authority, comprised in the name "Imperium" Cæsar now took permanently for himself with the title "Imperator," prefixed to his name. From it were henceforth to emanate the delegated powers of the provincial governors appointed by him, and responsible to him alone. This last change was the greatest of all. It was by the oppression of the provinces that the Roman oligarchy had ruined their unhappy subjects, had corrupted the freedom of the Roman people, had depraved and degraded themselves, and had called up the avenger. In the Imperium, therefore, we justly find the cause, the essence, and the title of the Roman empire.

A necessary consequence of this change was the depression of the city of Rome, who, from being the mistress of the whole republic, became the first municipality of the empire. The crowds of the Roman forum were henceforth stripped of the privilege of sending forth governors into the provinces, and taxing them according to their will and pleasure. The popular elections of consuls, prætors, and other officers continued, indeed, under certain limitations, which obliged the electors to choose the candidates nominated by Cæsar; but these officers had no concurrent authority with the emperor; they were his legates and servants, not those of the Roman people. This was the most effectual stop that Cæsar could put to the intolerable violence with which the mob and hired gangs of desperadoes had, in the last years of the republic, disgraced and undermined what was once the liberty of the people. The forum and the field of Mars became peaceful, when influence, power, and wealth were no longer to be obtained there; the great Roman people, coaxed and flattered and bribed by all parties, not less by the unprincipled demagogue than by the virtuous Cato, became a despised and impotent rabble. When Cæsar ascended to power, the infamous practice of distributing corn gratis, or at a low or nominal price, at the expense of the provinces, had grown to such fearful dimensions that it swallowed up one-fifth of the whole revenue of the state. Nothing shows more clearly the altered position of Cæsar, than that he was enabled at one blow to strike off 170,000 from a list of 320,000 public pensioners, and to make poverty the only claim of those who continued to receive a similar largess. He took care at the same time by establishing a broad system of emigration and colonization, to relieve the capital from the idle crowd that had flocked thither to participate in the many privileges of Roman citizens, and at the same time to restore new life to those ancient seats of industry, Carthage and Corinth.

But the wretchedness of the poor was not more ominous of decay than the mad extravagance of the rich. Cæsar, in the spirit of the time, vainly endeavoured to restrain this by severe sumptuary laws. He also tried to counteract the alarming increase of slaves, and the corresponding decrease of freemen. He ordered that of the herdsmen employed on the extensive Italian grazing farms, a proportion of at least one-third should be freemen. He attempted to restrict the hoarding of money, and by several other well-meant but fruitless laws, fondly hoped to restore an independent and healthy middle class. The most questionable perhaps of these, was one by which he cancelled a part of existing debts; he acted in this respect in the spirit of the old Roman democracy, which seemed to be justified by the ruinous and illegal rate of interest which the misfortunes of the times had in part produced. We are amazed at the activity he displayed as a legislator. No department of the state escaped his attention. He established the finances and the taxation on a sound and equitable footing; he issued the most comprehensive laws for the government of the provinces, the reform of the municipal towns, the administration of justice, the establishment of an effective police, the want of which had delivered the highways of Italy, and even the streets of Rome, into the hands of countless robbers and assassins. He contemplated, and in part executed public works, on an astounding scale of magnitude. Buildings, roads, canals, ports, works of drainage and irrigation, gave employment to crowds of impoverished workmen. The interests of science and literature were not forgotten by a man, who, if he had not been a statesman and a soldier, might have taken the highest place in several departments of learning. He founded the first public library at Rome, invited scholars by the offer of rewards and privileges to the capital, and with the assistance of the astronomer, Sosigenes, introduced the Egyptian solar year in place of the old Roman lunar year, which, through the ignorance of the "pontifices," and the meddling of political parties, had come to be nearly three months in advance of the real time. His genius rose even to contemplate a codification of the law, a work which his untimely death threw back for nearly six centuries, to be at last undertaken by far inferior hands.

In such an activity as this we must recognize and admire the extraordinary genius, worthy of the exalted position to which he had aspired, of regenerating his country. But he never succeeded in gaining the loyal affection of the aristocracy, which he had deprived of power. The senate, though decimated by the civil wars, and purged of the uncompromising opponents of monarchy, was still the centre of unconciliated animosity, though outwardly the loyalty of the nobility seemed to know no bounds. Their servile spirit had followed up Cæsar's victories with a succession of decrees in which their ingenuity was completely exhausted, to devise honours and titles for the new master. They called him the "Father of his country," they voted public thanksgivings for his victories, they changed the name of the month in which he was born from Quinctilis into Julius, erected his statues in the temples, and declared him a god. A laurel crown, a royal robe of state, an elevated gold throne were to mark him out as their lord and master; a body guard of senators was to watch for his safety. Nothing seemed left but to crown the king whom they had accepted. Whether it was Cæsar's wish to assume the title of Rex, may still be considered doubtful. He felt, on the one side, that he already possessed the reality of power, and that the title of king, from old time proscribed and odious to the Roman ear, might add to the difficulty of his position, without increasing his real strength. Yet he can hardly have been a stranger to the several devices by which his friends, especially M. Antony, evidently endeavoured to sound the public feeling on that subject. At the festival of Lupercalia, M. Antony offered Cæsar a crown; but the people showed their displeasure, and Cæsar rejected the proffered gift. Rumours, however, were rife that Cæsar meditated to take the title of king in all countries out of Italy. He was making preparations for a war with Parthia, and the Sibylline books contained a prophecy that the Parthians could only be conquered by a king. These rumours, whether true or false, gave a colour of republican virtue to a number of men,