Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/603

 10 s. VIL JUNE 22, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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to modern politics, and on the whole effectively. Thus we hear of Pompey's durbar, of the Tammany Hall of Rome in 58 B.C., and of the great Pogrom in Asia Minor in 88 B.C. The figures who dominate the closing years of the Republic are the subject of striking character sketches. We realize better than we ever did before that Clodius, for all his rascality, was an admirable organizer whose manoeuvres did something substantial for the good of Rome, as well as the egotistic cackling of that great and timorous orator Cicero. Lucullus appears not merely as the

Eromoter of good dinners, but also as " the Napo- jon of the last century of the Republic." Pompey, "the typical grand seigneur," is set down we think correctly as essentially a weak man in spite of his fine qualities.

Caesar is, of course, the chief figure, and we can- not object to the remarks concerning Mommsen's ''fanatical admiration for his hero." According to Signor Ferrero, Caesar was always impelled to action by immediate motives was, in fact, an opportunist. The same might be said of the majority of states- men, ancient and modern, whose career has been at all lengthy. We think it, however, fair to say that Caesar was "a persistent intriguer and unscrupulous man of business, as daring in his designs as he was remorseless in their execution," but one who never lost a certain caution, preventing irreparable blun- ders. Signor Ferrero dwells on his talents for literature and oratory, emphasizing that complete- ness of ability which is Caesar's great gift, and has dazzled his critics into making a demi-god of him. Caesar was best qualified of any man to rule Rome at the time of his death, but we cannot agree with the authorities who think his assassinators had no genuine patriotic feeling. It is shown here that in 44 B.C., as king in all but name, Caesar relaxed his authority on many points where he should have been firm ; he would not listen to advice, and he allowed his friends to steal public money wholesale. Caesar, Signor Ferrero explains more than once, was not a great statesman in spite of his splendid and varied endowments : "Under twentieth-century conditions he might have become a captain of industry in the United States, or a great pioneer or mine-owner or empire-builder in South Africa, or a scientist or man of letters in Europe with a world-wide in- fluence over his contemporaries." We do not see much in this fanciful reference to modern con- ditions ; there is more in the idea of the author that Caesar is to be regarded as the Archdestroyer, though it may be said that he never had a real chance to consolidate the fabric of Italian society. Signor Ferrero points out that for long after Caesar's death the forces of dissolution were far from ex- hausted. It took a long course of civil war to establish Augustus in the principate.

We notice that Caesar's remark to Brutus, " Tu quoque, Brute, fili mi," current in a shorter form, is rejected by Signor Ferrero as " merely a piece of sentiment tacked on to the fantastic legend which makes Brutus the child of Caesar."

In Brutus our author does not believe. He "was one of those spoilt children of fortune who succeed in winning general admiration for achievements they have not yet performed." There is a just account of the merits and defects of Cicero. We know too much to admire him; indeed, with all the tortuous turns of his mind divulged to us in his letters, we are almost in the position, as Jebb says, of his valet, and he is certainly no heroic figure. A note (ii. 105) makes the ingenious suggestion that

the scarcity of letters of his for the year 52 B.C. is due to the fact that his correspondence was pub- lished under Augustus, and subjected to a censor- ship which removed severe strictures on Caesar's conduct. We do not know why, in the excellent index which adds much to the value of the book, the orator is called M. Tullio Cicero. There are a few other obvious traces that the book is a transla- tion, e.g., a clumsy expression like "most best- known ; but on the whole Mr. Zimmern has done his work very well, preserving to a high degree the somewhat florid rhetoric of the author. The book as history is far in advance of Fronde's 'Caesar' which covers roughly the same ground, and it shares with Froude that vividness which makes history attractive to the ordinary man. We look forward with pleasure to the perusal of the author's later volumes, which are to take us down to the break up of the Empire. Here the author will find decadence to portray worthy of a disciple of Lombroso.

The Law of Hammurabi and Moses. Translated

from the German of H. Grimme by the Rev.

W. T. Pilter. (S.P.C.K.)

THE S.P.C.K. are to be congratulated on this little book, which will give the ordinary reader a good idea of the main features of the great code of Baby- lonian law which preceded and was contemporary with the Mosaic system. We find in the first place a translation of the brochure of Prof. Grimme on ' The Law of Hammurabi and Moses,' in which he- comes to the conclusion that whatever is common to the two codes is traceable to a common old Semitic source. In the second part the translator developes the history and archaeology of the subject as shown in the Patriarchal law, the culture of early Israel, and the system of Levirate marriage. The final chapter illustrates by the present law of Palestine a section of Hammurabi's Code ; and by way of appendix there is a translation of these laws of Hammurabi which Prof. Grimme compares in detail with the Mosaic laws of ' The Book of the Covenant.'

The date of Hammurabi whose stela (column) was discovered in 1901 by French investigators may be placed before B.C. 2100, according to our German authority: this alone is enough to give great interest to his laws. That he is the Amraphel of the Bible one of the four kings of the East successfully attacked by Abraham is tentatively put forward ; but we have seen so many of these identifications made and denied with equal con- fidence that we cannot pay much attention to such guesses. Abraham, we have heard it said, was an Arab sheikh, and it seems that the Patriarchs lived under a dispensation suggesting the Code of Ham- murabi, who represented the power of Babylon, at that time a far-reaching empire of great commercial prosperity. This Code, however, is a record of advanced civilization rather than primitive thought, and it is pointed out that the Mosaic enactments of the later Pentateuch, differing from those under which the Patriarchs lived, are probably founded on the old customary law of Semitic tribes, which is by no means the law of Hammurabi. And of this Semitic law there remain traces among Bedouin tribes of to-day. Such are the paradoxes and sur- prises of the unchanging East.

Mr. Filter's essay is an able amplification and commentary on Prof. Grimme's. It is well " docu- mented" by references at the bottom of the page to