[Born at Rome, B.C. 100. Died there, B.C. 44. Aged 56.]
The mightiest amongst the mighty of men. At the outset of his career he
served in Asia, where he won a civic wreath. Subsequently made Consul in
Rome (B.C. 59); and, at the close of his term of office, appointed to
the government of Gaul--which country in nine years he wholly subjugated
to Roman rule. His invasion of Britain is amongst the earliest
recollections of the English schoolboy. The renowned Commentaries of
Julius Cæsar graphically narrate these deeds. Rousing the jealousy of
Pompey, in Rome, by his splendid achievements, he marched into
Italy--afterwards into Spain, in order to crush the adherents of Pompey,
and then returned to Rome in triumph, to be created Dictator. As
Dictator he overcame his rival in the battle of Pharsalia, in Thessaly.
He performed fresh service to the state in Egypt, and going back to Rome
in order to advance the social and material prosperity of his country,
he fell a victim to a conspiracy, of which Brutus and Cassius were at
the head. Twice had the crown been offered to him, and twice had he
refused it. No Roman before his time had ever won such honour as was
heaped upon his head. He suffered from epilepsy, and was very
abstemious. He was tall, fair and slight--very careful of his person,
concealing his baldness by a laurel crown. His was indeed a head
inwreathed with palms. He was a great captain, a great statesman, a
great orator--a great writer. He had innate personal intrepidity,
instantaneous decision, answering celerity of action, resources to meet
every emergency, consummate military skill, an unshaken presence of
mind, a trust--whether in his fortune, as he said, or in himself--which
still augured and still conquered success. He had also the most implicit
confidence in his troops, whom he treated ever as companions and
brothers in arms. Intellectual action in him was without labour. It was
subtle, comprehensive, rapid, luminous, self-possessed. He dictated to
five secretaries at once, on different subjects: his strokes of
eloquence in the Senate, as his strokes of action in the field, were
quick and irresistible. In the terrible civil war of the dissolving
Republic--a war wasteful of Roman blood in the field,--thirstier for the
flow of the same drear beverage by the axe and the dagger,--there, where
the sole sad policy of the victor hitherto was revenge, Cæsar tried the
novel art of forgiveness: although in his Gaulish conquests--when the
barbarian stands before him--he looks to us, by his own reporting,
sanguinary and merciless. By toil and spare diet, he hardened a feeble
health for any work. A civilian, with but a taste, in youth, of war,
he, at forty, stepped into command, at once a supreme commander.
Recklessly licentious, yet no intellect could be keener, healthier, and
more vigorous. His writings, with the simplicity of a soldier, have the
clearness and precision of a grammarian. And why not, since we know that
in the versatility of his genius, he wrote two books on grammar. In the
history of the world, Julius Cæsar was a power. In the records of
psychology a wonder.
[From the bronze in the Florence Gallery. He wore the front of his
head shaven. It resembles the bronze medals of Cæsar, but is suspected
to be modern. He is said to have been sensitive on account of his
baldness, and this bust shows the hair combed forward to hide it. No.
111B possesses much individuality; it is from the head in basalt in
the Berlin Museum, and stood constantly on the study table of Frederic
the Great. No. 111A is the bust from the Poniatowsky Collection, and
remarkable for having the diadem round the head. No. 125 is from the
marble in the Gallery of the Emperors, in the Capitol at Rome.]
111A.}
} JULIUS CÆSAR. _Roman Dictator._
111B.}