The Caesars

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> The Caesars

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In our days, the greatest occasional gatherings of the human race are in
India, especially at the great fair of the _Hurdwar_, in the northern
part of Hindostan; a confluence of many millions is sometimes seen at that
spot, brought together under the mixed influences of devotion and
commercial business, and dispersed as rapidly as they had been convoked.
Some such spectacle of nations crowding upon nations, and some such
Babylonian confusion of dresses, complexions, languages, and jargons, was
then witnessed at Rome. Accommodations within doors, and under roofs of
houses, or of temples, was altogether impossible. Myriads encamped along
the streets, and along the high-roads in the vicinity of Rome. Myriads of
myriads lay stretched on the ground, without even the slight protection of
tents, in a vast circuit about the city. Multitudes of men, even senators,
and others of the highest rank, were trampled to death in the crowds. And
the whole family of man seemed at that time gathered together at the
bidding of the great Dictator. But these, or any other themes connected
with the public life of Caesar, we notice only in those circumstances which
have been overlooked, or partially represented by historians. Let us now,
in conclusion, bring forward, from the obscurity in which they have
hitherto lurked, the anecdotes which describe the habits of his private
life, his tastes, and personal peculiarities.

In person, he was tall, fair, and of limbs distinguished for their elegant
proportions and gracility. His eyes were black and piercing. These
circumstances continued to be long remembered, and no doubt were
constantly recalled to the eyes of all persons in the imperial palaces, by
pictures, busts, and statues; for we find the same description of his
personal appearance three centuries afterwards, in a work of the Emperor
Julian's. He was a most accomplished horseman, and a master
(_peritissimus_) in the use of arms. But, notwithstanding his skill
in horsemanship, it seems that, when he accompanied his army on marches,
he walked oftener than he rode; no doubt, with a view to the benefit of
his example, and to express that sympathy with his soldiers which gained
him their hearts so entirely. On other occasions, when travelling apart
from his army, he seems more frequently to have rode in a carriage than on
horseback. His purpose, in making this preference, must have been with a
view to the transport of luggage. The carriage which he generally used was
a _rheda_, a sort of gig, or rather curricle, for it was a four-
wheeled carriage, and adapted (as we find from the imperial regulations
for the public carriages, &c.) to the conveyance of about half a ton. The
mere personal baggage which Caesar carried with him, was probably
considerable, for he was a man of the most elegant habits, and in all
parts of his life sedulously attentive to elegance of personal appearance.
The length of journeys which he accomplished within a given time, appears
even to us at this day, and might well therefore appear to his
contemporaries, truly astonishing. A distance of one hundred miles was no
extraordinary day's journey for him in a _rheda_, such as we have
described it. So elegant were his habits, and so constant his demand for
the luxurious accommodations of polished life, as it then existed in Rome,
that he is said to have carried with him, as indispensable parts of his
personal baggage, the little lozenges and squares of ivory, and other
costly materials, which were wanted for the tessellated flooring of his
tent. Habits such as these will easily account for his travelling in a
carriage rather than on horseback.

The courtesy and obliging disposition of Caesar were notorious, and both
were illustrated in some anecdotes which survived for generations in Rome.
Dining on one occasion at a table, where the servants had inadvertently,
for salad-oil, furnished some sort of coarse lamp-oil, Caesar would not
allow the rest of the company to point out the mistake to their host, for
fear of shocking him too much by exposing the mistake. At another time,
whilst halting at a little _cabaret_, when one of his retinue was
suddenly taken ill, Caesar resigned to his use the sole bed which the house
afforded. Incidents, as trifling as these, express the urbanity of Caesar's
nature; and, hence, one is the more surprised to find the alienation of
the senate charged, in no trifling degree, upon a failure in point of
courtesy. Caesar neglected to rise from his seat, on their approaching him
in a body with an address of congratulation. It is said, and we can
believe it, that he gave deeper offence by this one defect in a matter of
ceremonial observance, than by all his substantial attacks upon their
privileges. What we find it difficult to believe, however, is not that
result from the offence, but the possibility of the offence itself, from
one so little arrogant as Caesar, and so entirely a man of the world. He
was told of the disgust which he had given, and we are bound to believe
his apology, in which he charged it upon sickness, which would not at the
moment allow him to maintain a standing attitude. Certainly the whole
tenor of his life was not courteous only, but kind; and, to his enemies,
merciful in a degree which implied so much more magnanimity than men in
general could understand, that by many it was put down to the account of
weakness.

Weakness, however, there was none in Caius Caesar; and, that there might be
none, it was fortunate that conspiracy should have cut him off in the full
vigor of his faculties, in the very meridian of his glory, and on the
brink of completing a series of gigantic achievements. Amongst these are
numbered--a digest of the entire body of laws, even then become unwieldy
and oppressive; the establishment of vast and comprehensive public
libraries, Greek as well as Latin; the chastisement of Dacia; the conquest
of Parthia; and the cutting a ship canal through the Isthmus of Corinth.
The reformation of the calendar he had already accomplished. And of all
his projects it may be said, that they were equally patriotic in their
purpose, and colossal in their proportions.

As an orator, Caesar's merit was so eminent, that, according to the general
belief, had he found time to cultivate this department of civil exertion,
the precise supremacy of Cicero would have been made questionable, or the
honors would have been divided. Cicero himself was of that opinion; and on
different occasions applied the epithet _Splendidus_ to Caesar, as though
in some exclusive sense, or with a peculiar emphasis, due to him. His
taste was much simpler, chaster, and disinclined to the _florid_ and
ornamental, than that of Cicero. So far he would, in that condition of
the Roman culture and feeling, have been less acceptable to the public;
but, on the other hand, he would have compensated this disadvantage by
much more of natural and Demosthenic fervor.

In literature, the merits of Caesar are familiar to most readers. Under the
modest title of _Commentaries_, he meant to offer the records of his
Gallic and British campaigns, simply as notes, or memoranda, afterwards to
be worked up by regular historians; but, as Cicero observes, their merit
was such in the eyes of the discerning, that all judicious writers shrank
from the attempt to alter them. In another instance of his literary
labors, he showed a very just sense of true dignity. Rightly conceiving
that every thing patriotic was dignified, and that to illustrate or polish
his native language, was a service of real patriotism, he composed a work
on the grammar and orthoepy of the Latin language. Cicero and himself were
the only Romans of distinction in that age, who applied themselves with
true patriotism to the task of purifying and ennobling their mother
tongue. Both were aware of the transcendent quality of the Grecian
literature; but that splendor did not depress their hopes of raising their
own to something of the same level. As respected the natural wealth of the
two languages, it was the private opinion of Cicero, that the Latin had
the advantage; and if Caesar did not accompany him to that length, he yet
felt that it was but the more necessary to draw forth any single advantage
which it really had. [Footnote: Caesar had the merit of being the first
person to propose the daily publication of the acts and votes of the
senate. In the form of public and official dispatches, he made also some
useful innovations; and it may be mentioned, for the curiosity of the
incident, that the cipher which he used in his correspondence, was the
following very simple one:--For every letter of the alphabet he
substituted that which stood fourth removed from it in the order of
succession. Thus, for A, he used D; for D, G, and so on.]

Was Caesar, upon the whole, the greatest of men? Dr. Beattie once observed,
that if that question were left to be collected from the suffrages already
expressed in books, and scattered throughout the literature of all
nations, the scale would be found to have turned prodigiously in Caesar's
favor, as against any single competitor; and there is no doubt whatsoever,
that even amongst his own countrymen, and his own contemporaries, the same
verdict would have been returned, had it been collected upon the famous
principle of Themistocles, that _he_ should be reputed the first,
whom the greatest number of rival voices had pronounced the second.

CHAPTER II.

The situation of the Second Caesar, at the crisis of the great Dictator's
assassination, was so hazardous and delicate, as to confer interest upon a
character not otherwise attractive. To many, we know it was positively
repulsive, and in the very highest degree. In particular, it is recorded
of Sir William Jones, that he regarded this emperor with feelings of
abhorrence so _personal_ and deadly, as to refuse him his customary
titular honors whenever he had occasion to mention him by name. Yet it was
the whole Roman people that conferred upon him his title of _Augustus_.
But Sir William, ascribing no force to the acts of a people who had sunk
so low as to exult in their chains, and to decorate with honors the very
instruments of their own vassalage, would not recognise this popular
creation, and spoke of him always by his family name of Octavius. The
flattery of the populace, by the way, must, in this instance, have been
doubly acceptable to the emperor, first, for what it gave, and secondly,
for what it concealed. Of his grand-uncle, the first Caesar, a tradition
survives--that of all the distinctions created in his favor, either by the
senate or the people, he put most value upon the laurel crown which was
voted to him after his last campaigns--a beautiful and conspicuous
memorial to every eye of his great public acts, and at the same time an
overshadowing veil of his one sole personal defect. This laurel diadem at
once proclaimed his civic grandeur, and concealed his baldness, a defect
which was more mortifying to a Roman than it would be to ourselves, from
the peculiar theory which then prevailed as to its probable origin. A
gratitude of the same mixed quality must naturally have been felt by the
Second Caesar for his title of _Augustus_, which, whilst it illustrated his
public character by the highest expression of majesty, set apart and
sequestrated to public functions, had also the agreeable effect of
withdrawing from the general remembrance his obscure descent. For the
Octavian house [_gens_] had in neither of its branches risen to any great
splendor of civic distinction, and in his own, to little or none. The same
titular decoration, therefore, so offensive to the celebrated Whig, was,
in the eyes of Augustus, at once a trophy of public merit, a monument of
public gratitude, and an effectual obliteration of his own natal
obscurity.

But, if merely odious to men of Sir William's principles, to others the
character of Augustus, in relation to the circumstances which surrounded
him, was not without its appropriate interest. He was summoned in early
youth, and without warning, to face a crisis of tremendous hazard, being
at the same time himself a man of no very great constitutional courage;
perhaps he was even a coward. And this we say without meaning to adopt as
gospel truths all the party reproaches of Anthony. Certainly he was
utterly unfurnished by nature with those endowments which seemed to be
indispensable in a successor to the power of the great Dictator. But
exactly in these deficiencies, and in certain accidents unfavorable to his
ambition, lay his security. He had been adopted by his grand-uncle,
Julius. That adoption made him, to all intents and purposes of law, the
son of his great patron; and doubtless, in a short time, this adoption
would have been applied to more extensive uses, and as a station of
vantage for introducing him to the public favor. From the inheritance of
the Julian estates and family honors, he would have been trained to mount,
as from a stepping-stone, to the inheritance of the Julian power and
political station; and the Roman people would have been familiarized to
regard him in that character. But, luckily for himself, the finishing, or
ceremonial acts, were yet wanting in this process--the political heirship
was inchoate and imperfect. Tacitly understood, indeed, it was; but, had
it been formally proposed and ratified, there cannot be a doubt that the
young Octavius would have been pointed out to the vengeance of the
patriots, and included in the scheme of the conspirators, as a fellow-
victim with his nominal father; and would have been cut off too suddenly
to benefit by that reaction of popular feeling which saved the partisans
of the Dictator, by separating the conspirators, and obliging them,
without loss of time, to look to their own safety. It was by this
fortunate accident that the young heir and adopted son of the first Caesar
not only escaped assassination, but was enabled to postpone indefinitely
the final and military struggle for the vacant seat of empire, and in the
mean time to maintain a coequal rank with the leaders in the state, by
those arts and resources in which he was superior to his competitors. His
place in the favor of Caius Julius was of power sufficient to give him a
share in any triumvirate which could be formed; but, wanting the formality
of a regular introduction to the people, and the ratification of their
acceptance, that place was not sufficient to raise him permanently into
the perilous and invidious station of absolute supremacy which he
afterwards occupied. The _felicity_ of Augustus was often vaunted by
antiquity, (with whom success was not so much a test of merit as itself a
merit of the highest quality,) and in no instance was this felicity more
conspicuous than in the first act of his entrance upon the political
scene. No doubt his friends and enemies alike thought of him, at the
moment of Caesar's assassination, as we now think of a young man heir-elect
to some person of immense wealth, cut off by a sudden death before he has
had time to ratify a will in execution of his purposes. Yet in fact the
case was far otherwise. Brought forward distinctly as the successor of
Caesar's power, had he even, by some favorable accident of absence from
Rome, or otherwise, escaped being involved in that great man's fate, he
would at all events have been thrown upon the instant necessity of
defending his supreme station by arms. To have left it unasserted, when
once solemnly created in his favor by a reversionary title, would have
been deliberately to resign it. This would have been a confession of
weakness liable to no disguise, and ruinous to any subsequent pretensions.
Yet, without preparation of means, with no development of resources nor
growth of circumstances, an appeal to arms would, in his case, have been
of very doubtful issue. His true weapons, for a long period, were the arts
of vigilance and dissimulation. Cultivating these, he was enabled to
prepare for a contest which, undertaken prematurely, must have ruined him,
and to raise himself to a station of even military pre-eminence to those
who naturally, and by circumstances, were originally every way superior to
himself.

The qualities in which he really excelled, the gifts of intrigue,
patience, long-suffering, dissimulation, and tortuous fraud, were thus
brought into play, and allowed their full value. Such qualities had every
chance of prevailing in the long run, against the noble carelessness and
the impetuosity of the passionate Anthony--and they _did_ prevail.
Always on the watch to lay hold of those opportunities which the generous
negligence of his rival was but too frequently throwing in his way--unless
by the sudden reverses of war and the accidents of battle, which as much
as possible, and as long as possible, he declined--there could be little
question in any man's mind, that eventually he would win his way to a
solitary throne, by a policy so full of caution and subtlety. He was sure
to risk nothing which could be had on easier terms; and nothing, unless
for a great overbalance of gain in prospect; to lose nothing which he had
once gained; and in no case to miss an advantage, or sacrifice an
opportunity, by any consideration of generosity. No modern insurance
office but would have guaranteed an event depending upon the final success
of Augustus, on terms far below those which they must in prudence have
exacted from the fiery and adventurous Anthony. Each was an ideal in his
own class. But Augustus, having finally triumphed, has met with more than
justice from succeeding ages. Even Lord Bacon says, that, by comparison
with Julius Caesar, he was "_non tam impar quam dispar_," surely a
most extravagant encomium, applied to whomsoever. On the other hand,
Anthony, amongst the most signal misfortunes of his life, might number it,
that Cicero, the great dispenser of immortality, in whose hands (more
perhaps than in any one man's of any age) were the vials of good and evil
fame, should happen to have been his bitter and persevering enemy. It is,
however, some balance to this, that Shakspeare had a just conception of
the original grandeur which lay beneath that wild tempestuous nature
presented by Anthony to the eye of the undiscriminating world. It is to
the honor of Shakspeare, that he should have been able to discern the true
coloring of this most original character, under the smoke and tarnish of
antiquity. It is no less to the honor of the great triumvir, that a
strength of coloring should survive in his character, capable of baffling
the wrongs and ravages of time. Neither is it to be thought strange that a
character should have been misunderstood and falsely appreciated for
nearly two thousand years. It happens not uncommonly, especially amongst
an unimaginative people like the Romans, that the characters of men are
ciphers and enigmas to their own age, and are first read and interpreted
by a far distant posterity. Stars are supposed to exist, whose light has
been travelling for many thousands of years without having yet reached our
system; and the eyes are yet unborn upon which their earliest rays will
fall. Men like Mark Anthony, with minds of chaotic composition--light
conflicting with darkness, proportions of colossal grandeur disfigured by
unsymmetrical arrangement, the angelic in close neighborhood with the
brutal--are first read in their true meaning by an age learned in the
philosophy of the human heart. Of this philosophy the Romans had, by the
necessities of education and domestic discipline not less than by original
constitution of mind, the very narrowest visual range. In no literature
whatsoever are so few tolerable notices to be found of any great truths in
Psychology. Nor could this have been otherwise amongst a people who tried
every thing by the standard of _social_ value; never seeking for a
canon of excellence, in man considered abstractedly in and for himself,
and as having an independent value--but always and exclusively in man as a
gregarious being, and designed for social uses and functions. Not man in
his own peculiar nature, but man in his relations to other men, was the
station from which the Roman speculators took up their philosophy of human
nature. Tried by such standard, Mark Anthony would be found wanting. As a
citizen, he was irretrievably licentious, and therefore there needed not
the bitter personal feud, which circumstances had generated between them,
to account for the _acharnement_ with which Cicero pursued him. Had
Anthony been his friend even, or his near kinsman, Cicero must still have
been his public enemy. And not merely for his vices; for even the grander
features of his character, his towering ambition, his magnanimity, and the
fascinations of his popular qualities,--were all, in the circumstances of
those times, and in _his_ position, of a tendency dangerously uncivic.

So remarkable was the opposition, at all points, between the second Caesar
and his rival, that whereas Anthony even in his virtues seemed dangerous
to the state, Octavius gave a civic coloring to his most indifferent
actions, and, with a Machiavelian policy, observed a scrupulous regard to
the forms of the Republic, after every fragment of the republican
institutions, the privileges of the republican magistrates, and the
functions of the great popular officers, had been absorbed into his own
autocracy. Even in the most prosperous days of the Roman State, when the
democratic forces balanced, and were balanced by, those of the
aristocracy, it was far from being a general or common praise, that a man
was of a civic turn of mind, _animo civili_. Yet this praise did Augustus
affect, and in reality attain, at a time when the very object of all civic
feeling was absolutely extinct; so much are men governed by words.
Suetonius assures us, that many evidences were current even to his times
of this popular disposition (_civilitas_) in the emperor; and that it
survived every experience of servile adulation in the Roman populace, and
all the effects of long familiarity with irresponsible power in himself.
Such a moderation of feeling, we are almost obliged to consider as a
genuine and unaffected expression of his real nature; for, as an artifice
of policy, it had soon lost its uses. And it is worthy of notice, that
with the army he laid aside those popular manners as soon as possible,
addressing them as _milites_, not (_according_ to his earlier practice) as
_commilitones_. It concerned his own security, to be jealous of
encroachments on his power. But of his rank, and the honors which
accompanied it, he seems to have been uniformly careless. Thus, he would
never leave a town or enter it by daylight, unless some higher rule of
policy obliged him to do so; by which means he evaded a ceremonial of
public honor which was burdensome to all the parties concerned in it.
Sometimes, however, we find that men, careless of honors in their own
persons, are glad to see them settling upon their family and immediate
connections. But here again Augustus showed the sincerity of his
moderation. For upon one occasion, when the whole audience in the Roman
theatre had risen upon the entrance of his two adopted sons, at that time
not seventeen years old, he was highly displeased, and even thought it
necessary to publish his displeasure in a separate edict. It is another,
and a striking illustration of his humility, that he willingly accepted of
public appointments, and sedulously discharged the duties attached to
them, in conjunction with colleagues who had been chosen with little
regard to his personal partialities. In the debates of the senate, he
showed the same equanimity; suffering himself patiently to be
contradicted, and even with circumstances of studied incivility. In the
public elections, he gave his vote like any private citizen; and, when he
happened to be a candidate himself, he canvassed the electors with the
same earnestness of personal application, as any other candidate with the
least possible title to public favor from present power or past services.
But, perhaps by no expressions of his civic spirit did Augustus so much
conciliate men's minds, as by the readiness with which he participated in
their social pleasures, and by the uniform severity with which he refused
to apply his influence in any way which could disturb the pure
administration of justice. The Roman juries (_judices_ they were called),
were very corrupt; and easily swayed to an unconscientious verdict, by the
appearance in court of any great man on behalf of one of the parties
interested: nor was such an interference with the course of private
justice any ways injurious to the great man's character. The wrong which
he promoted did but the more forcibly proclaim the warmth and fidelity of
his friendships. So much the more generally was the uprightness of the
emperor appreciated, who would neither tamper with justice himself, nor
countenance any motion in that direction, though it were to serve his very
dearest friend, either by his personal presence, or by the use of his
name. And, as if it had been a trifle merely to forbear, and to show his
regard to justice in this negative way, he even allowed himself to be
summoned as a witness on trials, and showed no anger when his own evidence
was overborne by stronger on the other side. This disinterested love of
justice, and an integrity, so rare in the great men of Rome, could not but
command the reverence of the people. But their affection, doubtless, was
more conciliated by the freedom with which the emperor accepted
invitations from all quarters, and shared continually in the festal
pleasures of his subjects. This practice, however, he discontinued, or
narrowed, as he advanced in years. Suetonius, who, as a true anecdote-
monger, would solve every thing, and account for every change by some
definite incident, charges this alteration in the emperor's condescensions
upon one particular party at a wedding feast, where the crowd incommoded
him much by their pressure and heat. But, doubtless, it happened to
Augustus as to other men; his spirits failed, and his powers of supporting
fatigue or bustle, as years stole upon him. Changes, coming by insensible
steps, and not willingly acknowledged, for some time escape notice; until
some sudden shock reminds a man forcibly to do that which he has long
meditated in an irresolute way. The marriage banquet may have been the
particular occasion from which Augustus stepped into the habits of old
age, but certainly not the cause of so entire a revolution in his mode of
living.

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