History of Julius Caesar

by Jacob Abbott

Many of the most important offices of the state depended upon the votes of the people; and as the people had very little opportunity to become acquainted with the real merits of the case in respect to questions of government, they gave their votes very much according to the personal popularity of the candidate. Public men had very little moral principle in those days, and they would accordingly resort to any means whatever to procure this personal popularity. They who wanted office were accustomed to bribe influential men among the people to support them, sometimes by promising them subordinate offices, and sometimes by the direct donation of sums of money; and they would try to please the mass of the people, who were too numerous to be paid with offices or with gold, by shows and spectacles, and entertainments of every kind which they would provide for their amusement.

Courage and enterprise, in fact, ought not to be expected of the rich; they are the virtues of poverty.

Among the letters of Caesar that remain to the present day, there is one written about this time to one of his friends, in which he speaks of this subject. "I am glad," says he, "that you approve of my conduct at Corfinium. I am satisfied that such a course is the best one for us to pursue, as by so doing we shall gain the good will of all parties, and thus secure a permanent victory. Most conquerors have incurred the hatred of mankind by their cruelties, and have all, in consequence of the enmity they have thus awakened, been prevented from long enjoying their power. Sylla was an exception; but his example of successful cruelty I have no disposition to imitate. I will conquer after a new fashion, and fortify myself in the possession of the power I acquire by generosity and mercy."

Domitius had the ingratitude, after this release, to take up arms again, and wage a new war against Caesar. When Caesar heard of it, he said it was all right. "I will act out the principles of my nature," said he, "and he may act out his."

Caesar acted thus very liberally in all respects. He surpassed Pompey very much in the spirit of generosity and mercy with which he entered upon the great contest before them. Pompey ordered every citizen to join his standard, declaring that he should consider all neutrals as his enemies.

Caesar, on the other hand, gave free permission to every one to decline, if he chose, taking any part in the contest, saying that he should consider all who did not act against him as his friends. In the political contests of our day, it is to be observed that the combatants are much more prone to imitate the bigotry of Pompey than the generosity of Caesar, condemning, as they often do, those who choose to stand aloof from electioneering struggles, more than they do their most determined opponents and enemies.

Pompey and his-counselors thought that the government of Ptolemy would receive him as a friend, on account of the services he had rendered to the young prince's father, forgetting that gratitude has never a place on the list of political virtues.

He depended, like Napoleon, in all the great movements of his life, not on grandeur of preparation, but on celerity of action.

While Caesar was in Alexandria, many of Pompey's officers, now that their master was dead, and there was no longer any possibility of their rallying again under his guidance and command, came in and surrendered themselves to him. He received them with great kindness, and, instead of visiting them with any penalties for having fought against him, he honored the fidelity and bravery they had evinced in the service of their own former master. Caesar had, in fact, shown the same generosity to the soldiers of Pompey's army that he had taken prisoners at the battle of Pharsalia. At the close of the battle, he issued orders that each one of his soldiers should have permission to save one of the enemy. Nothing could more strikingly exemplify both the generosity and the tact that marked the great conqueror's character than this incident. The hatred and revenge which had animated his victorious soldiery in the battle and in the pursuit, were changed immediately by the permission to compassion and good will. The ferocious soldiers turned at once from the pleasure of hunting their discomfited enemies to death, to that of protecting and defending them; and the way was prepared for their being received into his service, and incorporated with the rest of his army as friends and brothers.

The character of Cato, and the circumstances under which his suicide was committed, make it, on the whole, the most conspicuous act of suicide which history records; and the events which followed show in an equally conspicuous manner the extreme folly of the deed. In respect to its wickedness, Cato, not having had the light of Christianity before him, is to be leniently judged. As to the folly of the deed, however, he is to be held strictly accountable. If he had lived and yielded to his conqueror, as he might have done gracefully and without dishonor, since all his means of resistance were exhausted, Caesar would have treated him with generosity and respect, and would have taken him to Rome; and as within a year or two of this time Caesar himself was no more, Cato's vast influence and power might have been, and un doubtedly would have been, called most effectually into action for the benefit of his country. If any one, in defending Cato, should say he could not foresee this, we reply, he could have foreseen it; not the precise events, indeed, which occurred, but he could have foreseen that vast changes must take place, and new aspects of affairs arise, in which his powers would be called into requisition. We can always foresee in the midst of any storm, however dark and gloomy, that clear skies will certainly sooner or later come again; and this is just as true metaphorically in respect to the vicissitudes of human life, as it is literally in regard to the ordinary phenom...

Caesar remedied all this by adopting a new system of months, which should give three hundred and sixty-five days to the year for three years, and three hundred and sixty-six for the fourth; and so exact was the system which he thus introduced, that it went on unchanged for sixteen centuries. The months were then found to be eleven days out of the way, when a new correction was introduced, [4] and it will now go on three thousand years before the error will amount to a single day. Caesar employed a Greek astronomer to arrange the system that he adopted; and it was in part on account of the improvement which he thus effected that one of the months, as has already been mentioned, was called July. Its name before was Quintilis.

The conspirators distrusted one another, for the resolution of impetuous men is very apt to fail when the emergency arrives which puts it to the test; but as for Brutus, they knew very well that whatever he undertook he would most certainly do.

Men of a very calm exterior are often susceptible of the profoundest agitations within, the emotions seeming to be sometimes all the more permanent and uncontrollable from the absence of outward display. Brutus said little, but his soul was excited and fired by Cassius's words. There was a struggle in his soul between his grateful sense of his political obligations to Caesar and his personal attachment to him on the one hand, and, on the other, a certain stern Roman conviction that every thing should be sacrificed, even friendship and gratitude, as well as fortune and life, to the welfare of his country.