brave men. It was the knight, and not the hero, who gave himself up as a sacrifice, when this sacrifice obtained nothing but that the nation openly dishonoured itself, and spent its last breath in calling its worldhistorical death-struggle, a transgression against its oppressors—a humiliation as cowardly as it was senseless. How entirely different had Hannibal's conduct been under similar circumstances! It is impossible to part from the noble king of the Arverni without historical and human sympathy. But it may help to characterize the Keltic nation that its noblest man was a mere knight.'

Dr. Mommsen follows out the thought of the last lines more at length in a character of the Keltic nation.

"The career of the Keltic nation was at an end. Its political annihilation had become an accomplished fact under Cæsar, its national annihilation introduced and placed in regular progress. This was no accidental destruction, such as destiny sometimes prepares even for peoples capable of development; but a self-earned catastrophe and one to some extent historically necessary. In the mighty whirl of history, which inexorably grinds to powder all peoples not as hard as steel and as ductile as steel, such a nation could not long maintain itself; the Kelts of the continent justly suffered at the hands of the Romans the same fate which their kinsmen of Ireland suffer from the Saxons in our own day-the fate of merging in a nationality politically superior as the leaven of future development. At the moment of parting from this remarkable nation, it may be permitted to record, that in the reports of antiquity on the Kelts of the Loire and Seine, hardly one of the characteristic features is wanting by which we are accustomed to recognize the Irishman. Everything repeats itself; laziness in cultivation of soil; delight in carouses and riots; vaunting and curiosity; a language full of similes and hyperboles, of allusions and odd turns; a droll humour; a cordial pleasure in songs and stories of the deeds of old times; the most remarkable political and rhetorical gifts; a child-like piety which sees a father in the priest, and asks his advice in all matters; an unsurpassed depth of national feeling; and a holding together against strangers almost like members of one family; an inclination to rise and collect in bands under the first able leader, but also a complete incapacity to maintain a steady spirit equally removed from over-confidence and despondency. It was and

remains, in all times and places, the same lazy and poetical, yielding and cordial, curious, credulous, amiable, clever, but politically incapable nation; and therefore its destiny has been always and everywhere the same.'

Shortly before Cæsar commenced hostilities in Gaul the prospects of the Roman democracy were nearly desperate. True, its legal position had been improved by a coalition with Pompeius and Crassus in the years 683, 684; but this was at the price of putting predominant military authority in the hands of Pompeius, who had served the aristocracy against Lepidus and Sertorius, and whose affections were divided between it and himself. And, even supposing that, setting aside his patriotic scruples or overcoming his constitutional hesitation, he should grasp the crown which Fortune had twice held out to him in vain, it was most

improbable that as monarch of Rome he would have been guided by the traditions of C. Gracchus and Marius. He had understood and accomplished one part of Rome's task-the pacification and union of the East; but the second and more important duty of educating the West for civilized life he neither understood nor desired to perform. While such was the attitude of the first general of the age, the domestic conduct of the democratic leaders had not been such as to secure respect. The conspiracy of Catiline, with which many connected Cæsar, had produced general alarm and desire for a strong government that the democracy possessed a champion who could gratify this desire was as yet unsuspected.

The coalition of the representatives of the moneyed interest, the army, and the democracy generally known as the first triumvirate, altered the aspect of affairs by reducing the aristocratic republicans to insignificance, and securing to Cæsar an adequate support at home during his career of foreign conquest. But the death of Julia destroyed the personal connection of Pompeius and Cæsar, and that of Crassus removed a political mediator. Thus in the year 703 the conqueror of Vercingetorix and the conqueror of Mithridates stood definitely to each other.

Cæsar occupied a far better position than any popular leader since the commencement of Sulla's dictatorship had acquired. He had formed a veteran army in the wars of Gaul, and the Cisalpine province gave him a populous recruiting ground. Yet his position as a competitor for the sovereignty of Rome was not altogether promising. The real question at issue was, who should be monarch of Rome; but the events of the last two years had united the aristocracy to Pompeius, and their support was far more valuable to him than that of the disorganized and discredited democracy to Cæsar. The East feared and honoured the conqueror of Mithridates: of Cæsar it knew little or nothing. Africa, Spain, and the greater part of Italy were devoted to the legal possessors of authority, that is, to the senate. On the other hand, Cæsar had the great advantage of exercising a far more absolute sway than his rival over his own party; though this involved the necessity of far more vigilance and activity in the leader whose functions could not be delegated.

The preliminaries of the great struggle are narrated by Dr. Mommsen with great clearness and vivacity. He establishes that the final declaration of hostilities was the result of a terrorism exercised over the majority of the senate by Pompeius; and that, however little the question at issue was a constitutional one, Cæsar did not declare war until he had seen the constitu

tion violated by his adversaries. When the fugitive tribunes Antonius and Cassius arrived in his camp at Ravenna the position of Cæsar was serious enough. His army stretched in a long line from the Po to the Seine: in his rear were the numerous forces of the government in Spain; in his front, two legions, which might be supported by the whole male population of Italy, to most of whom a military oath had already been administered. If he delayed he would be assailed by overwhelming numbers under good officers, in front and rear at once: yet to advance with one legion, the whole force immediately at his disposal might seem madness. His decision is well known.

'When Cæsar was informed by the tribunes who fled for refuge to his camp what reception his proposals had met with in the capital, he called together the soldiers of the 13th legion which, meanwhile, had marched into Ravenna from its cantonments near Tergeste (Trieste), and developed before them the state of things. It was not only the gifted heart-searcher and the ruler of men's minds, whose brilliant eloquence shone and blazed aloft in this momentous crisis of his own and the world's history; not only the munificent commander and victorious general speaking to soldiers called to arms by himself, and who had followed his standards during eight years with ever-increasing enthusiasm; it was especially the energetic and consistent statesman who spoke, the statesman who now for twenty-nine years had defended the cause of freedom in good and evil times, and had braved for it, without shrinking, the daggers of assassins and the executioners of the aristocracy, the swords of the Germans and the waves of the unknown ocean; who had torn to pieces the constitution of Sulla, overthrown the senatorial government, and given shield and sword to the unarmed democracy in the war beyond the Alps. And he spoke, not to the populace of Clodius, whose republican enthusiasm had long burnt down to dross and ashes, but to the youthful populations of the cities and villages of north Italy, to whom the mighty thought of civic freedom came yet fresh and pure; who were yet capable of fighting and dying for ideals; whose native districts had received by a revolutionary act from Cæsar the civic rights which the government had denied them; whom Cæsar's failure would again abandon to the rods and axes, and to whom facts had already shown how inexorably the oligarchy would use these weapons against the Transpadanes. Before such hearers such a speaker stated the facts; the return for the conquest of Gaul which awaited general and army from the nobility, the contemptuous setting aside of the comitia, the terrorizing of the senate, and urged the sacred duty of protecting by arms the tribunate of the people, which five centuries before their fathers had by arms extorted from the nobility, and of keeping the ancient oath with which those fathers had sworn for themselves and their descendants to stand by the tribunes of the people, every man to the death. When he then, the leader and general of the popular party, now after all amicable offices had been exhausted, and concession carried to its utmost limits, called on the soldiers of the people to follow him in the last, the inevitable, the decisive struggle against a nobility as hated as it was despised, as perfidious as it was incapable, and even ludicrously incorrigible, there was no officer or soldier who would have held back. The march was ordered: at the head of his vanguard Cæsar crossed the narrow stream which separated his province from Italy, and on the

other side of which the proconsul of Gaul was outlawed by the constitution. Now, that after nine years' absence, he again set foot on the soil of his country, he set foot, at the same time, on the path of revolution. The die was cast.'

The events of the civil war which followed are too generally known to require description. They attested the strength and the weakness of Cæsar's cause. Wherever he commanded himself he triumphed; but his ablest supporter Curio was defeated and killed in Africa: his lieutenants in Illyricum and in Asia Minor suffered reverses: his vicegerents in Italy discredited his cause by arrogance, ostentation, and debauchery. His personal superiority to his rival, however, retrieved every loss. As an officer Pompeius may have been equal to Cæsar; but he was cold and suspicious as a man, wavering as a politician. Moreover, he had known Fortune only as a constant goddess, and lost heart at the first withdrawal of her smiles; while Cæsar had been trained by the vicissitudes of his career to constrain her support by importunity. Hence the defeat of the latter at Dyrrhachium was speedily retrieved, while his victory at Pharsalia was so improved as to determine the history of the world. The very mistakes of Cæsar showed the confidence and comprehensive view of true genius. If he wasted time at Alexandria when his presence was urgently required in the African province, it was because he could not bear to leave a half-finished task behind him, and saw a favourable opportunity for the permanent settlement of Egypt. And he confided with reason, as the sequel showed, that any lost time would be retrieved by his personal appearance on the scene of action.

The

The battle of Thapsus, in which fifty thousand of his enemies perished, followed by the deaths of all the more prominent republican leaders and of their ally the Numidian Juba, ended the struggle which Ilerda and Pharsalia had decided. East readily transferred its allegiance to the new representative of Roman power. The Jewish nation, important from its numbers, dissemination, and national feeling, was devoted to Cæsar. Italy was acquiescent. Gaul secured by his wisdom in organization as it had been impressed by his success in war. It was yet possible, indeed, for the sons of Pompeius to appeal to his old provincials in Spain and to organize a formidable insurrection there. But they were simply pretenders, and few national hopes were connected with their rising. Republican conspirators might threaten the life of the new monarch; but his power seemed able to defy any more general attempt for its overthrow.

Dr. Mommsen writes with a thorough sympathy for Cæsar throughout his narrative of the civil wars. But that the reader

may judge of his views upon imperialist or despotic systems generally we extract some of his remarks on Cæsar's work.

.

'If we endeavour to give a detailed account of the direction of the old elements in their new path, we must first recall the fact, that Cæsar did not come to begin but to end. The plan of a new policy suited to the times, such as Caius Gracchus had projected, had been retained by his successors with more or less intelligence and success but without wavering. Cæsar, originally and almost by inheritance the head of the popular party, had for thirty years borne its ensign aloft, without ever changing or concealing his colours As he maintained without any change the fundamental principles of the Roman democracy-the mitigation of the position of debtors, transmarine colonization, the gradual equalization of the legal condition of all subjects of the state, and the emancipation of the executive from the senate- his monarchy was so far from being in contradiction to democracy that the latter first attained to completion and fulfilment through it. For this monarchy was not the oriental despotism "by the grace of God," but such a monarchy as C. Gracchus had desired to found, and as Pericles and Cromwell did found the representation of the people by its highest delegate with unlimited powers. Thus far the thoughts on which Cæsar's monarchy rested were not properly new; but to him belongs their realization, which must always remain the chief matter; and to him the grandeur of the execution which might have surprised even the gifted projector if he could have seen it, and which always has struck, and always will strike with deep and deeper emotion and admiration those who meet it in living activity or in the mirror of history-an emotion and admiration which will be proportionate to their power for comprehending human and historical greatness.

This, however, will be the proper place to state expressly, once for all, what the historian always silently presupposes; and to make a protest against the custom which folly and perfidy alike adopt of employing historical praise and blame as phrases of general import without regard to the given relations; and in this case against their conversion of the judgment on Cæsar into a judgment on the so-called Cæsarianism. The history of past centuries is, certainly, the instructress of the present; but not in the common sense, as though the conjunctures of the present could be found in their entirety merely by turning over the pages of the past, and the symptoms and specifics of political diagnosis and pharmacy be collected from them: it is instructive only in so far as the observation of the elder cultures reveals the organic conditions of civilization everywhere, discloses its ever-similar fundamental forces and their ever-varying combinations, and leads and inspirits men, not to unthinking imitation, but to independent creation in the spirit of the past. In this sense the history of Cæsar and of Roman imperialism-considering the unsurpassed greatness of the master and the historical necessity of the workis truly a more bitter criticism on modern autocracy than the hand of man could write. According to the same law of nature which makes the smallest organism infinitely greater than the most artistic machine, any constitution, however imperfect, which leaves room for the free selfdetermination of a majority of citizens, is infinitely better than the most humane and gifted absolutism: for the first is capable of development, and therefore living; the second remains what it is, and therefore is dead. This law of nature has approved itself even in the Roman military monarchy... .. If at the beginning of the autocracy, and especially