Great Julius, whom now all the world admires,
The more he grew in years, the more inflamed
With glory, wept that he had lived so long
Inglorious.

And thou, dread statue! yet existent in
The austerest form of naked majesty,
Thou who beheldest, mid the assassins' din,
At thy bathed base the bloody Cæsar lie,
Folding his robe in dying dignity,

An offering to thine altar from the queen

MILTON.

Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,
And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been
Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?

BYRON.

With such vividness, with such transparent clearness, the age stands before us of Cato and Pompey, of Cicero and Julius Cæsar; the more distinctly because it was an age in so many ways the counterpart of our own, the blossoming period of the old civilization, when the intellect was trained to the highest point which it could reach, and on the great subjects of human interest, on morals and politics, on poetry and art, even on religion itself and the speculative problems of life, men thought as we think, doubted where we doubt, argued as we argue, aspired and struggled after the same objects. It was an age of material progress and material civilization; an age of civil liberty and intellectual culture; an age of pamphlets and epigrams, of salons and of dinner parties, of senatorial majorities and electoral corruption. The highest offices of state were open in theory to the meanest citizen; they were confined, in fact, to those who had the longest purses, or the most ready use of the tongue on popular platforms. — FROUDE.

The Roman Patriciate, trained in the conquest and government of the civilized world, in spite of the tyrannical vices which sprung from that training, were raised by the greatness of their objects to an elevation of genius and character unmatched by any other aristocracy, ere the period when, after preserving their power by a long course of wise compromise with the people, they were betrayed by the army and the populace into the hands of a single tyrant of their own order, the most accomplished of usurpers, and, if humanity and justice could for a moment be silenced, one of the most illustrious of men. There is no scene in history so memorable as that in which Cæsar mastered a

nobility of which Lucullus and Hortensius, Sulpicius and Catulus, Pompey and Cicero, Brutus and Cato, were members. - MACKINTOSH,

The death of Cæsar was followed by about thirteen years of confusion. Cæsar's nephew, Octavius, formed with AnEnd of the tony, one of Cæsar's generals, and Lepidus, the republic. Second Triumvirate, and waged war with the friends of the republic, who were headed by Brutus and Cassius. The latter were defeated at Philippi in 42 B. C. This was the end of the Roman Republic.

When Cæsar, one of the greatest of men, sank under the alliance of metaphysical fanaticism with aristocratic rage, this foolish and odious murder had no other issue than raising to the leadership of the people against the senate men much less fit for the government of the world; and none of the changes which ensued ever admitted of any return, however temporary, to the genuine Roman organization, because its existence was inseparably connected with the gradual extension of conquest.· COMTE.

The battle of Philippi, in the estimation of the Roman writers, was the most memorable conflict in their military annals. . . . It was on that field that the republic perished. — MERIVALE.

After expelling her kings and shaking off Etruscan influence, Rome existed as a republic for five centuries, and during this long age of barbarism she did nothing to advance science or art. Literature was almost wholly unknown within her walls, and not one monument has come down to our time, even by tradition, worthy of a city of a tenth part of her power and magnitude. There is probably no instance in the history of the world of a capital city existing so long, populous and peaceful at home, prosperous and powerful abroad, and at the same time so utterly devoid of any monuments or any magnificence to dignify her existence. FERGUSSON.

Ancient Rome produced many heroes, but no saints. Its selfsacrifice was patriotic, not religious. Its religion was neither an independent teacher nor a source of inspiration, although its rites mingled with and strengthened some of the best habits of the people.-LECKY.

Rome was to the entire Roman people, for many generations, as much a religion as Jehovah was to the Jews; nay, much more, for they never fell away from their worship, as the Jews did from theirs. And the Romans, otherwise a selfish people, with no very remarkable faculties of any kind, except the purely practical, derived nevertheless from this one idea a certain greatness of soul, which manifests itself in all their history, where that idea is concerned, and nowhere else, and has earned for them the large share of admiration, in other respects not at all deserved, which has been felt for them by most noble-minded persons from that time to this. - MILL.

Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus now divided the Roman world among themselves. Antony took the East, Octavius the West, and Lepidus the province of Africa; but the last named, being weaker than the others, soon dropped out of sight. Antony and Octavius now began to quarrel. The former stayed at Alexandria, where he fell under the influence of Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, for whom he divorced his wife Octavia, sister of Octavius. Octavius then declared war, and defeated Antony and Cleopatra in a sea-fight at Actium, on the west coast of Greece, in 31 B. C.

The issue of the long struggle of the nations against the allconquering republic is indeed a momentous event in human annals. The laws and language, the manners and institutions, of Europe still bear witness to the catastrophe of Actium. The results it produced can never recur to our minds without impelling us to reflect upon the results we may suppose it to have averted.

But Egypt knows her dream a cheat

Begot of Mareotic fumes,

When the devouring fire consumes,
Ship after ship, her Actium fleet.

- MERIVALE.

When Cæsar, following in her wake,
Like hawk or hunter giving chase
To timorous dove or hare of Thrace,
Urges his crew to overtake

And load the monster-queen with chains,
She homeward steers, resolved to die,
Preferring death to slavery

Or exile from her old domains.

HORACE. Tr. Hovenden.

Her tresses bound with Actium's crown of bay,
Peace comes; in all the world, sweet goddess, stay!
Her altar flames, ye priests, with incense feed,
Bid 'neath the axe the snow-white victim bleed!
Pray willing Heaven that Cæsar's house may stand,
Long as the peace it gives a wearied land!

OVID. Tr. Church.

ROME MISTRESS OF THE WORLD.

EGYPT soon after (30 B. C.) was made a Roman province. Rome thus became mistress of all the lands around the Mediterranean. With the exception of the conquest of Britain, in the next century, and some temporary additions at a later period, the Roman territory had now reached its greatest extent, and the Roman power may be regarded as having practically spread over all the lands which could be looked on as forming part of the civilized world.

Rome was th' whole world, and al the world was Rome;

And if things nam'd their names doo equalize,

When land and sea ye name, then name ye Rome;
And, naming Rome, ye land and sea comprize:
For th' auncient plot of Rome, displayed plaine,
The map of all the wide world doth containe.

SPENSER.

The subject world shall Rome's dominion own,
And prostrate shall adore the nation of the gown.

VIRGIL. Tr. Dryden.

The self-governing powers that had filled the Old World had bent, one after another, before the rising power of Rome, and had vanished. The earth seemed left void of independent nations. RANKE.

Toutes les nations civilisées et une partie des nations barbares étant réunies sous le même sceptre, il n'y eût plus dans l'ancienne monde qu'une seule cité, en travail d'un monde nouveau.

Rome onely might to Rome compared bee,

And onely Rome could make great Rome to tremble.

SPENSER.

The exultations, pomps, and cares of Rome,
Whence half the breathing world received its doom.

The Palatine, proud Rome's imperial seat,
(An awful pile!) stands venerably great:
Thither the kingdoms and the nations come,
In supplicating crowds, to learn their doom.

THIERRY.

WORDSWORTH.

CLAUDIAN. Tr. Addison.

When, however, Carthage was conquered and destroyed, when Greece was overrun and plundered, and Egypt, with her longtreasured art, had become a dependent province, Rome was no longer the city of the Aryan Romans, but the sole capital of the civilized world. Into her lap were poured all the artistic riches of the universe; to Rome flocked all who sought a higher distinction or a more extended field for their ambition than their own provincial capitals could then afford. She thus became the centre of all the arts and of all the science then known; and, so far at least as quantity is concerned, she amply redeemed her previous neglect of them. It seems an almost indisputable fact that during the three centuries of the empire more and larger buildings were erected in Rome and her dependent cities than ever were erected in a like period in any part of the world. FERGUSSON.

Rome laid a belt about the Mediterranean of a thousand miles in breadth, and within that zone she comprehended not only all the great cities of the ancient world, but so perfectly did she lay the garden of the world in every climate, and for every mode of natural wealth, within her own ring-fence, that since that era no land, no part and parcel of the Roman Empire, has ever risen into strength and opulence, except where unusual artificial industry has availed to counteract the tendencies of nature. So entirely had Rome engrossed whatsoever was rich by the mere bounty of native endowment. Vast, therefore, unexampled, immeasurable, was the basis of natural power upon which the Roman throne reposed. — DE QUINCEY.