The Mentor Julius Caesar 5

The Mentor Julius Caesar 5

Showing parts of a Gallic wall in which stones are intermixed with

beams]

 

During the civil war and the year following its close Cæsar gave

attention to internal reforms. Humanely and prudently he forgave

political offenders, and associated with himself in the government

many who had fought against him in the war. He sought to reconcile old

hatreds and to introduce an era of good feeling. There can be no doubt

of his sympathy with the subject peoples. Those in authority in the

provinces were no longer to enrich themselves and their friends by

oppression, but were held strictly accountable to the Dictator. Roman

citizenship was a highly-prized possession, as it meant justice and an

enviable social standing to the possessor. Cæsar granted it freely to

individuals and to entire communities. Obviously, his aim was the rapid

equalization of all freemen of the empire.

 

He took especial interest in public improvements at Rome. Among these

works was the completion of the temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva

on the Capitoline Hill. The earlier temple had been destroyed by fire,

and the construction of the new building required about thirty-six

years. This was the largest and most stately temple in the city. Cæsar

laid out a public square, named after his family the Julian Forum, in

which he erected a temple to Venus Genetrix (ancestress), from whom

he claimed descent. In it he placed a graceful statue of the goddess,

carved by Arcesilaus, the most famous sculptor of the age. It is a

remarkable example of clinging transparent drapery. In this public

exhibition of his descent from a goddess Cæsar boldly displayed his

egotism, which was further exalted by decrees of the Senate proclaiming

him a god. It was not till after his death, however, that a temple

was actually erected, at the east end of the Roman Forum, for his

worship.[2] The Curia, Senate House, Cæsar began to rebuild, but its

completion was left to Augustus, who named it the Curia Julia, after

the Julian family, to which Cæsar, and by adoption Augustus, belonged.

On the south side of the Forum he began the construction of the

Basilica Julia, afterward finished by Augustus. It was a great hall

intended for judicial and mercantile business. These are but a small

part of the vast improvements that he planned for Rome, Italy, and

the empire. The greater number remained mere schemes. To us the most

interesting was the cutting of a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth,

a work that has had to await the skill of the modern engineer.

 

[2] The temple of the deified Cæsar, the ruins of which is pictured

in this number.

 

As supreme pontiff Cæsar was the head of the state religion and

guardian of the sacred lore. In this capacity he reformed the

calendar, which in his day had fallen into dire confusion. The

improvement consisted essentially in the adoption of the Egyptian solar

year of 365¼ days. The Julian calendar remained in force throughout

the civilized world till 1582, when it was superseded by that of Pope

Gregory XIII, who introduced a more exact system.

 

[Illustration: ROMAN FASCES

 

Bundle of rods and axe bound together and borne before emperors and

other rulers as symbols of power]

 

[Illustration: THE BASILICA JULIA--Roman Forum (restored)]

 

[Illustration: A DENARIUS

 

Stamped with the head of Cæsar. A denarius was a silver coin worth

about 20 cents]

 

 

_Personal Appearance, Friends and Character_

 

The Romans as a people belonged to the Mediterranean race, and the

great majority, therefore, were short and dark, like the Sicilians of

today. Cæsar, however, was tall and fair, with round, well-proportioned

limbs and black piercing eyes. His portraits on coins and in sculpture

show a spare face with a high, broad forehead inclined to baldness,

representing a physique too delicate to sustain the enormous activities

of his brain. To the end of his days he paid, perhaps, an excessive

attention to his personal appearance, and was especially gratified when

the Senate in his honor decreed him the privilege of wearing a laurel

wreath; for he found it a means of covering his baldness. There was in

his face and manner a frank sympathy that won the hearts of all those

that came into close touch with him; and in spite of brutal conquests

he developed an __EXPRESSION__ of gentleness and clemency mentioned by

writers of his age.

 

The greatest of his contemporaries was Cicero, who by sheer energy and

ability had worked his way to the highest offices, and had rescued the

state from a dangerous conspiracy. Though he was a consummate political

orator, Cicero’s tastes lay chiefly in the direction of literary

and philosophic composition, pleasant country life, and association

with intellectual men. Cæsar tried to win him as a political ally;

but Cicero and those intimate associates that loved the Republic

feared Cæsar’s autocratic methods and ambition. This aloofness of the

intellectual class drove Cæsar to seek friends and helpers in the lower

ranks of society and among his subordinate military officers. Although

a few of these people served him faithfully, the great majority were

incompetent to fill the offices that he gave them, and were bent only

on shirking duty and enriching themselves. On such a basis no man,

however great, can build up a just and efficient system of government.

 

[Illustration: CICERO

 

In the Vatican Museum, Rome]

 

[Illustration: CICERO

 

In the Madrid Museum. Considered the most authentic marble portrait of

the great orator]

 

[Illustration: From History of Rome, by G. W. Botsford, The Macmillan

Co., Publishers

 

POMPEY]

 

In spite of many admirable qualities Cæsar shared fully in the moral

looseness of the age, which set at naught all marriage relations.

Not even his friends at Rome, nor friendly kings who gave him their

hospitality, could trust their wives to his honor. With Cleopatra,

queen of Egypt, he had associated in her capital; but he shocked even

his dissolute countrymen by bringing her to Rome and into his own house.

 

 

_An Imitation of Alexander_

 

[Illustration: POMPEY’S THEATER (restored)

 

First theater in Rome built of stone]

 

That Cæsar desired absolute power, not merely for his own enjoyment

but in the conviction that with it he could best serve the empire,

can hardly be disputed; but whether or not he wished the kingly title

no one can know. While he was in the Orient the glamor of Alexander’s

achievements seems to have overcome him; and under this spell he

neglected the work of improving the empire to plan the conquest of the

great Parthian kingdom, Rome’s only surviving rival. In this scheme the

conqueror got the better of the statesman. A motive to the new war,

in itself unnecessary, was to escape from the situation at Rome--from

flattery, intrigue, the incompetence of officials, from deadly though

silent envy and hatred, which were making his life every day more

unendurable. As the conqueror of Parthia he could overwhelm all

opposition and mold the empire as clay in the potter’s hands. For the

remainder of his days he could dwell serene on the pinnacle of glory;

and at his death, having no son of his own, he could bequeath the

regenerated world to his grandnephew Octavius, a youth of great promise

whom he had adopted as a son.

 

[Illustration: CLEOPATRA

 

In the Vatican Museum, Rome]

 

From all that we can learn, however, success in the Parthian war

would have been a catastrophe to European civilization. In wealth and

population, in the resources of war and peace, the Oriental part of

the empire would have overbalanced the European. The capital would

have shifted to Alexandria or farther east; and Oriental absolutism

would have dominated the civilized world. Three centuries after Cæsar,

autocracy was to come even to Europe. It came with its bureaucratic

accompaniment to destroy the little that remained of economic strength

and intellectual freedom, and to drag to ruin the decaying civilization

of the ancient world.

 

Cæsar, however, was not destined even to set out for Parthia. On March

15 (44 B. C.), the Senate met to take the last measures preparatory

to his departure. The place of session was the Senate House which

Pompey had built near his theater. Scarcely had Cæsar entered and taken

his seat when a throng of about sixty senators gathered round him,

pretending to greet him and to offer a petition. They were conspirators

who had engaged in a plot for his assassination, through no especial

love for the Republic, but for various personal reasons. Many had

gained office and wealth under his patronage; but in their greed for

greater wealth and political glory they lost all sense of gratitude.

The best among them was Marcus Brutus, in his own social circle a

philosopher and an idealist, but in business a hard, relentless usurer.

Caius Cassius, the brain of the conspiracy, was a plunderer of the

provinces and a robber of temples, whom envy drove into the plot. By

such men was Cæsar slain. It was a crime perpetrated upon the civilized

world, which had to endure thirteen more years of desolating civil

war (44-31 B. C.), before Octavius, the young heir to Cæsar, could

gain the mastery and bring the empire to peace. This young man, known

to history as Augustus, though less brilliant than his granduncle,

possessed a far greater degree of practical wisdom. It was he, rather

than Cæsar, who gave the Roman world an organization under which it was

to enjoy more than two centuries of prosperity and happiness. Viewed in

this light, the wisest act of the great Cæsar was the choice of this

youth of delicately modeled features and frail body as his son and

successor.

 

[Illustration: OCTAVIUS

 

Called “Augustus.” In the Vatican Museum, Rome]

 

[Illustration: MARCUS BRUTUS

 

In the National Museum, Naples. Found at Pompeii]

 

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