Litchfield enquirer., 1879-07-31
FROUDE's CESAR.

CESAR: A Sketch, by James Anthony Froude
 Published by Charles Scr1bners' Sons
 New York.
 Whatever it's merit as portrait, the Sketcl before us is certainly magnificent picture No dinness of immense distance, or dust o scholarship, rests on this wonderful painting The subject stands out in all his native brillian cy, as he seemed to the men of his Tentf Legion-the greatest man of action the worlt had then produced, perhaps the greatest of al time. The biographer pretends to no judicia candor He belongs to the sect of hero-wor shippers Here is the hero of all others wor thy of his worship and there is no attempt tt disguise the spirit of adoration which inspires his work. It is an easy book to criticise Int least discriminating of newspaper editors car quote a few paragraphs, and sum up with the wise remark that this is partisanship, not his tory Of course it is partisanship. MT. Froude finds in Caius Julius Caesar a man af ter his own heart, and he tries to rescue him from history"
 Scholars are 8 patient race, while this is an impatient world. They compose histories as Haydn composed his harmonies of ''The Ger ation," in a correct and by no means unmelo- dious way. But grand times need grander work; especially this climax of ancient history-a period of terrific social upheaval and of boiling political chaos Hence we can not but rejoice at the sound of these audacious Wagner trumpets with which Froude blares out the most tremendous of military symphonies with the noble Caesar motif as it's theme. He wakes up us careless moderns to interest in this far away crisis of a civilization now utter ly extinct; and in man whose life, or per haps whose death, changed the history of the world for ten centuries.
 We read Froude's five or six hundred pages with wonder and admiration. They are plain ly the work of consummate artist Those dry old Gallic wars become as entrancing a story as CGur- r-de- Lions storm of Torqulstone in Ivanhoe. Pharsalia, Thapsus and Munda, be- come as real to us as Shiloh or Gettysburgh. Froude's Rome is a revelation. The stately old Mistress of the World we read about in
 
 intrigue and scandal, of political and social squabbles, of riot, wreck and ruin The grave old Senate proves as noisy as a ward cau- GUS. Cicero blackguards his fellow Senators in language of which Gen. Butler would be ashamed. If this queer old lot of statesmen had any rules of order they never enforced them.
 At home these Roman aristocrats were the most riotous of spendthrifts abroad, they were the most avarIcious of tyrants Verres million dollars out of the province of Sicily Of this he reckoned on saving but one third for himself ; another was to satify his tools {; and the remaining third would bribe the Sen- ate. The Roman Democracy was no better than it's aristocracy The strength of primitive Rome had lain in it's small farmers They had been at once citizens and soldiers but the very victories of the Commonwealth had ruin- ed It. In the rear of her conquering armies had gone the slave-dealer He bought up all the prisoners and sold them at home as slaves. The Roman farmer soon found himself unable to compete with their labor, and gradually the whole country was divided into large planta- tions. Nor were the slaves mere savages like our African negroes. They were often in- telligent, educated men, or skilled artisans, and soon the real work done in Italy came to be done by them. The poorer citizens flocked into the provinces as merchants, or petty off, cers; or they crowded into the cities, chiefly Rome, adding hovel element as dangerous as the tenement house population of New York Here they were furnished with bread at artifcially reduced rates, and became an im- portant factor in the political disturbances of the times.
 The government of Rome was now thoroug- ly popular in form, though intensely aristo- cratic in substance. The citizens elected, by universal suffrage, all the officers of the State; and those officers, of certain grades, became, co ctScio, life members of the Senate. Thus the Senator was not necessarily, a patrician but held his office simply as an attribute of an of- ticlal station to which he had been chosen by the people. But, practically, the high offices which gave their occupants membership of the Senate could only be held by the rich. Usu- ally, says Mir. Froude, ''the elections were managed by clubs and coteries; and, except on occasions of national danger and political excitement, those who spent most freely were most certain of success" There were however occasional popular tempests, during which the aristocracy were for time driven from con- trol of the government. "It is easy," says Mir. Froude, "to persuade the masses that the good things of this world are unjustly divided, es- pecially when it happens to be the exact truth" The chief cause of strife was the public land. This was practically held by the aristocracy to their own use; but, now and then, some popular agitator would rise up and demand that this land should be opened tc settlement by the poorer citizens. Suct schemes, stigmatized by the arstocracy as 'agrarian," often resulted in the passage o what the American would term homestead laws. To these, the aristocracy were most bitterly opposed. They often managed to nulify the law, and they generally massacred the popular leaders who proposed them. Such had been the fate of the Gracchi The Marian party, which next took up the popular cause, had been prescribed by Sylla.
 Finally, the leadership of this party devolved on Caesar. He first comes into notice as a consummate politician, one of those men. says MT. Froude, who, seeing the end he wishes tc attain, uses any means to attain it. He was regarded by the aristocratic party, in the be- ginning, much as the old Federalists of 1S0C looked on Aaron Burr. Though hated by the Senate, he managed to win the confidence of the people, without becoming open to the charge of being a demagogue. In the mean time the Senate was disgracing itself by al. most incouceivable exhibitions of arrogance, incompetence and corruption. Cesar's first great blow at the Senatorial power was in the formation of the first Triumvirate, consisting of POmpey, the great soldier of the nariod .