Litchfield enquirer., 1879-07-31

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 Parthians. Rome was very hot for Pompey.
 He was supreme; but he was hated by the aristocracy, lampooned by the wits, and not specially beloved by the people Worse than all, he was rapidly dropping into the second place as a soldier. The war he had conducted in the East was child's play compared with Casar's conquest of the most warlike race the Romans had ever met The death of Crassus, and the breaking up of the domestic alliance between the surviving Triumvirs, by the death of Pompey's wife, C@sar's only daughter, changed the whole political situation. Pom- pey went over to the Senate and they made haste to serve notice on Caesar to dlsband his army and come home private citizen, or go into downright rebellion.
 Caesar was equal to the occasion. The shrewdest politician in Rome, he saw clearly that political extinction, possibly death by as- sassination or on some ejudicialpretence, would be the inevitable result of submission. He was now the ablest general of his time; he con- manded the finest body of soldiers the ancient world had yet seen and he at once chose the alternative of rebellion. The war which fol- lowed was one uniform career of success. He first drove his enemies out of Italy. A most brilliant and decisive campaign annihilated the Pompeians in Spain. At Pharsalia, with half their numbers, he crushed Pompey and the army of the Senate. In less than half the time he had required for the conquest of Gaul his victory was complete. The Republic, or what had called itself the Republic, was dead and the Empire begun. The grandest feature of the conquest had been the clemency of the ccnqueror. From first to last, the Senate had butchered every Casarian they could lay h.nds upon. From first to last, Caesar had forgiven every unarmed enemy, had spared every disarmed enemy. Even as late as his return from Munda, the last. the savagest, and looked for the confscations and prescriptions of a Marius or Sylla. They assassinated him and then, at last, they got their pay in their own coin.
 Casar's assassins struck at happy moment for Cgsar's fame. He had overthrown the old constitution. He had as yet found nothing with which to replace it. His death saved him from the failure that has overtaken all men similarly circumstanced So far, his work had been one of true reform. As Froude strongly but justly states it, "The free con- stitution of the Republic had issued at last in elections which were mockery of representa- ton, in courts of law which were an insult to justice, and in the conversion of the provin- ces of the Empire into the feeding grounds of gluttonous aristocracy." Caesar had reached the point at which, following much the same road, centuries afterwards, both Oliver Crom- well and Napoleon Bonaparte failed so con- pletely. Though like them military ruler ris- ing to power on the ruins of republic, Cesar had, indeed, a vastly better training for the work before him. They rose from insignifcance to power solely by military merit He was great civilian for more years than he was great soldier. Born in the highest social rank, he had none of Napoleon's vulgar ambition for titles and court parade, or of his petty intole- rance of opposition. He was not, like Crom-
  in Rome was not of the kind which inclined him to despotisln. He was, like an old Eng fish Whig, or an old Virginia Democrat, pa- trician leader of popular party
 Yet, with all Cesar's personal advantages, and with many capabilities unknown to the common conqueror, we cannot see the least indication of any plan of his for reformed republican constitution. He died mere En- peror-who could see nothing better for Rome than military rule. Such a result may not have been much to his liking; for, as Mir. Froude justly remarks, he was a man of too high nature to enjoy the task of arbitrary government. Facts, in short, were too mighty for him That, as the historian Merivale inn agines Caesar could ever have been brought down to level with Mark Antony by simi- lar infatuation for Cleopatra, we shall refuse to believe, unless on much better evidence than he adduces It seems more just to leave his character where his assassins left it-one of the grandest, noblest, most generous known to history.
 We have dealt at such length with the man that we have left ourselves little space for dealing with the period. In the light it throws on the workings of popular government under difficult circumstances, this is the most inn portant epoch of all ancient history. It was the period of the final breaking up of republi- can institutions of not less than five hundred years growth, from purely inherent defects, and with no hostile outside impulse. All the forms of popular government remained sacred, but the substance was gone. The empire had completely outgrown it's constitution.
 Two fatal defects are at once obvious to the modern eye. The first is the absence of any system of representation. Rome probably numbered at that time half a million of in- habitants. Most of them were worse clothed and more poorly lodged than the tenement house population of New York ''The elec- tions, once pure, had become" says Mr. Froude, "matters of annual bargain between the Roman noble and his supporters" Imag- inc modern city of fit hundred thousand inhabitants more than half shiftless and needy-given the supreme control over an en- pire numbering hundred million souls! New York has taught us what might have been ex- pected with this difference; the Roman mo- ble was keen and a thoroughly interruptions politician. He practiced all the arts of intim- idation known to the Mississippi Democrat, and all the arts of bribery known to the poli- tician of the Seventeenth Senatorial District of Connecticut. He had hIs crowd ofroughs, and blood was often split Tn the Forum. Occa- siona1iy, indeed, the mob would go mad at the heels of a Cinna or a Clodius; but in auieter times, such men were picked off by the assas. sins of the aristocracY, and the elections usu- ally went in it's favor. It could always rely on the Senate. To add to the complica- tions of the popular Roman election, most of the Italians finally obtained the suffrage. To exercise it, however, they must come up to al fIaxy -l~