A milk-white fawn, on account of its rarity, was given him by a peasant. He tamed her, and she became his constant companion, unaffrighted even in the tumult of battle. He saw that the people began to invest the little animal with supernatural qualities; so, finally, he confided to them that she was sent to him by the Goddess Diana, who spoke to him through her, and revealed important secrets. Such is the story which Corneille and writers in other lands have found so fascinating, and which an English author has made the subject of his poem "The White Hind of Sertorius." Another Roman civil war, more pregnant of great results, was to be fought out in Spain. Julius Caesar's conspiracy against the Roman Republic, and his desperate fight with Pompey for the dictatorship, long drenched Spanish soil with blood, and had its final culmination (after Pompey's tragic death in Egypt) in Caesar's victory over Pompey's sons at Munda, in Spain, 45 B.C. With this event, the military triumphs and the intrigues of Caesar had accomplished his purpose. He was declared _Imperator_, perpetual Dictator of Rome, and religious sacrifices were decreed to him as if he were a god. Unconscious of the chasm which was yawning at his feet he haughtily accepted the honors and adulation of men who were at that very moment conspiring for his death. On the fatal "Ides of March" (44 B.C.) he was stricken in the Senate Chamber by the hands of his friends, and the great Caesar lay dead at the feet of Pompey's statue. The world had reached a supreme crisis in its existence. Two events--the most momentous it has ever known--were at hand: the birth of a Roman Empire, which was to perish in a few centuries, after a life of amazing splendor; and the birth of a spiritual kingdom, which would never die! Caesar's nephew, Octavius Augustus, by gradual approaches reached the goal toward which no doubt his greater uncle was moving. After defeating Brutus and Cassius at Philippi (42 B.C.) and then after destroying his only competitor, Antony, at Actium (31 B.C.) he assumed the imperial purple under the name of Augustus. The title sounded harmless, but its wearer had founded the "Roman Empire." At last there was peace. Spain was pacified, and only here and there did she struggle in the grasp of the Romans. Augustus, to make sure of the permanence of this pacification, himself went to the Peninsula. He built cities in the plains, where he compelled the stubborn mountaineers to reside, and established military colonies in the places they had occupied. Saragossa was one of these cities in the plains, and its name was "Caesar Augusta," and many others have wandered quite as far from their original names, which may, however, still be traced.