Caesar, it is said, wept when Pompeius’s seal-ring was handed to him, and he knew that his great rival had perished. He set the statue of Pompeius up again in Rome; and might, thereby, have seemed to rebuke, almost in the words Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Marullus, the fickle people of Rome who so soon forgot him who was once their idol. _A Broken Idol_ _Marullus._ Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels? You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft Have you climb’d up to walls and battlements, To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, Your infants in your arms, and there have sat The livelong day, with patient expectation, To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome: And when you saw his chariot but appear, Have you not made a universal shout, That Tiber trembled underneath her banks, To hear the replication of your sounds Made in her concave shores? And do you now put on your best attire? And do you now cull out a holiday? And do you now strew flowers in his way, That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood? Be gone! Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, Pray to the gods to intermit the plague That needs must light on this ingratitude. Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_, I. i. XI Marcus Licinius Crassus Of all the wealthy men in Rome, whether like Lucullus or Sulla they had brought their riches back from foreign conquests, or extracted it from the people of the overseas provinces as governors, or made it in business, the wealthiest was Marcus Licinius Crassus. His riches became a standard by which other men’s were measured. Crassus belonged to an old but comparatively poor family which suffered much in the wars of Marius and Sulla. He himself as a very young man was, like Pompeius, one of Sulla’s lieutenants. Like Pompeius again he had founded his fortune at the time of Sulla’s proscriptions. But the extraordinary and constant increase in his wealth was due to his own unresting energy and extreme ingenuity, helped by the fact that he was not in the least scrupulous.