In so dissolute and adulterous a city, it could shock no one that Cæsar should be false to his wife with one mistress or even with several; but in the midst of her debaucheries, and even though Rome had lost many of her ancient virtues, she still preserved the pride of the Roman name. These conquerors of the world looked upon other nations as of servile race and inferior humanity. Little did they care for the transient loves of Cæsar and Ennoah, queen of Mauritania, nor would they have cared any more had Cleopatra served merely to beguile his leisure during the war of Alexandria; but in bringing this woman to the seven-hilled city, in publicly acknowledging her as his mistress, in forcing on all the spectacle of a Roman citizen, five times consul and thrice dictator, as the lover of an Egyptian woman, Cæsar seemed, according to the ideas of the time, to insult all Rome. As Merivale justly observes: “If one can imagine the effect that would have been produced in the fifteenth century by the marriage of a peer of England or of a grandee of Spain with a Jewess some idea may be formed of the impression made on the Roman people by the intrigue of Cæsar and Cleopatra.” Cæsar had received supreme power and had been deified. He was created dictator for ten years, and in the city his statue bore this inscription: “Cæsari semideo”—To Cæsar the demigod. He might believe himself sufficiently powerful to despise Roman prejudices; for the rest, during the last two years of his life, Cæsar, till then so prudent, so cautious in humoring the sentiments of the plebeians, so skillful in using them for his own designs, pretended in his public life to despise and brave public opinion. It was the same in his private life; far from dismissing Cleopatra, he visited her more frequently than ever at the villa on the Tiber, talked incessantly of the queen, and allowed her publicly to call her son Cæsarion.