CAESAR RULES ROME. The strife in the city had ceased for a time when Pompey, a famous general, who had once shared power with Caesar as a "triumvir," joined the senators in planning his ruin. Caesar led his army into Italy to the borders of the Rubicon. Exclaiming, "The die is cast,'" he crossed the sacred boundary and marched straight to Rome. Pompey and his party fled, and civil war divided the Roman world into those who followed Caesar and those who followed Pompey, Caesar was everywhere victorious, in Italy, Africa, Spain, and the East. He brought back order into the government of the city and of the provinces, but in the year 44 B.C. he was murdered in the senate-house by several senators, one of whom, Marcus Brutus, had been his friend. ORIGIN OF THE TITLE "EMPEROR." Caesar had not been called "emperor," though the chief power had been his. One of his titles was "imperator," or commander of the army, a word from which our word "emperor" comes. He was really the first emperor of Rome. In later times the very word Caesar became an imperial title, not only in the Roman Empire, but also in modern Germany, for "Kaiser" is another form of the word "Caesar." BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE. Caesar's successor was his grandnephew Octavius, usually called Augustus, which was one of his titles. Augustus carried out many of Caesar's plans for improving the government in Rome and in the provinces. The people in the provinces were no longer robbed by Roman officers. Many of them became Roman citizens. After a time all children born within the empire were considered Romans, just as if they had been born in Rome. THE ROMAN EMPIRE. The Roman Empire carried on the work which the republic had begun. It did some things better than the republic had done them. Within its frontiers there was peace for two or three hundred years. Many people had an opportunity to share in all the best that the Greeks and Romans had learned. Unfortunately the peoples imitated the bad as well as the good. ROMAN ROADS. As builders the Romans taught much to those who lived after them. Their great roads leading out from Rome have never been excelled. In Gaul these roads served, centuries later, to mark out the present French system of highroads and showed many a route to the builders of railroads. They were made so solid that parts of them still remain after two thousand years. [Illustration: Augustus Caesar After the statue in the Vatican]