The founder of the Roman empire was a very great man. With such genius and such fortune it is not surprising that he should be made an idol. In intellectual stature he was at least an inch higher than his fellows which is in itself enough to confound all our notions of right and wrong. He had the advantage of being a statesman before he was a soldier whereas Napoleon was a soldier before he was a statesman. His ambition coincided with the necessity of the world which required to be held together by force, and therefore his empire endured for four hundred, or if we include its eastern offset, for fourteen hundred years, while that of Napoleon crumbled to pieces in four. But unscrupulous ambition was the root of his character. It was necessary in fact to enable him to trample down the respect for legality which still hampered other men. To connect him with any principle seems to me impossible. He came forward, it is true, as the leader of what is styled the democratic party, and in that sense the empire which he founded may be called democratic. But to the gamblers who brought their fortunes to that vast hazard table, the democratic and aristocratic parties were merely _rouge_ and _noir_. The social and political equity, the reign of which we desire to see was, in truth, unknown to the men of Caesar's time. It is impossible to believe that there was an essential difference of principle between one member of the triumvirate and another. The great adventurer had begun by getting deeply into debt, and had thus in fact bound himself to overthrow the republic. He fomented anarchy to prepare the way for his dictatorship. He shrank from no accomplice however tainted, not even from Catiline; from no act however profligate or even inhuman. Abusing his authority as a magistrate, for party purposes, he tries to put to a cruel and ignominious death Rabirius, an aged and helpless man, for an act done in party warfare thirty years before. The case of Vettius is less clear, but Dr. Mommsen, at all events, seems to have little doubt that Caesar was privy to the subornation of this perjurer, and when his perjuries had broken down, to his assassination. Dr. Mommsen owns that there was a dark period in the life of the great man; in that darkness it could scarcely be expected that the Republicans should see light.