It is hard not to judge men by the standards of our own age. The ancients rarely felt an international humanity, and in his own time "Cæsar's clemency" was proverbial. As he was always careful not to waste in useless fighting the lives of his soldiers, so he was always true to his own precept, "Spare the citizens." The way in which he repeatedly forgave his enemies when they were in his power was an example to many a Christian conqueror. The best of his antagonists showed themselves bloodthirsty in word or act; and most of them, not excepting Cicero, were basely ungrateful for his forbearance. His treatment of Cicero was certainly most handsome--our knowledge of it is derived mainly from Cicero's letters. Perhaps this magnanimity was dashed with a tinge of kindly contempt for his fellow-citizens; but whatever its motives, it was certainly wise and benign at the beginning of the new era he was inaugurating. He was no vulgar destroyer, and did not desire to ruin in order to rule. He is charged with ambition, the sin by which the angels fell. It is not for us to fathom the depths of his mighty mind. Let us admit the charge. But it was not an ignoble ambition. Let us say that he was so ambitious that he laid the foundations of the Roman Empire and of modern France; that his services to civilization and his plans for humanity were so broad that patriots were driven to murder him. Some of Cæsar's eulogists have claimed for him a moral greatness corresponding to his transcendent mental power. This is mistaken zeal. He may stand as the supreme representative of the race in the way of practical executive intellect. It is poor praise to put him into another order of men, with Plato or with Paul. Their greatness was of another kind. We cannot speak of degrees. He is the exponent of creative force in political history--not of speculative or ethical power.