It was a marvellous exhibition, not simply of force, but of force wielded by supreme intelligence and craft. He had lived four years among this people and knew their sources of weakness, their internal jealousies and rivalries, their incohesiveness. When they hurled themselves against Rome, it was as a mass of sharp fragments. When the Goths did the same, it was as one solid, indivisible body. Caesar saw that by adroit management he could disintegrate this people, even while conquering them. By forcibly maintaining in power those who submitted to him, being by turns gentle and severe, ingratiating here, terrifying there, he established a tremendous personal force; and during nine years carried on eight campaigns, marvels in the art of war, as well as in the subtler methods of negotiation and intrigue. He had successively dealt with all the Gallic tribes, even including Great Britain, subjugating either through their own rivalries, or by his invincible arm. Equally able to charm and to terrify, he had all the gifts, all the means to success and empire, that can be possessed by man. Great in politics as in war, as full of resource in the forum as on the battle-field, he was by nature called to dominion. It was not as a patriot, simply intent upon freeing Rome of an harassing enemy, that he endured those nine years in Gaul--not as a great leader burning with military ardor that he conducted those eight campaigns. The conquest of Gaul meant the greater conquest of Rome. The one was accomplished; he now turned his back upon the devastated country, and prepared to complete his great project of human ascendency. Rome was mistress of the world; he--would be master of Rome. CHAPTER III. While the Star of Empire was thus moving toward the West, another and brighter star was about to arise in the East. So accustomed are we to the story, that we lose all sense of wonder at its recital. Julius Caesar's brief triumph was over. Marc Antony had recited his virtues over his bier, Rome had wept, and then forgotten him in the absorbing splendors of his nephew Augustus. In an obscure village of an obscure country in Asia Minor, the young wife of a peasant finds shelter in a stable, and gives birth to a son, who is cradled in the straw of a manger, from which the cattle are feeding. Can the mind conceive of human circumstances more lowly? The child grew to manhood, and in his thirty-three years of life was never lifted above the obscure sphere into which he was born; never spoke from the vantage-ground of worldly elevation,--simply moving among people of his own station in life, mechanics, fishermen, and peasants, he told of a religion of love, a gospel of peace, for which he was willing to die.