as live to be in awe of such a thing as I myself," says Cassius.[171] It had come home to them at length that Caesar was to be king, and therefore they conspired. It would be a difficult task in the present era to recommend to my readers the murderers of Caesar as honest, loyal politicians, who did for their country, in its emergency, the best that the circumstances would allow. The feeling of the world in regard to murder has so changed during the last two thousand years, that men, hindered by their sense of what is at present odious, refuse to throw themselves back into the condition of things a knowledge of which can have come to them only from books. They measure events individually by the present scale, and refuse to see that Brutus should be judged by us now in reference to the judgment that was formed of it then. In an age in which it was considered wise and fitting to destroy the nobles of a barbarous community which had defended itself, and to sell all others as slaves, so that the perpetrator simply recorded the act he had done as though necessary, can it have been a base thing to kill a tyrant? Was it considered base by other Romans of the day? Was that plea ever made even by Caesar's friends, or was it not acknowledged by them all that "Brutus was an honorable man," even when they had collected themselves sufficiently to look upon him as an enemy? It appears abundantly in Cicero's letters that no one dreamed of regarding them as we regard assassins now, or spoke of Caesar's death as we look upon assassination. "Shall we defend the deeds of him at whose death we are rejoiced?" he says: and again, he deplores the feeling of regret which was growing in Rome on account of Caesar's death, "lest it should be dangerous to those who have slain the tyrant for us."[172] We find that Quintilian, among his stock lessons in oratory, constantly refers to the old established rule that a man did a good deed who had killed a tyrant--a lesson which he had taken from the Greek teachers.[173] We are, therefore, bound to accept this murder as a thing praiseworthy according to the light of the age in which it was done, and to recognize the fact that it was so regarded by the men of the day.