That Cæsar desired absolute power, not merely for his own enjoyment but in the conviction that with it he could best serve the empire, can hardly be disputed; but whether or not he wished the kingly title no one can know. While he was in the Orient the glamor of Alexander’s achievements seems to have overcome him; and under this spell he neglected the work of improving the empire to plan the conquest of the great Parthian kingdom, Rome’s only surviving rival. In this scheme the conqueror got the better of the statesman. A motive to the new war, in itself unnecessary, was to escape from the situation at Rome--from flattery, intrigue, the incompetence of officials, from deadly though silent envy and hatred, which were making his life every day more unendurable. As the conqueror of Parthia he could overwhelm all opposition and mold the empire as clay in the potter’s hands. For the remainder of his days he could dwell serene on the pinnacle of glory; and at his death, having no son of his own, he could bequeath the regenerated world to his grandnephew Octavius, a youth of great promise whom he had adopted as a son. [Illustration: CLEOPATRA In the Vatican Museum, Rome] From all that we can learn, however, success in the Parthian war would have been a catastrophe to European civilization. In wealth and population, in the resources of war and peace, the Oriental part of the empire would have overbalanced the European. The capital would have shifted to Alexandria or farther east; and Oriental absolutism would have dominated the civilized world. Three centuries after Cæsar, autocracy was to come even to Europe. It came with its bureaucratic accompaniment to destroy the little that remained of economic strength and intellectual freedom, and to drag to ruin the decaying civilization of the ancient world.