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CAESAR 543 ten account of the conspiracy was put into his hand, but he thrust it unopened into the bosom of his mantle. It was agreed by the conspirators that one of them, Lucius Tilling Oimber, should present a petition to him, and that his expected refusal to grant it should be the signal for his murder. All happened as it had been planned ; the assassins rushed upon him with their daggers, and met with but a momentary resistance; wrapped in his toga, he sank, pierced with 23 wounds, at the foot of the statue of Pompey ; and Rome was again plunged into civil war, and became a prey to Antony and Octavius, the grandson of Caesar's sister Julia. The heads of the conspiracy, Brutus and Cassius, perished at Philippi in 42, and when Octavius had vanquished Antonius, Casar's son by Cleopatra, Ccesarion, was put to death by his order. Caesar's last wife, Calpurnia, survived him. As a general Csesar stands in history among the first, having no equal except perhaps the modern Napoleon ; as a statesman the highest rank is conceded to him ; as an orator he was compared to Cicero; and as a writer he surpassed Xenophon, and was only less than Tacitus. Besides his masterly " Com- mentaries," the memoirs of his own career, he wrote on grammar and on rhetoric ; composed tragedies, satires, and lyrics ; and reformed the calendar as well as the state. (See CALEN- DAR.) His moral sensibility appears to have been unequal to his intellectual acuteness or to his force of will ; and the record of his life is stained by acts of profligacy, and by a need- less waste of human life. In person, Caesar was tall and spare ; his face was generally pale, his body weak and subject to epileptic fits. He was fastidious in his tastes, amiable and cour- teous, careful of the feelings of his friends, and generous to his enemies, except when he deemed them incorrigible. His great works are the Commentarii de Bella Gallico and Commentarii de Bella Civili. . The first is in seven books, containing the incidents of as many campaigns; an eighth book was after- ward added by another hand ; it contains an account of his actions while in Gaul, during which time he invaded Britain and Germany. The second work describes his contest with Pompey until the time of the siege of Alexan- dria. It is not known when he published the first, but it was probably about 51 B. 0. ; the second was published in 47 B. C. Both these works were .written immediately after the events occurred, and are therefore most impor- tant as authorities. His style is noted for its simplicity, naturalness, and purity, for which qualities nothing in the Latin language can be compared to it. Caesar's veracity has been called in question by Asinius Pollio (Suetonius, 56), and by several later writers. Schneider, in particular, advances the opinion that the ob- ject of his first work was political, to give the public a favorable idea of his talents, and to confound the plans of his enemies who were attempting to destroy his popularity ; and that 138 VOL. HI. 35 of the second to appease the animosity of the partisans of Pompey. This opinion has been very ingeniously maintained, but there is the greatest difficulty in reconciling it with the simplicity of Caesar's style. Caasar is men- tioned in terms of unqualified praise by Cicero in his Brutus. Tacitus, in his Germania, calls him summus auctorum divus Julius. The gen- uineness of the Commentaries has also been questioned. Julius Celsus, at Constantinople, published an abstract of Caasar's Commen- taries, from which arose the report that he was the original author ; it is without founda- tion, and there is a previous Greek translation of Caesar by Planudes. Many think, and with reason, that Caasar wrote a diary ; Servius has a passage which is not in our copies, under the title ofEphemeris; and Plutarch has one under the same title which has come down to us, showing that something of the kind was writ- ten by him. He left some orations, letters, apophthegms, a treatise DeAnalogia, Anticato, &c., all of which are lost, except the letters which are preserved in the works of Cicero. The supposed author of the eighth book, and also of the additions to the civil war, is Aulus Ilirtius, a legate of Csesar, who died one year after him at Mutina (now Modena), where both the consuls Hirtius and Pansa were slain. It has been thought that Hirtius wrote the Helium Hispanicum, but the style shows it to be the work of a different hand. The editio princeps of Caesar's works was pub- lished at Rome in 1469 ; good editions are those of Oudendorp (Stuttgart, 1822) and Herzog (Leipsic, 1831-'4). The ancient au- thorities for the life of Caesar are the biog- raphies by Suetonius and Plutarch, the let- ters and orations of Cicero, and the histories of Dion Cassius, Appian, and Velleius Pater- culus. A life of Caesar was begun by Napo- leon III., and two volumes were published (VRMoire de Jules Cesar, Paris, 1865-'6). But perhaps the best modern account of his career is that given by Mommsen, who, in his " History of Rome," has devoted a very large space to this subject. MMI!. Sir .luliiis. an English jurist, of Ital- ian descent, son of a physician to Queens Mary and Elizabeth, born at Tottenham in 1557, died April 28, 1636. After having held high offices during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, he was appointed by James I. chancellor of the exchequer. This office he resigned upon re- ceiving that of master of the rolls, which he retained till his death. He was a strong friend of Bacon, whom he assisted during his trial, and who died in his arms. Williams, Bacon's successor, having himself had no experience in chancery practice, relied greatly upon Sir Ju- lius's learning and skill. He was remarkable for the gravity of his character, and his repu- tation for benevolence was so great that his house was as well known to poor people as a hospital. His life was published by Edmund Lodge (royal 4to, London, 1810).