writing a treatise on punning, and collecting a set of good sayings—fighting and making love at the same moment, and willing to abandon both his empire and his mistress for a sight of the Fountains of the Nile. Such did Julius Cæsar appear to his contemporaries, and to those of the subsequent ages who were the most inclined to deplore and execrate his fatal genius.
But we must not be so much dazzled with his surpassing glory, or with his magnanimous, his amiable qualities, as to forget the decision of his impartial countrymen:—
HE WAS JUSTLY SLAIN.[1]
27.
Egeria! sweet creation of some heart
Which found no mortal resting-place so fair
As thine ideal breast.
The respectable authority of Flaminius Vacca would incline us to believe in the claims of the Egerian grotto.[2] He assures us that he saw an inscription in the pavement, stating that the fountain was that of Egeria, dedicated to the nymphs. The inscription is not there at this day, but Montfaucon quotes two lines[3] of Ovid [Fast., iii. 275, 276] from a stone in the Villa Giustiniani, which he seems to think had been brought from the same grotto.
- ↑ "Jure cæsus existimetur," says Suetonius, i. 76, after a fair estimation of his character, and making use of a phrase which was a formula in Livy's time. "Mælium jure cæsum pronuntiavit, etiam si regni crimine insons fuerit:" [lib. iv. cap. xv.] and which was continued in the legal judgments pronounced in justifiable homicides, such as killing house-breakers.
- ↑ Rom. Ant., F. Nardini, 177 1, iv. Memorie, note 3, p. xii. He does not give the inscription.
- ↑ "In villa Justiniana exstat ingens lapis quadrus solidus, in quo sculpta hæc duo Ovidii carmina sunt:—
"'Ægeria est quæ præbet aquas dea grata Camœnis,
Illa Numæ conjunx consiliumque fuit.'Qui lapis videtur eodem Egeriæ fonte, aut ejus vicinia, istuc comportatus."—Diarium Italic., Paris, 1702, p. 153.
