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LAVINIA.
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the monarchy ; the republic has outlived itself, and Brutus and Cassius can only murder the man who first grasped at the royal crown, but are in no degree able to kill the royal form of government which is deeply rooted in the needs of the age. In Antony and Cleopatra we see how, in place of a fallen Cæsar, three other Cæsars stretch forth daring hands to the sovereignty of the world, the problem of principles is solved, and the strife which breaks out between these triumvirs is only the personal question, " Who shall be Emperor, lord of all men and lands ? " The tragedy entitled Titus Andronicus shows us that even unlimited autocracies in the Roman realm follow the law of all earthly events, that is, to pass into decay, and nothing is more repulsive than those later Cæsars who, to the madness and crimes of Nero and Caligula, added the windiest weakness. Nero and Caligula indeed grew giddy on the vast height of their power ; thinking themselves above humanity they became inhuman, believing they were gods they became godless ; but in contemplating their monstrosity we can no longer measure them with the rule of reason. The later Cæsars, on the contrary, are rather subjects of our pity, our dislike, our disgust ; they are wanting in the heathen self-deification, the intoxication of a sense of their own majesty, their terrible irresponsibility ;