arms in Africa [Juba, King of Mauritania, having espoused their cause]. Cæsar pursued them thither, and proceeding with caution till secure of his advantage, defeated them in a decisive engagement at Thapsus. Scipio perished in his passage to Spain. Cato, shutting himself up in Utica, meditated a brave resistance; but finally, seeing no hope of success, he determined not to survive the liberties of his country, and fell deliberately by his own hand. Mauritania was now added to the number of the Roman provinces, and Cæsar returned to Rome absolute master of the empire. [He was decreed four triumphs, which were conducted with great magnificence; the first for his conquest of Gaul; the second for his victory over Ptolemy and Egypt; the third for the defeat of Pharnaces and Pontus; and the fourth for the defeat of Juba, King of Numidia. Appian says that the money carried in these triumphal processions, as the fruits of Cæsar's victories amounted to 65,000 talents, besides, 2822 crowns of gold, weighing together 20,414 Roman pounds.]

5. From that moment his attention was directed solely to the prosperity and happiness of the Roman people. He remembered no longer that there had been opposite parties; beneficent alike to the friends of Pompey as to his own. He laboured to reform every species of abuse or grievance. He introduced order into every department of the state, defining the separate rights of all its magistrates, and extending his care to the regulation of its most distant provinces. The reformation of the calendar, the draining of the marshes of Italy, the navigation of the Tiber, the embellishment of Rome, the complete survey and delineation of the empire, alternately employed his liberal and capacious mind. Returning from the final overthrow of Pompey's party in Spain, [whither Pompey's sons had escaped] he was hailed the father of his country, was created consul for ten years, and perpetual dictator. His person was declared sacred, his title henceforth Imperator, A.U.C. 709, B.C. 45.

6. The Roman republic had thus finally, by its own acts, resigned its liberties. They were not extinguished, as Montesque has well remarked, by the ambition of a Pompey or of a Cæsar. If the sentiments of Cæsar and Pompey had been the same as those of Cato, others would have had the same ambitious thoughts; and since the commonwealth was fated to fall, there never would

have been wanting a hand to drag it to destruction. Yet Cæsar had by force subdued his country; he therefore was a usurper; and had it been possible to restore the liberties of the republic, and with these its happiness, by the suppression of that usurpation, the attempt would have merited the praise at least of good designs. Perhaps so thought his murderers; and thus, however weak their policy, however base and treacherous their act, with many they will ever find apologists. They madly dreamed an impossible issue, as the event demonstrated.

7. A conspiracy was formed by 60 of the senators, at the head of whom were Brutus and Cassius: the former a man beloved of Cæsar, who had saved his life, and heaped upon him numberless benefits. It was rumoured that the dictator wished to add to his numerous titles that of king, and that the Ides of March was fixed on for investing him with the diadem. On that day [15 March], when taking his seat in the senate-house, he was suddenly assailed by the conspirators: he defended himself for some time against their daggers, till, seeing Brutus amongst the number, he faintly exclaimed, "And you, too, my son!" and, covering his face with his robe, resigned himself to his fate. He fell, pierced by 23 wounds, [in the 56th year of his age,] A.U.C. 711, B.C. 43.

8. The Roman people were struck with horror at the deed they loved Cæsar, master as he was of their lives and liberties. Mark Antony and Lepidus, ambitious of succeeding to the power of the dictator, resolved to pave the way by avenging his death. The people, to whom Cæsar by his testament had bequeathed a great part of his fortune, were penetrated with gratitude to his memory. A public harangue from Antony over the bleeding body, exposed in the forum, inflamed them with the utmost indignation against his murderers, who must have met with instant destruction had they not escaped with precipitation from the city. Antony profited by these dispositions; and the avenger of Cæsar, of course the favourite of the people, was in the immediate prospect of attaining a similar height of dominion. In this, however, he found a formidable competitor in Octávius, the grand-nephew and the adopted heir of Cæsar, who, at this critical moment, arrived in Rome. Availing himself of these titles, Octávius gained the senate to his interest, and divided with Antony the favour of the people The rivals soon per

ceived that it was their wisest plan to unite their interests; and they admitted Lepidus into their association, whose power, as Governor of Gaul, and immense riches, gave him a title to a share of authority. Thus was formed the second triumvirate, the effects of whose union were beyond measure dreadful to the republic. The triumviri divided among themselves the provinces, and cemented their union by a deliberate sacrifice made by each of his associates. Antony consigned to death his uncle Lucius, Lepidus his brother Paulus, and Octávius his guardian Toránius, and his friend Cicero. In this horrible proscription, 300 senators and 3000 knights were put to deatn.

9. Octavius and Antony now marched against the conspirators, who had a formidable army in the field in Thrace, commanded by Brutus and Cassius. An engagement ensued at Philippi, which decided the fate of the empire. Antony was victorious, for Octavius had no military talents; he was destitute even of personal bravery; and his conduct after the victory was stained with that cruelty which is ever the attendant of cowardice. Brutus and Cassius escaped the vengeance of their enemies by a voluntary death [42 B.C.]. Antony now sought a recompense for his troops by the plunder of the East. When in Cilicia, he summoned Cleopatra to answer for her conduct in dethroning an infant brother, and in openly favouring the party of Brutus and Cassius. The queen came to Tarsus, and made a complete conquest of the triumvir. Immersed in luxury and intoxicated with love, he forgot glory, ambition, fame, and every thing for Cleopatra; and Octavius saw this phrenzy with delight, as the preparative of his rival's ruin. He had nothing to dread from Lepidus, whose insignificant character first drew on him the contempt of his partisans ; and whose folly, in attempting an invasion of the province of his colleague, was punished by his deposition and banishment.

10. Antony had in his madness lavished the provinces of the empire in gifts to his paramour and her children. The Roman people were justly indignant at these enormities; and the divorce of his wife Octavia, the sister of his colleague, was at length the signal of declared hostility between them. An immense armament, chiefly naval, came to a decisive conflict near Actium, on the coast of Epirus. Cleopatra, who attended her lover, de

serted him with her galleys in the heat of the engagement; and such was the infatuation of Antony, that he abandoned his fleet and followed her. After a contest of some hours, they yielded to the squadron of Octavius, A.U.C. 723, B.C. 31. The victor pursued the fugitives to Egypt; and the base Cleopatra proffered terms to Octavius, including the surrender of her kingdom, and the abandonment of Antony. After an unsuccessful attempt at resistance, he anticipated his fate by falling on his sword. And Cleopatra soon after, either from remorse, or more probably from mortified ambition, as she found it was Octavius's design to lead her in chains to Rome to grace his triumph, had courage to follow the example of her lover, and put herself to death by the poison of an asp. Octavius [having reduced Egypt into a Roman province} returned to Rome, sole master of the Roman empire, A.U.C. 727, B.C. 27.

XXXV.-Consideration on such Particulars as mark the Genius and National Character of the Romans.

1. System of Roman Education.-A virtuous but rigid severity of manners was the characteristic of the Romans under their kings, and in the first ages of the republic. The private life of the citizens, frugal, temperate, and laborious, had its influence on their public character. The "paternal authority" gave to every head of a family a sove reign authority over all the members that composed it; and this power, felt as a right of nature, was never abused. Plutarch has remarked, as a defect of the Roman laws, that they did not prescribe, as those of Lacedæmon, a system and rules for the education of youth. But the truth is, the manners of the people supplied this want. The utmost attention was bestowed in the early formation of the mind and character. The excellent author of the dialogue De Oratoribus (whether Quintilian or Tacitus) presents a valuable picture of the Roman education in the early ages of the commonwealth, contrasted with the less virtuous practice of the more refined. The Roman matrons did not abandon their infants to mercenary nurses. They esteemed those duties sacred, and regarded the careful nurture of their offspring, the rudiments of their education, and the necessary occupations of their household, as the highest points of female merit. Next to the

care bestowed in the instilment of virtuous morals, a remarkable degree of attention seems to have been given to the language of children, and to the attainment of a correctness and purity of expression. Cicero informs us, that the Gracchi, the sons of Cornelia, were educated, "not so much in the lap as in the language of their mother.” That urbanity, which characterised the Roman citizens, showed itself particularly in their speech and gesture.

2. The attention to the language of the youth had another source. It was by eloquence more than by any other talent, that the young Roman could rise to the highest offices and dignities of the state. Forensic studies were, therefore, a principal object of the Roman education. Plutarch informs us, that among the sports of the children at Rome, one was, the pleading causes before a mock tribunal, and accusing and defending a criminal in the usual forms of judicial procedure.

3. The exercises of the body were likewise particularly attended to; whatever might harden the temperament, and confer strength and agility. These exercises were daily practised by the youth, under the eye of their elders, in the Campus Martius.

4. At seventeen the youth assumed the manly robe. He was consigned to the care of a master of rhetoric, whom he attended constantly to the forum, or to the courts of justice; for, to be an accomplished gentleman, it was necessary for a Roman to be an accomplished orator. The pains bestowed on the attainment of this character, and the best instructions for its acquisition, we learn from the writings of Cicero, Quintilian, and the younger Pompey.

XXXVI. Of the Progress of Literature among the Romans.

1. Before the intercourse with Greece, which took place after the Punic wars, the Roman people were utterly rude and illiterate. As among all nations the first appearance of the literary spirit is shown in poetical composition, the Roman warrior had probably, like the Indian or the Celtic, his war songs which celebrated his triumphs in battle. Religion likewise employs the earliest poetry of most nations; and if a people subsists by agriculture, a plentiful harvest is celebrated in the rustic song of the husbandmen. The Versus Fescennini, mentioned by Livy were probably of the nature of poetical dialogue, or alter