condemned, he answered with the significant words "THEY HAVE LIVED."

The chief conspirator died in a less ignoble fashion. He had contrived
to collect about twelve thousand men; but only a fourth part of these
were regularly armed; the rest carried hunting spears, pikes, sharpened
stakes, any weapon that came to hand. At first he avoided an engagement,
hoping to hear news of something accomplished for his cause by the
friends whom he had left behind him in Rome. When the news of what had
happened on the fifth of December reached him, he saw that his position
was desperate. Many who had joined the ranks took the first opportunity
of deserting; with those that remained faithful he made a hurried march
to the north-west, hoping to make his way across the Apennines into
Hither Gaul. But he found a force ready to bar his way, while Antonius,
with the army from Rome, was pressing him from the south. Nothing
remained for him but to give battle. Early in the year 62 B.C. the
armies met. The rebel leader showed himself that day at his best. No
soldier could have been braver, no general more skillful. But the forces
arrayed against him were overpowering. When he saw that all was lost, he
rushed into the thickest of the fight, and fell pierced with wounds. He
was found afterwards far in advance of his men, still breathing and with
the same haughty expression on his face which had distinguished him in
life. And such was the contagious force of his example that not a single
free man of all his followers was taken alive either in the battle or in
the pursuit that followed it. Such was the end of a GREAT CONSPIRACY.

CHAPTER VIII.

CAESAR.

At eight-and-twenty, Caesar, who not thirty years later was to die
master of Rome, was chiefly known as a fop and a spendthrift. "In all
his schemes and all his policy," said Cicero, "I discern the temper of a
tyrant; but then when I see how carefully his hair is arranged, how
delicately with a single finger he scratches his head, I cannot conceive
him likely to entertain so monstrous a design as overthrowing the
liberties of Rome." As for his debts they were enormous. He had
contrived to spend his own fortune and the fortune of his wife; and he
was more than three hundred thousand pounds in debt. This was before he
had held any public office; and office, when he came to hold it,
certainly did not improve his position. He was appointed one of the
guardians of the Appian Way (the great