ious States and
cities out of Italy, and colonized new cities. He excluded _judices_ from
all ranks but those of senators and knights, and enacted new laws for the
security of persons and property. He gave unbounded religious toleration,
and meditated a complete codification of the Roman law. He founded a
magnificent public library, appointed commissioners to make a map of the
whole empire, and contemplated the draining of the Pontine marshes.

(M1023) After these works of legislation and public improvement, he
prepared for an expedition to Parthia, in which he hoped to surpass the
conquests of Alexander in the East. But his career was suddenly cut off by
his premature death. The nobles whom he humiliated, and the Oriental
despotism he contemplated, caused a secret hostility which he did not
suspect amid the universal subserviency to his will. Above all, the title
of king, the symbol of legitimate sovereignty, to which he aspired,
sharpened the daggers of the few remaining friends of the liberty which
had passed away for ever. All the old party of the State concocted the
conspiracy, some eighty nobles, at the head of which were Brutus and
Cassius. On the fifteenth day of March, B.C. 44, the Ides of March, the
day for which the Senate was convened for his final departure for the
East, he was stabbed in the senate-house, and he fell, pierced with
wounds, at the foot of Pompey's statue, in his fifty-sixth year, and
anarchy, and new wars again commenced.

(M1024) The concurrent voices of all historians and critics unite to give
Caesar the most august name of all antiquity. He was great in every
thing,--as orator, as historian, as statesman, as general, and as lawgiver.
He had genius, understanding, memory, taste, industry, and energy. He
could write, read, and dictate at the same time. He united the bravery of
Alexander with the military resources of Hannibal. He had a marvelous
faculty of winning both friends and enemies. He was generous, magnanimous,
and courteous. Not even his love for Cleopatra impaired the energies of
his mind and body. He was not cruel or sanguinary, except when urged by
reasons of State. He pardoned Cicero, and received Brutus into intimate
friendship. His successes were transcendent, and his fortune never failed
him. He reached the utmost limit of human ambition, and was only hurled
from his pedestal of power by the secret daggers of fanatics, who saw in
his elevation the utter extinction of Roman l