ough he approved of the deed
after it was done. (Drumann, _Geschichte Roms_, Cinnae, p. 591, notes,
and also as to Helvius Cinna.)]

[Footnote 618: And also in the Life of Antonius.]

[Footnote 619: Suetonius (_Caesar_, c. 89) observes that scarce any of
his assasins survived him three years; and they all came to a violent
end.]

[Footnote 620: This town was on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont.
Compare the Life of Brutus, c. 36. 48, and Appianus (_Civil Wars_, iv.
134). Dion Cassius does not mention the ghost story.]

[Footnote 621: It has been already remarked that Niebuhr is of opinion
that the introduction to the Life of Caesar is lost. This opinion will
not appear well founded to those who have got a right conception of
the dramatic form in which Plutarch has cast most of his Lives, and
more particularly this of Caesar. He begins by representing him as
resisting the tyrant Sulla when others yielded, and then making his
way through a long series of events to the supreme power, which he had
no sooner attained than he lost it. But his fortune survived him, and
the faithless men, his murderers, most of whom owed to him their lives
or their fortunes, were pursued by the avenging daemon till they were
all hunted down.

A just estimate of the first of all the Romans is not a difficult
task. We know him from the evidence of his contemporaries, both
friends and enemies. The devoted attachment of his true friends is
beyond doubt; and his enemies could not deny his exalted talents.
Cicero, who has in various places heaped on him every term of abuse
that his copious storehouse contained, does not refuse his testimony
to the great abilities and generous character of Caesar. Drumann
(_Geschichte Roms_, Julii) has given an elaborate examination of
Caesar's character. His faults and his vices belonged to his age, and
he had them in common with nearly all his contemporaries. His most
striking virtues, his magnanimity, his generosity, his mercy to the
vanquished, distinguished him among all the Romans of his period.
Caesar was a combination of bodily activity, intellectual power, of
literary acquirements, and administrative talent that has seldom
appeared. As a soldier he was not inferior in courage and endurance to
the hardiest veteran of his legions; and his military ability places
him in the first rank of commanders who have contended with and
overcome almost insurmountable obstacles. Cicero ranks him in the
first class o