thing which counts. Caesar could hardly have
understood the idea of an indissoluble marriage, of a limited
monarchy, of equality before the law.

One strange similitude Froude did, in deference to outraged
susceptibilities, omit, and only the first edition contains a formal
comparison of Julius Caesar with Jesus Christ. No irreverence was
intended. It was Froude's enthusiasm for Caesar that carried him
away. Still, the instance is only an extreme form of what comes from
pushing parallels below the surface. It is only a shade less
misleading, though many shades less startling, to represent Caesar
as a virtuous philanthropist abstemious habits who perished in a
magnanimous effort to rescue the people from the tyranny of nobles.
The people in the modern sense were slaves, and the Republic at
least ensured that there should be some protection against military
despotism, to which in due course its abolition led. That Caesar was
intellectually among the greatest men of all time is beyond
question. Both strategist and as historian he is supreme. His
"thrasonical boast" was sober truth, and he stands above military or
literary criticism, a lesson and a model. But he was steeped in all
the vices of his age, and his motive was personal ambition. The
Republic did not give him sufficient scope, and therefore he would
have destroyed it, if he had not been himself destroyed.

Froude adopted the position of a great German professor and
historian, Theodor Mommsen, whose prejudices were as strong as his
learning was profound. He went with Mommsen in adoration of Caesar,
and in depreciation of Cicero. That Cicero used one sort of language
in public speeches, and another sort in private correspondence, is
true, and is notorious because some of his most intimate letters
have been preserved. But it is not peculiar to him. The man who
talked in public as he talked in private would have small sense of
fitness. The man who talked in private as he talked in public would
have small sense of humour. Although Cicero's humour was not brilliant,
he had sufficient taste to preserve him from pedantry and
from solecisms. His devotion to the Republic was perfectly sincere;
and if he changed in his behaviour to Caesar, it was because Caesar
changed in his behaviour to the Republic. Froude's specific charge
of rapid tergiversation is disproved by dates. The speech for
Marcellus, with its over-strained flattery of the conqueror, was
delivered, not "wit