iters had he been distinguished in no
other way. Only a remarkable man could have written an account of his
own doings in just this style. For there is no word of comment: the
whole thing is, as Caesar himself says, bare, simple, and plain, with
every kind of ornament cast aside. The language is simple, exact,
concise. Every word tells. There is never a word too much. The dryness
with which amazing feats of generalship, of endurance, of courage, are
set down only makes them, in the end, more impressive. No mere talker,
no one shifted this way and that by chance and by the opinion of others,
could have written these books. They are the record of one who could
both see and act.

In so far as we can judge a man from his face, the busts tell the same
story. They show us Caesar in middle age, when firmly set to serious
purposes, the idle impulses of youth left behind. The power to think,
the power to act--these are the characteristics of the familiar bust.
Yet Caesar, if we can believe the stories of him, retained to beyond
middle life a rare personal charm, and always had much of the quick,
passionate responsiveness of the artist. There was room in his mind for
all sorts of things beside the business of making men do what he wanted.
Whether the almost tragic nobility of the sculptured face, which is in
this respect like that of Napoleon, means that Caesar was led on by
something higher than personal ambition, the desire to engrave his own
will upon the stuff of life, it is impossible to say. He made history;
he was, in that sense, a man of destiny, but did he know what he was
doing? did he care for a good beyond his own?

[Illustration: JULIUS CAESAR
The Brit. Mus. bust]

The first incident we know of Caesar is highly characteristic. Pompeius
at the time of the proscriptions had put away his wife at Sulla's
behest. Caesar, a little younger, like him a rising young soldier, was
descended from one of the most illustrious of patrician families. But
his uncle had married Marius's sister. Not only was he the nephew of
Marius; he was allied to the beaten party in the Revolution by his
marriage to Cornelia the daughter of Cinna. Sulla commanded him to
divorce her. Caesar refused. He loved his wife dearly. Neither then
(he was hardly out of his teens) nor at any other time was he ready to
take orders from other men. Therefore his property and the dowry of his
young wife were confiscated. His own life was in danger and he had