priestly offices, which could be filled
by none but patricians, and for which their number was scarcely
sufficient. If Caesar had died quietly the republic would have been in
the same, nay, in a much worse, state of dissolution than if he had not
existed at all. I consider it a proof of the wisdom and good sense of
Caesar that he did not, like Sulla, think an improvement in the state of
public affairs so near at hand or a matter of so little difficulty. The
cure of the disease lay yet at a very great distance, and the first
condition on which it could be undertaken was the sovereignty of Caesar,
a condition which would have been quite unbearable even to many of his
followers, who as rebels did not scruple to go along with him. But Rome
could no longer exist as a republic.

It is curious to see in Cicero's work, _de Republica_, the consciousness
running through it that Rome, as it then stood, required the strong hand
of a king. Cicero had surely often owned this to himself; but he saw no
one who would have entered into such an idea. The title of king had a
great fascination for Caesar, as it had for Cromwell--a surprising
phenomenon in a practical mind like that of Caesar. Everyone knows the
fact that while Caesar was sitting on the _suggestum_, during the
celebration of the _Lupercalia_, Antony presented to him the diadem, to
try how the people would take it. Caesar saw the great alarm which the
act created and declined the diadem for the sake of appearance; but had
the people been silent, Caesar would unquestionably have accepted it. His
refusal was accompanied by loud shouts of acclamation, which for the
present rendered all further attempts impossible. Antony then had a
statue of Caesar adorned with the diadem; but two tribunes of the people,
L. Caesetius Flavus and Epidius Marullus, took it away: and here Caesar
showed the real state of his feelings, for he treated the conduct of the
tribunes as a personal insult toward himself. He had lost his
self-possession and his fate carried him irresistibly onward. He wished
to have the tribunes imprisoned, but was prevailed upon to be satisfied
with their being stripped of their office and sent into exile.

This created a great sensation at Rome. Caesar had also been guilty of an
act of thoughtlessness, or perhaps merely of distraction, as might
happen very easily to a man in his circumstances. When the senate had
made its last decrees, conferring upon Caesar unlimited power