n bearing the most
atrocious libels, to punish which might have only increased their force.

Caesar's career divides itself not unnaturally into three periods,
corresponding with his youth, his manhood and his maturity; with the
absorption of force in gaining experience, the lavish expenditure of
force in conquest, the calm employment of force in final supremacy. The
man who never lost a battle in which he commanded in person, began life
by failing in everything he attempted, and ended it as the foremost man
of all humanity, past and to come, the greatest general, the greatest
speaker, the greatest lawgiver, the greatest writer of Latin prose whom
the great Roman people ever produced, and also the bravest man of his
day, as he was the kindest. In an age when torture was a legitimate part
of justice, he caused the pirates who had taken him, and whom he took in
turn, to be mercifully put to death before he crucified their dead
bodies for his oath's sake, and when his long-trusted servant tried to
poison him he would not allow the wretch to be hurt save by the sudden
stroke of instant death; nor ever in a long career of conquest did he
inflict unnecessary pain. Never was man loved of women as he was, and
his sins were many even for those days, yet in them we find no
unkindness, and when his own wife should have been condemned for her
love of Clodius, Caesar would not testify against her. He divorced her,
he said, not because he knew anything, but because his family should be
above suspicion. He plundered the world, but he gave it back its gold in
splendid gifts and public works, keeping its glory alone for himself. He
was hated by the few because he was beloved by the many, and it was not
revenge, but envy, that slew the benefactor of mankind. The weaknesses
of the supreme conqueror were love of woman and trust of man, and as the
first Brutus made his name glorious by setting his people free, the
second disgraced it and blackened the name of friendship with a stain
that will outlast time, and by a deed second only in infamy to that of
Judas Iscariot. The last cry of the murdered master was the cry of a
broken heart--'And thou, too, Brutus, my son!' Alexander left chaos
behind him; Caesar left Europe, and it may be truly said that the
crowning manifestation of his sublime wisdom was his choice of
Octavius--of the young Augustus--to complete the carving of a world
which he himself had sketched and blocked out in the rough.