re
won by some greater than mere military greatness.--Karma,
perhaps, remembering the Mysteries at Gaulish Bibracte, and the
world left now quite lightless, might have a word to say; might
even be looking round for shafts to speed. But what, against a
man so golden-panoplied? "Tush!" saith Caesar, "there are no
arrows now but straws."

One such straw was this: (a foolish one, but it may serve)--

Rome for centuries has been amusing herself on all public
occasions with Fourth of July rhetoric against kings, and in
praise of tyrannicides. Rome for centuries has been cherishing
in her heart what she calls a love of Freedom,--to scourge your
slaves, steal from your provincials, and waste your substance in
riotous living. All of which Julius Caesar,--being a real man,
mind you,--holds in profoundest contempt for driveling unreality;
which it certainly is. But unrealities are awfully real
at times.

Unluckily, with all his supermannism, he retained some traces of
personality. He was bald, and sensitive about it; he always had
been a trifle foppish. So when they gave him a nice laurel
wreath for his triumph over Pompey, he continued, against all
precedent, to wear it indefinitely,--as hiding certain shining
surfaces from the vulgar gaze.... "H'm," said Rome, "he goes
about the next thing to crowned!" And here is his statue, set up
with those of the Seven Kings of antiquity; he allowing it, or
not protesting.--They remembered their schoolboy exercises, their
spoutings on many Latins for Glorious Fourth; and felt very
badly indeed. Then it was unlucky that, being too intent on
realities, he could not bother to rise when those absurd old
Piccadilly pterodactyls the Senators came into his presence;
that he filled up their ridiculous house promiscuously with
low-born soldiers and creatures of his own. And that there was a
crowd of foolish prigs and pedants in Rome to take note of these
so trivial things, and to be more irked by them than by all the
realities of his power:--a lean hungry Cassius; an envious
brusque detractor Casca; a Brutus with a penchant for being
considered a philosopher, after a rather maiden-auntish sort
of conception of the part,--and for being considered a true
descendant of his well-known ancestor: a cold soul much
fired with the _ignis fatuus_ of Republican slave-scourging
province-fleecing freedom. An unreal lot, with not the ghost
of a Man between them;--what should the one Great Man