all, and that the portions of gain accruing to them
were to be diminished by the accession of the vanquished.
This settlement of the commonwealth was acceptable to no party,
and had to be imposed on his associates no less than on his opponents.
Caesar's own position was now in a certain sense more imperilled
than before the victory; but what he lost, the state gained.
By annihilating the parties and not simply sparing the partisans
but allowing every man of talent or even merely of good descent
to attain to office irrespective of his political past, he gained
for his great building all the working power extant in the state;
and not only so, but the voluntary or compulsory participation of men
of all parties in the same work led the nation also over imperceptibly
to the newly prepared ground. The fact that this reconciliation
of the parties was for the moment only externaland that they were
for the present much less agreed in adherence to the new state of things
than in hatred against Caesar, did not mislead him; he knew well
that antagonisms lose their keenness when brought into such outward union,
and that only in this way can the statesman anticipate the work of time,
which alone is able finally to heal such a strife by laying
the old generation in the grave. Still less did he inquire who hated him
or meditated his assassination. Like every genuine statesman he served
not the people for reward--not even for the reward of their love--
but sacrificed the favour of his contemporaries for the blessing
of posterity, and above all for the permission to save
and renew his nation.

Caesar's Work

In attempting to give a detailed account of the mode in which
the transition was effected from the old to the new state of things,
we must first of all recollect that Caesar came not to begin,
but to complete. The plan of a new polity suited to the times,
long ago projected by Gaius Gracchus, had been maintained
by his adherents and successors with more or less of spirit and success,
but without wavering. Caesar, from the outset and as it were
by hereditary right the head of the popular party, had for thirty years
borne aloft its banner without ever changing or even so much
as concealing his colours; he remained democrat even when monarch.
as he accepted without limitation, apart of course from the preposterous
projects of Catilina and Clodius, the heritage of his party;
as he displayed the bitterest, even personal, hatred t