ed by his command
even in the calendar of the state and could not, in fact,
be well revoked. The probability is that Caesar, who appreciated alike
the value of a convenient formal designation and the antipathies
of the multitude which fasten more on the names than on the essence
of things, was resolved to avoid the name of king as tainted
with an ancient curse and as more familiar to the Romans of his time
when applied to the despots of the east than to their own Numa
and Servius, and to appropriate the substance of the regal office
under the title of Imperator.

The New Court
The New Patrician Nobility

But, whatever may have been the definitive title present to his thoughts
the sovereign ruler was there, and accordingly the court
established itself at once with all its due accompaniments of pomp,
insipidity, and emptiness. Caesar appeared in public not in the robe
of the consuls which was bordered with purple stripes,
but in the robe wholly of purple which was reckoned in antiquity
as the proper regal attire, and received, seated on his golden chair
and without rising from it, the solemn procession of the senate.
The festivals in his honour commemorative of birthday, of victories,
and of vows, filled the calendar. When Caesar came to the capital,
his principal servants marched forth in troops to great distances
so as to meet and escort him. To be near to him began to be
of such importance, that the rents rose in the quarter of the city
where he dwelt. Personal interviews with him were rendered
so difficult by the multitude of individuals soliciting audience,
that Caesar found himself compelled in many cases to communicate
even with his intimate friends in writing, and that persons
even of the highest rank had to wait for hours in the antechamber.
People felt, more clearly than was agreeable to Caesar himself,
that they no longer approached a fellow-citizen. There arose
a monarchical aristocracy, which was in a remarkable manner at once
new and old, and which had sprung out of the idea of casting
into the shade the aristocracy of the oligarchy by that of royalty,
the nobility by the patriciate. The patrician body still subsisted,
although without essential privileges as an order, in the character
of a close aristocratic guild;(19) but as it could receive
no new -gentes-(20) it had dwindled away more and more in the course
of centuries, and in the time of Caesar there were not more than
fifteen or sixteen pa