hardly conceive, and which
is not to be explained solely from the unparalleled rapidity
and decision of his working, but has moreover its ground
in a more general cause. When we see Caesar, Sulla, Gaius Gracchus,
and Roman statesmen in general displaying throughout an activity
which transcends our notions of human powers of working, the reason lies,
not in any change that human nature has undergone since that time,
but in the change which has taken place since then in the organization
of the household. The Roman house was a machine, in which even
the mental powers of the slaves and freedmen yielded their produce
to the master; a master, who knew how to govern these, worked as it were
with countless minds. It was the beau ideal of bureaucratic
centralization; which our counting-house system strives indeed
zealously to imitate, but remains as far behind its prototype
as the modern power of capital is inferior to the ancient system
of slavery. Caesar knew how to profit by this advantage;
wherever any post demanded special confidence, we see him filling it up
on principle--so far as other considerations at all permit--
with his slaves freedmen, or clients of humble birth. His works
as a whole show what an organizing genius like his could accomplish
with such an instrument; but to the question, how in detail
these marvellous feats were achieved, we have no adequate answer.
Bureaucracy resembles a manufactory also in this respect,
that the work done does not appear as that of the individual
who has worked at it, but as that of the manufactory which stamps it.
This much only is quite clear, that Caesar, in his work had no helper
at all who exerted a personal influence over it or was even so much as
initiated into the whole plan; he was not only the sole master,
but he worked also without skilled associates,
merely with common labourers.

In Matters of Finance

With respect to details as a matter of course in strictly political
affairs Caesar avoided, so far as was at all possible,
any delegation of his functions. Where it was inevitable,
as especially when during his frequent absence from Rome he had need
of a higher organ there, the person destined for this purpose was,
significantly enough, not the legal deputy of the monarch,
the prefect of the city, but a confidant without officially-recognized
jurisdiction, usually Caesar's banker, the cunning and pliant
Phoenician merchant Lucius Cornelius Balbus from Gades.
I