qually ready
upon that signal to return to the sheath. Fate is mightier than genius.
Caesar desired to become the restorer of the civil commonwealth,
and became the founder of the military monarchy which he abhorred;
he overthrew the regime of aristocrats and bankers in the state,
only to put a military regime in their place, and the commonwealth
continued as before to be tyrannized and worked for profit
by a privileged minority. And yet it is a privilege of the highest
natures thus creatively to err. The brilliant attempts of great men
to realize the ideal, though they do not reach their aim,
form the best treasure of the nations. It was owing to the work
of Caesar that the Roman military state did not become a police-state
till after the lapse of several centuries, and that the Roman Imperators,
however little they otherwise resembled the great founder
of their sovereignty, yet employed the soldier in the main
not against the citizen but against the public foe, and esteemed
both nation and army too highly to set the latter as constable
over the former.

Financial Administration

The regulation of financial matters occasioned comparatively
little difficulty in consequence of the solid foundations
which the immense magnitude of the empire and the exclusion
of the system of credit supplied. If the state had hitherto found itself
in constant financial embarrassment, the fault was far from chargeable
on the inadequacy of the state revenues; on the contrary these had
of late years immensely increased. To the earlier aggregate income,
which is estimated at 200,000,000 sesterces (2,000,000 pounds),
there were added 85,000,000 sesterces (850,000 pounds)
by the erection of the provinces of Bithynia-Pontus and Syria;
which increase, along with the other newly opened up or augmented
sources of income, especially from the constantly increasing produce
of the taxes on luxuries, far outweighed the loss of the Campanian rents.
Besides, immense sums had been brought from extraordinary sources
into the exchequer through Lucullus, Metellus, Pompeius, Cato,
and others. The cause of the financial embarrassments rather la
partly in the increase of the ordinary and extraordinary expenditure,
partly in the disorder of management. Under the former head,
the distribution of corn to the multitude of the capital claimed
almost exorbitant sums; through the extension given to it
by Cato in 691(40) the yearly expenditure for that purpo