attended with the usual
horrors of a desperate naval encounter. Hundreds were slain. The dead
bodies of the combatants fell from the galleys into the lake and the
waters of it were dyed with their blood.

There were land combats, too, on the same grand scale. In one of them
five hundred foot soldiers, twenty elephants, and a troop of thirty
horse were engaged on each side. This combat, therefore, was an action
greater, in respect to the number of the combatants, than the famous
battle of Lexington, which marked the commencement of the American war;
and in respect to the slaughter which took place, it was very probably
ten times greater. The horror of these scenes proved to be too much even
for the populace, fierce and merciless as it was, which they were
intended to amuse. Caesar, in his eagerness to outdo all former
exhibitions and shows, went beyond the limits within which the seeing of
men butchered in bloody combats and dying in agony and despair would
serve for a pleasure and a pastime. The people were shocked; and
condemnations of Caesar's cruelty were added to the other suppressed
reproaches and criminations which every where arose.

Cleopatra, during her visit to Rome, lived openly with Caesar at his
residence, and this excited very general displeasure. In fact, while the
people pitied Arsinoe, Cleopatra, notwithstanding her beauty and her
thousand personal accomplishments and charms, was an object of general
displeasure, so far as public attention, was turned toward her at all.
The public mind was, however, much engrossed by the great political
movements made by Caesar and the ends toward which he seemed to be
aiming. Men accused him of designing to be made a king. Parties were
formed for and against him; and though men did not dare openly to utter
their sentiments, their passions became the more violent in proportion
to the external force by which they were suppressed. Mark Antony was at
Rome at this time. He warmly espoused Caesar's cause, and encouraged his
design of making himself king. He once, in fact, offered to place a
royal diadem upon Caesar's head at some public celebration; but the marks
of public disapprobation which the act elicited caused him to desist.

At length, however, the time arrived when Caesar determined to cause
himself to be proclaimed king. He took advantage of a certain remarkable
conjuncture of public affairs, which can not here be particularly
described, but which seemed to him s