By these, the
spoils of the world were appropriated, and its government abused: Caesar
gave the helpless peoples a legal sovereign, and preserved them from the
lawless tyranny of a thousand masters. He narrates himself, that "he found
the Romans enslaved by a faction, and he restored their liberty:" "Caesar
interpellat; ut Populum Romanum, paucorum factione oppressum, in
libertatem vindicat." The march of Caesar into Italy was a triumphal
progress; and there can be no doubt, that the common people received him
gladly. Again he says, "Nihil esse Rempublicam; appellationem modo, sine
corpore et specie;" "The Republic is nothing but an empty name, a phantom
and a shadow." That Caesar should have seen this, is the highest evidence
of his genius: that Cicero did not see it, is to himself, and to his
country, the great misfortune of his career; and to his admirers, one of
the most melancholy events in Roman history. The opinions of Tacitus were
not far removed from the opinions of Cicero, but they were modified by
what he saw of Nerva and of Trajan: he tells us, how Agricola looked
forward to the blessings of a virtuous Prince; and his own thoughts and
writings would have been other, than they are, had he witnessed the
blameless monarchy of Hadrian and the Antonines.
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