Cato, Brutus, Cassius,
Antonius, and others fell by their own hands, or by the hands of persons
who acted by their orders. Caesar, Pompeius, Cicero, and Crassus were
murdered. Nothing serves more to show how much Augustus differed from
most Romans of his century than the fact that he died in his bed at
extreme old age.
That Mr. Merivale's Caesarism does not prevent him from doing justice to
the opponents of Caesar is proved by his portrait of Q. Lutatius Catulus,
the best leader of the _optimates_, and whom he pronounces to have been
the most moderate and disinterested of all the great men of his
day,--"indeed," he adds, "there is perhaps no character in the history
of the Commonwealth which commanded more general esteem, or obtained
more blameless distinction in political life." Yet Catulus was one of
those men with whom Caesar came earliest in collision, each as the
representative of his party on vital points of difference. Our
historian's estimate of the life, labors, purposes, and character of
Pompeius is singularly correct, when we consider the temptation that he
has to underrate the man with whom Caesar has stood in direct opposition
for nineteen centuries. There are few more emphatic passages in the
historical literature of our language than the account which is given in
Vol.
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