The Caesars | Page 9

also the same language; and as these are less susceptible
of a false coloring than the features of a general character, we find this
poet of liberty, in the midst of one continuous effort to distort the truth,
and to dress up two scenical heroes, forced by the mere necessities of
history into a reluctant homage to Cæsar's supremacy of moral

grandeur.
Of so great a man it must be interesting to know all the well attested
opinions which bear upon topics of universal interest to human nature;
as indeed no others stood much chance of preservation, unless it were
from as minute and curious a collector of anecdotage as Suetonius.
And, first, it would be gratifying to know the opinion of Cæsar, if he
had any peculiar to himself, on the great theme of Religion. It has been
held, indeed, that the constitution of his mind, and the general cast of
his character, indisposed him to religious thoughts. Nay, it has been
common to class him amongst deliberate atheists; and some well
known anecdotes are current in books, which illustrate his contempt for
the vulgar class of auguries. In this, however, he went no farther than
Cicero, and other great contemporaries, who assuredly were no atheists.
One mark perhaps of the wide interval which, in Cæsar's age, had
begun to separate the Roman nobility from the hungry and venal
populace who were daily put up to sale, and bought by the highest
bidder, manifested itself in the increasing disdain for the tastes and
ruling sympathies of the lowest vulgar. No mob could be more abjectly
servile than was that of Rome to the superstition of portents, prodigies,
and omens. Thus far, in common with his order, and in this sense,
Julius Cæsar was naturally a despiser of superstition. Mere strength of
understanding would, perhaps, have made him so in any age, and apart
from the circumstances of his personal history. This natural tendency in
him would doubtless receive a further bias in the same direction from
the office of Pontifex Maximus, which he held at an early stage of his
public career. This office, by letting him too much behind the curtain,
and exposing too entirely the base machinery of ropes and pulleys,
which sustained the miserable jugglery played off upon the popular
credulity, impressed him perhaps even unduly with contempt for those
who could be its dupes. And we may add--that Cæsar was
constitutionally, as well as by accident of position, too much a man of
the world, had too powerful a leaning to the virtues of active life, was
governed by too partial a sympathy with the whole class of active
forces in human nature, as contradistinguished from those which tend
to contemplative purposes, under any circumstances, to have become a
profound believer, or a steadfast reposer of his fears and anxieties, in

religious influences. A man of the world is but another designation for
a man indisposed to religious awe or contemplative enthusiasm. Still it
is a doctrine which we cherish--that grandeur of mind in any one
department whatsoever, supposing only that it exists in excess, disposes
a man to some degree of sympathy with all other grandeur, however
alien in its quality or different in its form. And upon this ground we
presume the great Dictator to have had an interest in religious themes
by mere compulsion of his own extraordinary elevation of mind, after
making the fullest allowance for the special quality of that mind, which
did certainly, to the whole extent of its characteristics, tend entirely to
estrange him from such themes. We find, accordingly, that though
sincerely a despiser of superstition, and with a frankness which must
sometimes have been hazardous in that age, Cæsar was himself also
superstitious. No man could have been otherwise who lived and
conversed with that generation and people. But if superstitious, he was
so after a mode of his own. In his very infirmities Cæsar manifested his
greatness: his very littlenesses were noble.
"Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre."
That he placed some confidence in dreams, for instance, is certain:
because, had he slighted them unreservedly, he would not have dwelt
upon them afterwards, or have troubled himself to recall their
circumstances. Here we trace his human weakness. Yet again we are
reminded that it was the weakness of Cæsar; for the dreams were noble
in their imagery, and Cæsarean (so to speak) in their tone of moral
feeling. Thus, for example, the night before he was assassinated, he
dreamt at intervals that he was soaring above the clouds on wings, and
that he placed his hand within the right hand of Jove. It would seem
that perhaps some obscure and half- formed image floated in his mind,
of the eagle, as the king of birds; secondly,