The absurdity of a calumny may be as evident as the absurdity of a
miracle; the ground for belief may be no more than a lightness of
mind, and a less pardonable wish that it may be true. But the idle
tale floats in society, and by and by is written down in books and
passes into the region of established realities.

The proportion of such idle tales seriously printed as history can
never, of course, be computed. Sometimes one is tempted to think that
history is mainly "whole cloth." Certainly the lives of such men as
Caesar are largely made up of what one might term illustrative fictions
rather than actual facts. The story of Caesar and Cleopatra is probably
such an "illustrative fiction," representing something that might very
well have happened to Caesar, whether it did so or not. At all events,
it does his fame no great harm, unlike another calumny, which, as it
does not seem "illustrative"--that is, not in keeping with his general
character--we are at liberty to reject. Both alike, however, were
the product of the gossip, the embodied littleness of human nature
endeavouring then, as always, to minimize and discredit the strong man,
who, whatever his actual faults, at least strenuously shoulders for his
fellows the hard work of the world.

The great have usually been strong enough to smile contempt on their
traducers--Caesar's answer to an infamous epigram of the poet Catullus
was to ask him to dinner--but even so, at what extra cost, what "expense
of spirit in a waste of shame," have their achievements been bought,
because of these curs that bark forever at the heels of fame!

And not always have they thus prevailed against the pack. Too often has
the sorry spectacle been seen of greatness and goodness going down
before the poisonous tongues and the licking jaws. Even Caesar himself