[Footnote 4: By Pope Gregory XIII. at the time of the change from the
old style to the new]

[Sidenote: Magnificent schemes.]
[Sidenote: Caesar collects the means to carry out his vast schemes.]

Caesar formed a great many other vast and magnificent schemes. He
planned public buildings for the city, which were going to exceed in
magnitude and splendor all the edifices of the world. He commenced the
collection of vast libraries, formed plans for draining the Pontine
Marshes, for bringing great supplies of water into the city by an
aqueduct, for cutting a new passage for the Tiber from Rome to the sea,
and making an enormous artificial harbor at its mouth. He was going to
make a road along the Apennines, and cut a canal through the Isthmus of
Corinth, and construct other vast works, which were to make Rome the
center of the commerce of the world. In a word, his head was filled with
the grandest schemes, and he was gathering around him all the means and
resources necessary for the execution of them.



CHAPTER XI

THE CONSPIRACY.

Caesar's greatness and glory came at last to a very sudden and violent
end. He was assassinated. All the attendant circumstances of this deed,
too, were of the most extraordinary character, and thus the dramatic
interest which adorns all parts of the great conqueror's history marks
strikingly its end.