streets the passing of Caesar, it was the passing of the republic
they announced, the foundation of Imperial Rome.

There was a hush, then a riot which frightened a senate that
frightened the world. Caesar was adored. A man who could give
millions away and sup on dry bread was apt to conquer, not
provinces alone, but hearts. Besides, he had begun well and his
people had done their best. The House of Julia, to which he
belonged, descended, he declared, from Venus. The ancestry was
less legendary than typical. Cinna drafted a law giving him the
right to marry as often as he chose. His mistresses were queens.
After the episodes in Gaul, when he entered Rome his legions
warned the citizens to have an eye on their wives. At seventeen he
fascinated pirates. A shipload of the latter had caught him and
demanded twenty talents ransom. "Too little," said the lad; "I
will give you fifty, and impale you too," which he did, jesting
with them meanwhile, reciting verses of his own composition,
calling them barbarians when they did not applaud, ordering them
to be quiet when he wished to sleep, captivating them by the
effrontery of his assurance, and, the ransom paid, slaughtering
them as he had promised.

Tall, slender, not handsome, but superb and therewith so perfectly
sent out that Cicero mistook him for a fop from whom the republic
had nothing to fear; splendidly lavish, exquisitely gracious, he
was born to charm, and his charm was such that it still subsists.
Cato alone was unenthralled. But Cato was never pleased; he
laughed but once, and all Rome turned out to see him; he belonged
to an earlier day, to an austerer, perhaps to a better one, and it
may be that in "that woman," as he called Cassar, his clearer