praise at least of good design. Perhaps so thought his murderers; and thus, however weak their policy, however base and treacherous their act, with many they will ever find apologists. They madly dreamed an impossible issue, as the event demonstrated.

7. A conspiracy was formed by sixty of the senators, at the head of whom were the prætors Brutus and Cassius; the former a man beloved of Cæsar, who had saved his life, and heaped upon him numberless benefits. It was rumoured that the dictator wished to add to his numerous titles that of king, and that the Ides (15th) of March was fixed on for investing him with the diadem. On that day, when taking his seat in the senate-house, he was suddenly assailed by the conspirators: he defended himself for some time against their daggers, till, seeing Brutus amongst the number, he faintly exclaimed, "And you too, my son!" and covering his face with his robe, resigned himself to his fate. He fell pierced by twenty-three wounds, at the foot of Pompey's statue, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, (year of Rome 710, B. C. 44.)

A

8. The Roman people were struck with horror at the deed; they loved Cæsar, master as he was of their lives and liberties Mark Antony, who was then consul, and Lepidus, general of the horse, ambitious of succeeding to the power of the dictator, resolved to pave the way by avenging his death. The people, to whom Cæsar by his testament had bequeathed a great part of his fortune, were penetrated with gratitude to his memory. public harangue from Antony over the bleeding body, exposed in the forum, inflamed them with the utmost indignation against his murderers, who must have met with instant destruction, had they not escaped with precipitation from the city. Antony profited by these dispositions; and the avenger of Cæsar, of course the favourite of the people, was in the immediate prospect of attaining a similar height of dominion. In this, however, he found a formidable competitor in Octavius, the grand-nephew and the adopted heir of Cæsar, who at this critical moment returned to Rome from Apollonia on the Ionian Sea, where he had been sent to levy troops and await the arrival of Cæsar, who meditated an expedition against the Parthian empire. Availing himself of these titles, Octavius gained the senate to his interest, and divided with Antony the favour of the people. The rivals soon perceived that it was their wisest plan to unite their interests; and they admitted Lepidus into their association,

remained to surrender their lands to them, and to hold of them in place of the sovereign; and they changed the national assemblies into baronial courts. The struggles in England between the sovereign and the aristocracy, which continued for centuries, was a consequence of the destruction of the middle and lower classes of freemen, after the Norman conquest. The only security for public liberty in any country, is in the liberal distribution of property among a numerous middle class, and a well-conditioned commonalty.

whose power, as governor of Gaul, and immense riches, gave him a title to a share of authority. Thus was formed the second Triumvirate (43 B. C.), the effects of whose union were beyond measure dreadful to the republic. The Triumviri divided among themselves the provinces, and cemented their union by a deliberate sacrifice made by each of his best friends to the vengeance of his associates. Antony consigned to death his uncle Lucius Cæsar, Lepidus his brother Paulus, and Octavius his guardian Toranius, and his friend Cicero. In this horrible proscription, 300 senators and 3,000 knights were put to death.

9. Octavius and Antony now marched against the conspirators, who had a formidable army in the field in Thrace, commanded by Brutus and Cassius. An engagement ensued at Philippi in Macedonia, towards the close of the year 42 B. C., which decided the fate of the empire. Antony was victorious, for Octavius had no military talents: he was destitute even of personal bravery; and his conduct after the victory was stained with that cruelty which is ever the attendant of cowardice. Brutus and Cassius escaped the vengeance of their enemies by a voluntary death. Antony now sought a recompense for his troops, by the plunder of the East. While in Cilicia, he summoned Cleopatra to answer for her conduct in poisoning her infant brother, and in openly favouring the party of Brutus and Cassius. The queen came to Tarsus, and made a complete conquest of the Triumvir. Immersed in luxury, and intoxicated with love, he forgot glory, ambition, fame, and everything for Cleopatra; and Octavius saw this frenzy with delight, as the preparative of his rival's ruin. He had nothing to dread from Lepidus, whose insignificant character first drew on him the contempt of his partisans; and whose folly, in attempting an invasion of the province of his colleague, was punished by his deposition and banishment.

10. Antony had in his madness lavished the provinces of the empire in gifts to his paramour and her children. The Roman people were justly indignant at these enormities; and the divorce of his wife Octavia, the sister of his colleague, was at length the signal of declared hostility between them. An immense armament, chiefly naval, came to decisive conflict near Actium, on the coast of Epirus, in sight of the two armies on the shore. Cleopatra, who attended her lover, deserted him with her galleys in the heat of the engagement; and such was the infatuation of Antony, that he abandoned his fleet, and followed her. After a contest of some hours, they yielded to the squadron of Octavius, (year of Rome 723, B. C. 31.) The victor pursued the fugitives to Egypt; and the base Cleopatra proffered terms to Octavius, including the surrender of her kingdom, and the abandonment of Antony. After an unsuccessful attempt at resistance, he anticipated his fate by falling on his sword. And Cleopatra soon after, either from remorse, or more probably from mortified ambition, as she found it was Octavius's design to lead her in

chains to Rome to grace his triumph, had courage to follow the example of her lover, and put herself to death by the poison of an asp, in the thirty-ninth year of her age. With her ended the empire of the Ptolemies, in the year 30 B. C., after it had continued, reckoning from the death of Alexander the Great, about 296 years. Egypt was then made a Roman province, and Octavius returned to Rome, sole master of the Roman empire.

SECTION XLVI.

CONSIDERATIONS ON SUCH PARTICULARS AS MARK THE GENIUS AND NATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE ROMANS.

System of Roman Education.

1. A VIRTUOUS but rigid severity of manners was the characteristic of the Romans under their kings, and in the first ages of the republic. The private life of the citizens was frugal, temperate, and laborious, which had its influence on their public character. The Patria potestas gave to every head of a family a sovereign authority over all the members that composed it; and this power, felt as a right of nature, was never abused. Plutarch has remarked, as a defect of the Roman laws, that they did not prescribe, as those of Lacedæmon, a system and rules for the education of youth. But the truth is, the manners of the people supplied this want. The utmost attention was bestowed in the early formation of the mind and character. The excellent author of the dialogue De Oratoribus (whether Quintilian or Tacitus) presents a valuable picture of the Roman education in the early ages of the commonwealth, contrasted with the less virtuous practice of the more refined. The Roman matrons did not abandon their infants to mercenary nurses. They esteemed those duties sacred, and regarded the careful nurture of their offspring, the rudiments of their education, and the necessary occupations of their household, as the highest points of female merit. Next to the care bestowed in the instilment of virtuous morals, a remarkable degree of attention seems to have been given to the language of children, and to the attainment of a correctness and purity of expression. Cicero informs us that the Gracchi, the sons of Cornelia, were educated, non tam in gremio quam in sermone matris. That urbanity which characterized the Roman citizens showed itself particularly in their speech and gesture.

2. The attention to the language of the youth had another source. It was by eloquence more than by any other talent, that the young Roman could rise to the highest offices and dignities of the state. The studia forensia were, therefore, a

principal object of the Roman education. Plutarch informs us, that among the sports of the children at Rome, one was, the pleading causes before a mock tribunal, and accusing and defending a criminal in the usual forms of judicial procedure.

3. The exercises of the body were likewise particularly attended to; and whatever might harden the temperament and confer strength and agility. These exercises were daily practised by the youth, under the eye of their elders, in the Campus Martius. 4. At seventeen the youth assumed the manly robe, the toga virilis. He was consigned to the care of a master of rhetoric, whom he attended constantly to the forum or to the courts of justice; for to be an accomplished gentleman, it was necessary for a Roman to be an accomplished orator. The pains bestowed on the attainment of this character, and the best instructions for its acquisition, we learn from the writings of Cicero, Quintilian, and the younger Pliny.

SECTION XLVII.

OF THE PROGRESS OF LITERATURE AMONG THE ROMANS.

1. BEFORE the intercourse with Greece, which took place after the Punic wars, the Roman people were utterly rude and illiterate. As among all nations, the first appearance of the literary spirit is shown in poetical composition, the Roman warrior had probably, like the Indian or the Celtic, his war songs, which celebrated his triumphs in battle. Religion likewise employs the earliest poetry of most nations; and if a people subsists by agriculture, a plentiful harvest is celebrated in the rustic song of the husbandman. The Versus Fescennini, mentioned by Livy, were probably of the nature of poetical dialogue, or alternate verses sung by the labourers, in a strain of coarse merriment and raillery. This shows a dawning of the drama.

2. About the 390th year of Rome (364 B. C.), on occasion of a pestilence, Ludiones (drolls or stage-dancers) were brought from Etruria, qui ad tibicinis modos saltantes, haud indecoros motus more Tusco dabant. Livy tells us that the Roman youth imitated these performances, and added to them rude and jocular verses, probably the Fescennine dialogues. It was not, however, till 240 B. C., that the regular drama was introduced at Rome from Greece by Livius Andronicus, a Greek slave. The earliest Roman plays were, therefore, we may presume, translations from the Greek.

Post Punica bella quietus quærere cepit,

Quid Sophocles, et Thespis, et Eschylus utile ferrent.

3. Of the early Roman drama, Ennius was a great ornament, and from his time the art made rapid advancement.

The

comedies of Plautus, the contemporary of Ennius, with great strength and spirit of dialogue, display a considerable knowledge of human nature, and are read at this day with pleasure.

4. Cæcilius improved so much on the comedy of Plautus, that he is mentioned by Cicero as perhaps the best of the Roman comic writers. Of his compositions we have no remains. His patronage fostered the rising genius of Terence, whose first comedy, the Andria, was performed in the 587th year of Rome. 164 B.C. The merit of the comedies of Terence lies in that nature and simplicity which are observable alike in the structure of his fables, in the delineation of his characters, and in the delicacy and purity of the sentiments of his pieces. They are deficient, however, in comic energy; they are not calculated to excite ludicrous emotions. They are chiefly borrowed from the Greek of Menander and Apollodorus.

5. The Roman Comedy was of four different species: the Comadia Togata or Prætexata, the Comedia Tabernaria, the Attelanæ, and the Mimi. The first admitted serious scenes and personages, and was of the nature of modern sentimental comedy. The second was a representation of ordinary life and manners. The Attellana were pieces where the dialogue was not committed to writing, but the subject of the scene was prescribed, and the dialogue filled up by the talents of the actors. The Mimi were pieces of comedy of the lowest species-farces, or entertainments of buffoonery; though sometimes admitting the serious, and even the pathetic.

6. The Roman tragedy kept pace in its advancement with the comedy. The best of the Roman tragic poets were Actius and Pacuvius, of whom we have no remains. The tragedies published under the name of Seneca are generally esteemed the work of different hands. They are none of them of superlative merit.

7. Velleius Paterculus remarks, that the era of the perfection of Roman literature was the age of Cicero (106—43 B.C.); comprehending all of the preceding times whom Cicero might have seen, and all of the succeeding who might have seen him. Cicero, Quintilian, and Pliny, celebrate in high terms the writings of the elder Cato, whose principal works were historical, and have entirely perished. We have his fragments, de Re Rustica, in which he was imitated by Varro, one of the earliest of the good writers among the Romans, and a man of universal erudition. Of the variety of his talents we may judge, not only from the splendid eulogium of Cicero, but from the circumstance of Pliny having recourse to his authority in every book of his Natural History.

8. Sallust (86-34 B. C.), in order of time, comes next to Varro. This writer introduced an important improvement on history, as treated by the Greek historians, by applying (as Dionysius of Halicarnassus says) the science of philosophy to