Antonius, according to Roman fashion, made a funeral speech over the body of Cæsar (Life of Antonius, c. 14; of Brutus, c. 20). Dion Cassius (44. c. 36-49) has put a long speech in the mouth of Antonius, mere empty declamation. Appianus (Civil Wars, ii. 144-6) gives one which is well enough suited to the character of Antonius. (Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta, ed. Mayer, p. 455.) It is probable that the speech of Antonius was preserved, and was used as materials by the historians.
[617] This man, who unluckily bore the name of Cinna, was C. Helvius Cinna, a tribune of the plebs, a poet, and a friend of Cæsar. (Dion Cassius, 44. c. 50, and the notes of Reimarus.) The conspirator Cinna was the son of L. Cornelius Cinna, who was a partisan of Marius, and was murdered in his fourth consulship (Life of Pompeius, c. 5). Cæsar's wife Cornelia, the mother of his only child Julia, was the sister of the conspirator Cinna, as Plutarch names him. But probably he was not one of the conspirators, though he approved of the deed after it was done. (Drumann, Geschichte Roms, Cinnæ, p. 591, notes, and also as to Helvius Cinna.)
[618] And also in the Life of Antonius.
[619] Suetonius (Cæsar, c. 89) observes that scarce any of his assasins survived him three years; and they all came to a violent end.
[620] This town was on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont. Compare the Life of Brutus, c. 36. 48, and Appianus (Civil Wars, iv. 134). Dion Cassius does not mention the ghost story.
[621] It has been already remarked that Niebuhr is of opinion that the introduction to the Life of Cæsar is lost. This opinion will not appear well founded to those who have got a right conception of the dramatic form in which Plutarch has cast most of his Lives, and more particularly this of Cæsar. He begins by representing him as resisting the tyrant Sulla when others yielded, and then making his way through a long series of events to the supreme power, which he had no sooner attained than he lost it. But his fortune survived him, and the faithless men, his murderers, most of whom owed to him their lives or their fortunes, were pursued by the avenging dæmon till they were all hunted down.
A just estimate of the first of all the Romans is not a difficult task. We know him from the evidence of his contemporaries, both friends and enemies. The devoted attachment of his true friends is beyond doubt; and his enemies could not deny his exalted talents. Cicero, who has in various places heaped on him every term of abuse that his copious storehouse contained, does not refuse his testimony to the great abilities and generous character of Cæsar. Drumann (Geschichte Roms, Julii) has given an elaborate examination of Cæsar's character. His faults and his vices belonged to his age, and he had them in common with nearly all his contemporaries. His most striking virtues, his magnanimity, his generosity, his mercy to the vanquished, distinguished him among all the Romans of his period. Cæsar was a combination of bodily activity, intellectual power, of literary acquirements, and administrative talent that has seldom appeared. As a soldier he was not inferior in courage and endurance to the hardiest veteran of his legions; and his military ability places him in the first rank of commanders who have contended with and overcome almost insurmountable obstacles. Cicero ranks him in the first class of orators; and his own immortal work, his History of the Gallic Campaign and the Civil War, is a literary monument which distinguishes him among all other commanders. As a speaker and a writer he had no superior among his contemporaries. His varied talents are further shown by his numerous literary labours, of which some small notices remain. His views were large and enlightened, his schemes were vast and boundless. His genius deserved a better sphere than the degenerate republic in which he lived. But the power which he acquired did not die with him. A youth of tender age succeeded to the name and the inheritance of Cæsar, and by his great talents and a long career of wonderful success consolidated that Monarchy which we call the Roman Empire.
Shakspere has founded his play of Julius Cæsar on Plutarch's Life of Cæsar and the Lives of Brutus and Antonius. The passages in North's version which he has more particularly turned to his purpose are collected in Mr. Knight's edition of Shakspere (8vo. edition). Shakspere has three Roman plays, Coriolanus, Julius Cæsar, and Antony and Cleopatra. As a drama the first is the best. The play of Julius Cæsar has been estimated very differently by different critics. Mr. Knight has many valuable remarks on these Roman plays (vol. xi.), and he has shown the way, as he conceives, in which they should be viewed. The Julius Cæsar is so constructed as to show the usurpation and death of Cæsar, and the fall of Brutus, the chief of the assassins, at the battle of Philippi. With Brutus the hopes of his party fell. The play should therefore rather be entitled Marcus Brutus than Julius Cæsar; and it is deficient in that unity without which no great dramatic effect can be produced. The name and the fame of Cæsar,
the noblest man,
That ever lived in the tide of time,
obscure the meaner talents of Brutus; and that death which in Plutarch forms a truly tragical catastrophe, here occurs in the middle of the action, which would appropriately terminate with it. But we have to follow the historical course of events; we follow Brutus to his fate at the battle of Philippi, and witness the vengeance of which Cæsar's ghost forewarns the false friends. Shakspere may have meant to represent Brutus as the last of the Romans, and the Republic as dying with him; but he also represents him as haunted by the ghost of his murdered benefactor, and losing heart before the final contest. The "great dæmon" of Cæsar avenged him on his enemies; and in this point of view the play has a unity. Brutus dies like a Roman, and that murder to which he was led by the instigation of others, only renders the Monarchy inevitable and necessary. But if the play is faulty in construction, as I venture to think it is, it has other merits of the highest order, which place it in some respects among the best works of the great master of dramatic art.