IMAGO CIVILIS AUGUSTI CÆSARIS.

AUGUSTO CESARI, si cui mortalium, magnitudo animi inerat inturbida, serena, et ordinata: idque indicant res illæ omnium maximæ, quas ab ineunte adolescentia gessit. Nam qui ingenio commotiores sunt, ii fere adolescentias per varios errores transigunt, ac sub mediam ætatem demum se ostendunt: quibus autem natura est composita et placida, ii prima etiam ætate florere possunt. Atque cum animi dotes, sicut et bona corporis, sanitate quadam, pulchritudine, et viribus contineantur et absolvantur, fuit certe avunculo Julio viribus animi impar, pulchritudine et sanitate superior. Ille enim inquietus et incompositus (ut sunt fere ii qui comitiali morbo tentantur) se ad fines suos nihilominus summa ratione expediebat; sed ipsos fines minime ordinaverat, sed impetu infinito, et ultra mortale appetens, ferebatur ad ulteriora. Hic autem sobrius, et mortalitatis memor, etiam fines suos ordine admirabili descriptos et libratos habuisse visus est. Primum enim, rerum potiri volebat; deinde id assequi, ut dignus eo fastigio existimaretur; dein etiam, frui summa fortuna humanum esse ducebat; ad extremum, addere se rebus, et imaginem et virtutem sui principatus seculis post se futuris imprimere et inferre meditabatur. Itaque prima ætate Potentiæ, media Dignitati, vergente Voluptatibus, senectute Memoriæ et Posteritati serviebat.

CHARACTER OF JULIUS CÆSAR.

JULIUS CESAR had from the beginning a fortune full of exercise: which turned to his advantage: for it took away his pride and braced his sinews. A mind he had, in desires and affections turbulent, but in judgment and intellect very serene; as appears by

the ease with which he delivered himself both in action and speech. For no man decided quicker, or spoke clearer there was nothing embarrassed, nothing involved about him. But in will and appetite he was one who never rested in what he had got, but ever pressed forward to things beyond. And yet he was not hurried from one action to another by a humour of weariness, but made the transitions at the just periods: for he always brought his actions to the most perfect closes. And therefore he that after winning so many victories and making himself so secure did not despise the relics of civil war in Spain, but went in person to put an end to them; as soon as ever that last civil war was concluded and peace established everywhere, immediately set about an expedition against the Parthians. Greatness of mind he undoubtedly had in a very high degree; yet such as aspired more after personal aggrandisement than merit towards the public. For he referred everything to himself, and was

himself the true and perfect centre of all his own actions which was the cause of his singular and almost perpetual felicity. For he allowed neither country, nor religion, nor services, nor kindred, nor friendships, to be any hindrance or bridle to his purposes. Neither was he much bent upon perpetuity; as one who neither established the state of affairs, nor founded or erected anything remarkable either in the way of building or institution; but as it were referred all things to himself. So also he confined his thoughts within the circle of his own times. Only his name he wished to make famous; because he thought he had himself some interest in that. And assuredly in his private wishes he cared more for power than reputation. For he sought reputation and fame not for themselves, but as instruments of power. By natural impulse therefore, not by any moral guiding, he aspired to the supreme authority; and aspired rather to possess it than to be thought worthy of it: a thing which gave him favour with the people, who had no dignity of their own; but with the nobles and great persons, who wished also to preserve their own dignity, procured him the reputation of covetousness and boldness. Wherein assuredly they were not far from the truth: for he was by nature extremely bold, and never showed any bashfulness except when he assumed it on purpose. And yet for all that, this boldness was so fashioned as neither to impeach him of rashness, nor to make him intolerable, nor to bring his nature into suspicion: but was thought to proceed from a simplicity of manners, and confidence, and the nobility of his birth. And the same held good in all things else, that he was taken to be by no means cunning or wily, but frank and

veracious. And though he was in fact a consummate master of simulation and dissimulation, and made up entirely of arts, insomuch that nothing was left to his nature except what art had approved, nevertheless there appeared in him nothing of artifice, nothing of dissimulation; and it was thought that his nature and disposition had full play and that he did but follow the bent of them. Yet for the smaller and meaner artifices and precautions, to which men unskilled in affairs and depending not on their own strength but on help from without, are driven for the support of their authority, he was not at all beholden to these; as being a man exceedingly expert in all human actions, and who managed all business of any consequence for himself, not by others. How to extinguish envy he knew excellently well; and thought it an object worth purchasing even by the sacrifice of dignity; and being in quest of real power, he was content during the whole course of his life to decline and put by all the empty show and pomp and circumstance of it until at last, whether satiated with power or corrupted by flattery, he aspired likewise to the external emblems thereof, the name of king and the crown; which turned to his destruction. The sovereignty was the mark he aimed at even from his youth; the example of Sylla, the relationship of Marius, the emulation of Pompey, the corruptions and perturbation of the times, readily suggesting it to him. But he made himself a way to the sovereignty in a strange order; first by means of a power popular and seditious, afterwards by a power military and imperatorial. For at first he had to break the force and authority of the senate; during the maintenance of which no man could find a