Did Julius deflower Rome? Then, by that consummation, he
caused her to fulfill the functions of her nature; he compelled her to
exchange the imperfect and inchoate condition of a mere _faemina_ for the
perfections of a _mulier_. And, metaphor apart, we maintain that Rome lost
no liberties by the mighty Julius. That which in tendency, and by the
spirit of her institutions--that which, by her very corruptions and abuses
co-operating with her laws, Rome promised and involved in the germ--even
that, and nothing less or different, did Rome unfold and accomplish under
this Julian violence. The rape [if such it were] of Caesar, her final
Romulus, completed for Rome that which the rape under Romulus, her
earliest Caesar, had prosperously begun. And thus by one godlike man was a
nation-city matured; and from the everlasting and nameless [Footnote:
"_Nameless city_."--The true name of Rome it was a point of religion to
conceal; and, in fact, it was never revealed.] city was a man produced--
capable of taming her indomitable nature, and of forcing her to immolate
her wild virginity to the state best fitted for the destined "Mother of
empires.
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