" Peace, then, rhetoricians, false threnodists of false liberty!
hollow chanters over the ashes of a hollow republic! Without Caesar, we
affirm a thousand times that there would have been no perfect Rome; and,
but for Rome, there could have been no such man as Caesar.
Both then were immortal; each worthy of each. And the _Cui viget nihil
simile aut secundum_ of the poet, was as true of one as of the other.
For, if by comparison with Rome other cities were but villages, with even
more propriety it may be asserted, that after the Roman Caesars all modern
kings, kesars, or emperors, are mere phantoms of royalty. The Caesar of
Western Rome--he only of all earthly potentates, past or to come, could be
said to reign as a _monarch_, that is, as a solitary king. He was not
the greatest of princes, simply because there was no other but himself.
There were doubtless a few outlying rulers, of unknown names and titles
upon the margins of his empire, there were tributary lieutenants and
barbarous _reguli_, the obscure vassals of his sceptre, whose homage
was offered on the lowest step of his throne, and scarcely known to him
but as objects of disdain.
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