Julius Caesar and the foundation of the Roman imperial system . inthese efforts he even once or twice allowed concilia-tion to get the better of political principle. Workhad to be done ; there was but a year to do it in;obstruction and opposition confronted him at everyturn ; yet that work was done, and done on thewhole by the hand of a real statesman, true to theprinciples of a great And indeed, as we look back on the work of thisyear, with the map of the Roman Empire before us,and with the subsequent history of that Empire inour minds, we see the consulship of Caesar in a newlight. H
Julius Caesar and the foundation of the Roman imperial system . inthese efforts he even once or twice allowed concilia-tion to get the better of political principle. Workhad to be done ; there was but a year to do it in;obstruction and opposition confronted him at everyturn ; yet that work was done, and done on thewhole by the hand of a real statesman, true to theprinciples of a great And indeed, as we look back on the work of thisyear, with the map of the Roman Empire before us,and with the subsequent history of that Empire inour minds, we see the consulship of Caesar in a newlight. His legislation affected the world from theEuphrates to the Tagus. It showed how far-reach-ing were the duties of the Roman government, andhow impossible it was to fulfil them, with discordreigning in the city. To banish such discord per-manently, there was but one resource left—themilitary arm, wielded by an intelligent was beginning to understand this in the yearof his consulship ; seven years later, the Senate beganto understand it CHAPTER VIII. THE DEFENCE OF TRANSALPINE ROM the time when Caesartook possession of his pro-vinces in March, 58 , wehave a detailed record of hisactive life, with the exceptionof the few brief intervals whenhe was at Rome in the yearsof his supreme power. It istrue indeed that we knowhardly anything of the busi-ness and the studies in which he was engaged winterafter winter in Cisalpine Gaul and Illyria, while mili-tary operations were impracticable; it is true that themans real thoughts and aims, as well as his pursuitsand methods of government, are thus entirely hiddenfrom us. That inner life of the mind, which in thenineteenth century we fancy we ought to discoverin a biography, is in Caesars case not to be where Fortune has been singularly gracious to 126
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