80 



years of confusion, auarchy, and bloodshed which followed the murder 

 of Cassar, but his fame would have remained fair and bright ; he would 

 have been x'eckoned among the benefactors of his country, and his 

 premature death would have been lamented as a national calamity. 

 Now he is branded in history as a " despicable and detested monster,"* 

 because he was not happy enough to die before he obtained supreme 

 power. 



The disposition to think and speak evil of others, at all times power- 

 ful in the human heart, was perhaps never so rampant as during 

 the period of national decay, of moral, political, and religious de- 

 generacy, which accompanied the establishment of the Eoman Empire. 

 It thrived under the incubus which oppressed freedom of speech. No 

 act of those in power, no event that could be coloured with a criminal 

 hue, escaped the slanderous tongues of that depraved generation. No 

 crime was so black and horrible, no misdeed so gratuitous or mad, no 

 folly so absurd, but it was eagerly credited and spread in a society from 

 which all holier impulses of our nature were erased ; which knew of 

 patriotism, self-devotion, justice, piety, and pui'ity of life only from the 

 scarce credited annals of bygone days, — which was sunk and lost in 

 epicurean selfishness, in the most abject servility and the grossest 

 superstition. If a man of eminence died unexpectedly, his death was 

 sure to be ascribed to the dagger or to poison, even when not the 

 slightest evidence of violence could be adduced. Nor were these sus- 

 picions confined to the vulgar. We see them at least hinted at and 

 insinuated by the most respectable historians of the time. Not only 

 the premature deaths of Marcellus, of Caiusf and Lucius, the adopted 

 sous of Augustus, and presumptive heirs of the Empire, were darkly 

 imputed to the "fatal stepmother of the Augustan house," but Au- 

 gustus himself, though he reached the extreme limit of human life and 

 infirmity of age, was believed to have fallen at last a victim to her 

 deadly craft. + Nothing surely would have been more gratuitous than 

 to kill a dying man. The succession of Tiberius was an irrevocable 

 necessity ; there was nobody to contest the empire with him.§ Why 

 should Livia, after having waited patiently so long, have suddenly 



* Hume. 



+ Tacit. Ann. 1. 3. Of Tiberius' opinion of Cains we may judge from a passage in Vel- 

 leins II. 101, (C. Csesar tam varie se gessit, ut nee laudaturum ii;„gna nee vimpera turum 

 mediooris inaleria deliciat). We are bound to suppose that Velleius knew the niiud of 

 Tiberius perfectly well, and did not write a single word to displease his patron. Tlie 

 qualified praise therefore wliich be bestows on Caius is trustworthy evidence of the Enipe- 

 ror's disposition towards Cains. Compare also Veil. II. 103. 



} Tao, .\nn I. 5. Et quidara scelus uxoris suspectabant. 



§ It is perfectly true wliat Velleius says, II. 103: — Neque enim quaerendns erat quum 

 legeret (Augustus) sed legendus qui ciuinebat. 



