that if that question were left to be collected from the suffrages already
expressed in books, and scattered throughout the literature of all
nations, the scale would be found to have turned prodigiously in Caesar's
favor, as against any single competitor; and there is no doubt whatsoever,
that even amongst his own countrymen, and his own contemporaries, the same
verdict would have been returned, had it been collected upon the famous
principle of Themistocles, that _he_ should be reputed the first,
whom the greatest number of rival voices had pronounced the second.




CHAPTER II.


The situation of the Second Caesar, at the crisis of the great Dictator's
assassination, was so hazardous and delicate, as to confer interest upon a
character not otherwise attractive. To many, we know it was positively
repulsive, and in the very highest degree. In particular, it is recorded
of Sir William Jones, that he regarded this emperor with feelings of
abhorrence so _personal_ and deadly, as to refuse him his customary
titular honors whenever he had occasion to mention him by name. Yet it was
the whole Roman people that conferred upon him his title of _Augustus_.
But Sir William, ascribing no force to the acts of a people who had sunk
so low as to exult in their chains, and to decorate with honors the very
instruments of their own vassalage, would not recognise this popular
creation, and spoke of him always by his family name of Octavius. The
flattery of the populace, by the way, must, in this instance, have been
doubly acceptable to the emperor, first, for what it gave, and secondly,
for what it concealed. Of his grand-uncle, the first Caesar, a tradition