CÆSAR: A SKETCH[1].
By J. A. Froude, MA. London, 1879.
In one of his earliest published compositions Macaulay makes Julius Cæsar the central figure in a fragmentary story of which the scene is laid at Rome on the eve of Catiline's conspiracy. The tale opens with a conversation between two of Catiline's friends. Ligarius is strolling back from the Campus Martius to the Forum, when he overtakes Flaminius, who tells him what the political world is saying about the supper-parties at Catiline's house. Cæsar, in particular, has been indicated by Cicero as a dangerous person. Ligarius is astonished. Surely, he says, Cæsar does nothing but gamble, feast, intrigue, read Greek, and write verses. Flaminius, however, knows better. He has just lost a large sum to Cæsar at play, and Cæsar had won the game while carrying on a flirtation which preoccupied him so much that he scarcely looked at the board. "I thought," says Flaminius, "that I had him. All at once I found my counters driven into the corner. Not a piece to move. It cost me two millions of sesterces." While the friends are still talking, the
- ↑ Edinburgh Review for October, 1879.
