are alike shocked when we are asked to believe that Cicero was a nonentity who could not excel even in oratory, and when Cato's epitaph is a remark on the irony of the fate which had decreed that the epilogue of a great tragedy should be spoken by the fool. But Mommsen has at least taken care that his defence of Cæsar's autocracy on the plea of "exclusive ability to govern" shall not be confounded with modern Cæsarism. History, he says, must not refuse due honour to the true Cæsar because her verdict may help false Cæsars to beguile the unwary. "History, too, is a Bible, and if she cannot any more than the Bible hinder the fool from misunderstanding and the Devil from quoting her, she, too, will be able to bear with and to requite them both."
The appeal of modern Cæsarism to the career of Julius Cæsar involves, in fact, a double fallacy. The first fallacy consists in representing Cæsar as expressing and fulfilling the will of the people by founding the military monarchy. Cæsar happened, indeed, to have been at the head of the popular party, and that fact contributed in several ways to make his assumption of supreme power more plausible; but the will which he expressed and fulfilled when he became absolute was neither that of the democracy nor that of the oligarchy; it was a more important one, namely, his own. If Pompey had conquered in the Civil War, he also might have founded a military absolutism, had his qualities been equal to the task; but modern apologists would then have found it more difficult to represent the vic-
