us die manfully for our brethren, and let us not stain our honour.”

The battle lasted all day, but it was one in which numbers gave the advantage. Judas fell before the end of the day, and was buried in the sepulchre at Modin, while the song of David rose up from the mountains, “How are the mighty fallen!"

He fell B.C. 162; but his country's cause was won. His brothers well kept up the spirit he had roused, and for nearly a hundred years Judæa was a brave and independent state, revived out of her dust, and observant of her Law as she had never been in her most splendid days.

CAIUS JULIUS CÆSAR.

B.C. 100-44.

THE verdict of our forefathers has placed among the three Worthies of classical antiquity one to whom that title is due rather from his rare abilities than from his moral character, which, in some respects, fell far short even of the heathen pitch of excellence; for, in truth, his endeavour was rather to be great than to be good. He had no real faith in the remnants of truth in the national religion, nor had he any standard of ideal excellence, like the earnest students and actors of philosophical systems. He was not the obedient self-sacrificing servant of his country's law and glory that others made themselves; still less was he a worshipper and would-be restorer of the past. His philosophy was the Epicurean, which chiefly took heed to present advantage and enjoyment; and though his wonderful genius and practical nature made him seek these often in a generous and beneficent manner, yet there was a want of elevation in his aims; and though his clear sense discerned what was the only practicable course for his countrymen, and forced them into it, his work was more one of personal ambition than of patriotism.

Nevertheless, with all his crimes, Caius Julius Cæsar was undoubtedly, in his own time," the foremost man of all this world," and in the front rank of the great men of

all time; and his powers and some of his qualities merit from us the careful attention that our ancestors claimed for him by numbering him with the Worthies.

He was born in a time when virtue was hard of attainment. Traditionary gleams of truth had nearly disappeared from both the Greek and Roman myths, when they had been mixed up together with importations from Egypt, Syria, and Phoenicia, and philosophy had nearly worn its clue threadbare in the labyrinthine mazes of speculation, so that all life and light were gone out of the inner man; even while the education, which had been first taken up by the Cornelian family, had been carried to the highest pitch, and scholarship, learning, and wit were in the utmost esteem. Moreover, the very conquests of Rome were changing her whole character, and making some difference in her constitution necessary, so that the rottenness of the state showed itself in horrible convulsions at the centre. All Italy, Greece, and Carthage had been subdued; Syria had no longer a king; Egypt had been scotched, and was nearly at the last gasp; and the surrounding nations were either abject allies existing on sufferance, or enemies fighting the last battles of independence. The old, stern, simple race of peasant kings had, as Cato the censor foresaw, departed for ever. A consul, after his year of office at Rome, instead of coming back to his farm, had five or three years of government in one or other of the provinces, where he was absolute for the time over the lives and property of the natives, and helped himself nearly as he chose, being secure that a barbarian would hardly be listened to at Rome if he complained of a Roman magistrate. The provinces were so many in number, that not only ex-consuls, but ex-prætors and ex-quæstors looked to them as their employment and reward at the end of the year of office, and came home with great wealth, and habits of solitary unquestioned

authority, that made them evil companions to one another, and fierce, boastful tyrants to those beneath them in rank, while their wealth was used to the detriment of their family and the corruption of the plebeians.

All these great prizes lay in the gift of the Roman people; .e. those who held the franchise or power of election-the old patrician and plebeian races. The patricians, having been always a limited number of families, without any opening for promotion of others into their ranks, naturally became fewer in number, while the plebeians increased, since any man who obtained Roman citizenship was added to their ranks. Many of this order were very rich; and as they were eligible for magistracies, they acquired seats in the Senate, and their older and better families were, to all intents and purposes, on equal terms with the patricians; but it was the mass of idle poor who were the great difficulty. Having the disposal of such enormous prizes in their hands, they were naturally courted by all who desired to be elected, and were kept in good humour by supplies of provisions, and by perpetual shows. What would have been the use, they argued, of ruling the world, if they had not plenty of food and amusement? So Sicily and Egypt were expected to keep them supplied with corn freely distributed, and every person who wanted to be elected to an office, every victorious general who came home for a triumph, contended who should display the most exciting entertainment, showing either strange wild beasts set to tear one another to pieces for the amusement of the people, or, still worse, slaves called gladiators, trained to fight with one another for the public diversion. Brutal, selfish, and turbulent such a state of things could not fail to make the people of the single city that held the government of the world in its hands; for though there were many other citizens resident in the few favoured Italian

cities or in the colonies, no votes for Roman magistrates could be given except at Rome itself. The best hope for Rome would have been to have diminished the number of plebeians who lived on little but their vote, by settling them upon Italian farms; and this had been attempted by Tiberius and Caius Sempronius Gracchus, the grandsons of the great Scipio Africanus, but they had both perished in the attempt to contend with the patricians and the wealthy plebeians. As another remedy, it was proposed to admit many more Italian cities to the franchise, which would have made the interests of Rome those of the whole country, and freed nations of kindred blood and like manners from the galling condition of provincials; and this point was the subject of the fierce struggle, fought out with all the reckless fury of patrician and plebeian jealousy, and with the bitter personal hatred of two rival generals, at the time when the greatest man of all Rome came into the world—a most disorganized, ferocious, and demoralized world. He was born at Rome on the 12th of July, B.C. 100-the month that bears his name-and was the son of one of the very oldest patrician families, whose nomen of Julius was said to be derived from Iulus, the son of Æneas of Troy, and thus, according to tradition, the grandson of the goddess Venus. The cognomen of the family, Cæsar, was by some explained to apply to their long hair (cæsaries); by others to the Punic name for an elephant, which a Julius of old was said to have killed. His prænomen of Caius had always been given to the eldest son of the family, and he was the only son of his parents, Caius Julius Cæsar and Aurelia, who had besides only two daughters, both called from their father, Julia.

The father could not have been a man of mark, since he never attained any rank beyond that of prætor; but this may have been on account of early death. The