The outlines have thus been set forth, which Caesar drew for this work, according to which he laboured himself, and according to which posterity—­ for many centuries confined to the paths which this great man marked out—­ endeavoured to prosecute the work, if not with the intellect and energy, yet on the whole in accordance with the intentions, of the illustrious master.  Little was finished; much even was merely begun.  Whether the plan was complete, those who venture to vie in thought with such a man may decide; we observe no material defect in what lies before us—­every single stone of the building enough to make a man immortal, and yet all combining to form one harmonious whole.  Caesar ruled as king of Rome for five years and a half, not half as long as Alexander; in the intervals of seven great campaigns, which allowed him to stay not more than fifteen months altogether(119) in the capital of his empire, he regulated the destinies of the world for the present and the future, from the establishment of the boundary-line between civilization and barbarism down to the removal of the pools of rain in the streets of the capital, and yet retained time and composure enough attentively to follow the prize-pieces in the theatre and to confer the chaplet on the victor with improvised verses.  The rapidity and self-precision with which the plan was executed prove that it had been long meditated thoroughly and all its parts settled in detail; but, even thus, they remain not much less wonderful than the plan itself.  The outlines were laid down and thereby the new state was defined for all coming time; the boundless future alone could complete the structure.  So far Caesar might say, that his aim was attained; and this was probably the meaning of the words which were sometimes heard to fall from him—­that he had “lived enough.”  But precisely because the building was an endless one, the master as long as he lived restlessly added stone to stone, with always the same dexterity and always the same elasticity busy at his work, without ever overturning or postponing, just as if there were for him merely a to-day and no to-morrow.  Thus he worked and created as never did any mortal before or after him; and as a worker and creator he still, after wellnigh two thousand years, lives in the memory of the nations—­the first, and withal unique, Imperator Caesar.

CHAPTER XII

Religion, Culture, Literature, and Art

State Religion

In the development of religion and philosophy no new element appeared during this epoch.  The Romano-Hellenic state-religion and the Stoic state-philosophy inseparably combined with it were for every government—­oligarchy, democracy or monarchy—­not merely a convenient instrument, but quite indispensable for the very reason that it was just as impossible to construct the state wholly without religious elements as to discover any new state-religion fitted to take the place of the