VOL. 4-1

The following is contained in the Fifty-second of Dio’s Rome: 

How Caesar formed a plan to lay aside his sovereignty (chapters 1-40).

How he began to be called emperor (chapters 41-43).

Duration of time, the remainder of the consulship of Caesar (5th) and
Sextus Apuleius. (B.C. 29 = a. u. 725.)

(BOOK 52, BOISSEVAIN)

[-1-] My record has so far stated what the Romans both did and endured for seven hundred and twenty-five years under the monarchy, as a democracy, and beneath the rule of a few.  After this they reverted to nothing more nor less than a state of monarchy again, although Caesar had a plan to lay down his arms and entrust affairs to the senate and the populace.  He held a consultation on the subject with Agrippa and Maecenas, to whom he communicated all his secrets.  Agrippa, first of the two, answered him as follows:—­

[-2-] “Be not surprised, Caesar, if I try to turn your mind away from monarchy, in spite of the fact that I might enjoy many advantages from it if you held the place.  If it were going to prove serviceable to you, I should be thoroughly enthusiastic for it.  But those who hold supreme power are not in a like position with their friends:  the latter without incurring jealousy or danger reap all the benefits they please, whereas jealousies and dangers are the lot of the former.  I have thought it right, as in other cases, to look forward not for my own interest but for yours and the public’s.  Let us consider leisurely all the features of the system of government and turn whichever way our reflection may direct us.  For it will not be asserted that we ought to choose it under any and all circumstances, even if it be not advantageous.  Otherwise we shall seem to have been unable to bear good fortune and to have gone mad through our successes, or else to have been aiming at it long since, to have used our father and our devotion to him as a mere screen, to have put “the people and the senate” forward as an excuse.  Our object will seem to have been not to free them from conspirators but to enslave them to ourselves.  Either supposition entails censure.  Who would not be indignant to see that we had spoken words of one tenor, but to ascertain that we had had something different in mind?  How much more would he hate us now than if we had at the outset laid bare our desires and aimed straight at the monarchy!  It has come to be generally believed that to adopt some violent course belongs somehow to the nature of man, even if it involves taking an unfair advantage.  Every person who excels in any business thinks it right that he should enjoy more advantages than his inferior.  If he meets with a success he ascribes it to the force of his individual temperament, and if he fails in anything he refers it to the workings of the supernatural.  A man, however, who tries to gain advancement by plots and injuries is in the