ed,
their forelocks puffed, drew a high and wonderfully jewelled car; and
there, in the attributes and attitude of Jupiter Capitolinus, Caesar
sat, blinking his tired eyes. His face and arms were painted vermilion;
above the Tyrian purple of his toga, above the gold work and palms of
his tunic, there oscillated a little ball in which there were charms
against Envy. On his head a wreath concealed his increasing baldness;
along his left arm the sceptre lay; behind him a boy admonished him
noisily to remember he was man, while to the rear for miles and miles
there rang the laugh of trumpets, the click of castanets, the shouts of
dancers, the roar of the multitude, the tramp of legions, and the cry,
caught up and repeated, "Io! Triomphe!"

Presently, in the temple of the god of gods, side by side with the
statue of Jupiter, Caesar found his own statue with "Caesar, demi-god,"
at its base. The captive chiefs disappeared in the Tullianum, and a
herald called, "They have lived!" Through the squares jesters
circulated, polyglot and obscene; across the Tiber, in an artificial
lake, the flotilla of Egypt fought against that of Tyr; in the
amphitheatre there was a combat of soldiers, infantry against cavalry,
one that indemnified those that had not seen the massacres in Thessaly
and in Spain. There were public feasts, gifts to everyone. Tables were
set in the Forum, in the circuses and theatres. Falernian circulated in
amphorae, Chios in barrels. When the populace was gorged there were the
red feathers to enable it to gorge again. Of the Rome of Romulus there
was nothing left save the gaunt she-wolf, her wide lips curled at the
descendants of her nursling.

Later, when in slippered feet Caesar wandered through those lovely
gardens of his that lay beyond the Tiber, it may be that he recalled a
dream which had come to him as a lad; one which concerned the
submission of his mother; one which had disturbed him until the
sooth-sayers said: "The mother you saw is the earth, and you will be
her master." And as the memory of the dream returned, perhaps with it
came the memory of the hour when as simple quaestor he had wept at
Gaddir before a statue that was there. Demi-god, yes; he was that.
More, even; he was dictator, but the dream was unfulfilled. There were
the depths of Hither Asia, the mysteries that lay beyond; there were
the glimmering plains of the Caucasus; there were the Vistula and the
Baltic; the diadems of Cyrus and of Ale