eature--the very person of the Caesar. In the presence of a huge and
enthusiastic crowd it was taken to the temple of Mars, where the
pontiffs, attired in their festal robes, dedicated it with solemn ritual
to the god of war and finally deposited it in a specially constructed
cradle fashioned of citrus wood with elaborate carvings and touches of
gilding thereon; the whole resting upon a pedestal of African marble.

Upon the next day a procession of Gauls entered the city carrying
helmets which were filled with sea-shells. The men wore their hair long
and unkempt, they were naked save for a goatskin tied across the torso
with a hempen rope and their shins were encircled with leather bands.
The helmets were said to have belonged to those of Caesar's soldiers who
had lost their lives in the expedition against the Germans, and the
sea-shells were a special tribute from the ocean to the gods of the
Capitol. By the Caesar's orders the helmets were to be the objects of
semi-divine honours in memory of the illustrious dead.

Thus the tragi-comedy went on day after day. The plebs enjoying the
pageants because they did not know that they were being fooled, and the
patricians looking on because they did not care.

And now the imperial mountebank was coming home himself, having ordered
his triumph as he had stage-managed his deeds of valour. Triumphal
arches and street decorations, flowers and processions, he had ordained
everything just as he wished it to be. From the statue of every god in
the temples of the Capitol and of the Forum the bronze head had been
knocked off by his orders, and a likeness of his own head placed in
substitution. His intention was to receive divine homage, and this the
plebs--who had been promised a succession of holidays, with races,
games, and combats--was over-ready to grant him.

The vestibule connecting his palace with the temple of Castor had been
completed in his absence, and he wished to pass surreptitiously from his
own apartments to the very niche of the idol which was in full view of
the Forum and there to show himself to the people, even whilst a
sacrifice was offered to him as to a god.

To all this senseless display of egregious vanity the obsequiousness of
the senators and the careless frivolity of the plebs easily lent itself;
nor did anyone demur at the decree which came from the absent hero, that
he should in future be styled: "The Father of the Armies! the Greatest
and best of Cae