a minute narrative of these
military operations; but as the two civil wars against Niger and against
Albinus were almost the same in their conduct, event, and consequences,
I shall collect into one point of view the most striking circumstances,
tending to develop the character of the conqueror and the state of the
empire.

[Footnote 40: Herodian, l. iii. p. 112]

[Footnote 41: Though it is not, most assuredly, the intention of Lucan
to exalt the character of Caesar, yet the idea he gives of that hero,
in the tenth book of the Pharsalia, where he describes him, at the same
time, making love to Cleopatra, sustaining a siege against the power of
Egypt, and conversing with the sages of the country, is, in reality, the
noblest panegyric. * Note: Lord Byron wrote, no doubt, from a
reminiscence of that passage--"It is possible to be a very great man,
and to be still very inferior to Julius Caesar, the most complete
character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Nature seems
incapable of such extraordinary combinations as composed his versatile
capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans themselves. The first
general; the only triumphant politician; inferior to none in point of
eloquence; comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in an age
made up of the greatest commanders, statesmen, orators, and
philosophers, that ever appeared in the world; an author who composed a
perfect specimen of military annals in his travelling carriage; at one
time in a controversy with Cato, at another writing a treatise on
punuing, and collecting a set of good sayings; fighting and making love
at the same moment, and willing to abandon both his empire and his
mistress for a sight of the fountains of the Nile. Such did Julius
Caesar appear to his contemporaries, and to those of the subsequent ages
who were the most inclined to deplore and execrate his fatal genius."
Note 47 to Canto iv. of Childe Harold.--M.]

[Footnote 42: Reckoning from his election, April 13, 193, to the death
of Albinus, February 19, 197. See Tillemont's Chronology.]

Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as they seem to the dignity of
public transactions, offend us with a less degrading idea of meanness,
than when they are found in the intercourse of private life. In the
latter, they discover a want of courage; in the other, only a defect of
power: and, as it is impossible for the most able statesmen to subdue
millions of followers and enemies by their ow