called great who is not also good. Thus a French historian said that
Napoleon was as great as a man could be without virtue. Even here,
however, there is room for difference and discussion. What is meant by
virtue? Is the good man he who does good, who makes people better and
happier, or the man who is good in himself, who tries always to put the
welfare of others before his own, whether he succeeds or not? If the
first be true, poets, painters, and sculptors must rank highest in the
order of goodness as of greatness. If the second, most of the really
good are forgotten, since they tried and failed. Is success the test? It
is the only test that history accepts. The men who appear to us as great
in the story of the past are those who made some mark, whether for good
or evil, on their time. The others are forgotten. What we know of most
of the men, great or small, of the past, is not what they were, but what
they did. We know what they did. We can only guess why they did it.
Often, too, it happens that good men--men kindly, affectionate, and
unselfish--do harm to others without knowing it: bad men do good.

[Illustration: JULIUS CAESAR
The Brit. Mus. gem]

All these puzzling questions, and many more, are set to us by the
character of Caius Julius Caesar. He puzzled the men who lived in his
own time, and has gone on puzzling historians ever since. Brutus, who
loved him, finally killed him because he thought he was doing more harm
than good. Marcus Antonius, who also loved him, thought him, to the end,
the noblest man that ever lived. One great historian regards him as one
of the few really wise and far-seeing statesmen in the world's story;
a man who with extraordinary genius saw what the world needed and with
extraordinary will carried it out. Another sees him as no more than a
clever, selfish, and ambitious time-server: a man without fixed ideas or
principles, whose sole object was power. Both admit his genius: but
where one sees it directed steadily to great ends, the other sees
nothing fixed in his character but the determination to succeed.

Caesar's speeches (and he was a great speaker) are lost. We have two
volumes of his writings: his account of the conquest and settlement of
Gaul, and his account of the Civil War. These two volumes of
_Commentaries_ are so admirably written, in so pure and firm and lucid a
style, with such mastery of narrative and of order, that their author
would stand high among Roman wr