d besides these great tasks there were lesser
ones--the reform of the calendar, of the system of weights and measures,
of the language. Reforms are never popular. The change from bad to good
is slow and gradual. Caesar's followers were not made as rich as they
had hoped. His measures were directed to filling, not private pockets,
but the coffers of the State.

The people loved him. Their lot was vastly improved. But a growing body
began to say that he was behaving as a tyrant and that things were no
better than they had been under the old government. Some of these people
were sincere republicans who were afraid that Caesar was trying to make
himself king. Among them was Marcus Junius Brutus.

Brutus had married Cato's daughter and shared many of Cato's ideas.
Round him there gathered a knot of men, among whom the ablest was Caius
Cassius, who determined to free the city of the tyrant. To the minds of
Brutus and Cassius it seemed that Caesar was destroying the seeds of
greatness in all other men, to make himself supreme. Shakespeare makes
Cassius argue thus:

_The Penalty of Greatness_

_Cassius._ Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
'Brutus' will start a spirit as soon as 'Caesar'.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art sham'd!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was fam'd with more than with one man?
When could they say, till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walls encompassed but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
O! you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.

Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_, I. ii.

Caesar was warned of the conspiracy but took l