trouble to investigate the progress of Caesar's ambition, from such
materials as even yet remain, may satisfy himself that the scheme of
revolutionizing the Republic, and placing himself at its head, was no
growth of accident or circumstances; above all, that it did not arise
upon any so petty and indirect a suggestion as that of his debts; but
that his debts were in their very first origin purely ministerial to his
wise, indispensable, and patriotic ambition; and that his revolutionary
plans were at all periods of his life a direct and foremost object, but
in no case bottomed upon casual impulses. In this there was not only
patriotism, but in fact the one sole mode of patriotism which could have
prospered, or could have found a field of action.

Chatter not, sublime reader, commonplaces of scoundrel moralists against
ambition. In some cases ambition is a hopeful virtue; in others (as in
the Rome of our resplendent Julius) ambition was the virtue by which any
other could flourish. It had become evident to everybody that Rome,
under its present constitution, must fall; and the sole question was--by
whom? Even Pompey, not by nature of an aspiring turn, and prompted to
his ambitious course undoubtedly by circumstances and, the friends who
besieged him, was in the habit of saying, "Sylla potuit: ego non
potero?" _Sylla found it possible: shall I find it not so?_ Possible to
do what? To overthrow the political system of the Republic. This had
silently collapsed into an order of things so vicious, growing also so
hopelessly worse, that all honest patriots invoked a purifying
revolution, even though bought at the heavy price of a tyranny, rather
than face the chaos of murderous distractions to which the tide of feuds
and frenzies was violently tending.

Such a revolution at such a price was not less Pompey's object than
Caesar's. In a case, therefore, where no benefit of choice was allowed
to Rome as respected the thing, but only as respected the person, Caesar
had the same right to enter the arena in the character of combatant as
could belong to any one of his rivals. And that he _did_ enter that
arena constructively, and by secret design, from his very earliest
manhood, may be gathered from this--that he suffered no openings towards
a revolution, provided they had any hope in them, to escape his
participation. It is familiarly known that he was engaged pretty deeply
in the conspiracy of Catiline, and that he incurred consi