ate than by any attempt to extirpate them by proscription
or to eject them from the commonwealth by banishment. Caesar could not
for his high objects dispense with the constitutional party itself,
which in fact embraced not the aristocracy merely but all the elements
of a free and national spirit among the Italian burgesses;
for his schemes, which contemplated the renovation of the antiquated
state, he needed the whole mass of talent, culture, hereditary,
and self-acquired distinction, which this party embraced;
and in this sense he may well have named the pardoning of his opponents
the finest reward of victory. Accordingly the most prominent chiefs
of the defeated parties were indeed removed, but full pardon
was not withheld from the men of the second and third rank
and especially of the younger generation; they were not, however,
allowed to sulk in passive opposition, but were by more or less
gentle pressure induced to take an active part in the new administration,
and to accept honours and offices from it. As with Henry the Fourth
and William of Orange, so with Caesar his greatest difficulties began
only after the victory. Every revolutionary conqueror learns
by experience that, if after vanquishing his opponents he would
not remain like Cinna and Sulla a mere party-chief, but would
like Caesar, Henry the Fourth, and William of Orange substitute
the welfare of the commonwealth for the necessarily one-sided programme
of his own party, for the moment all parties, his own as well as
the vanquished, unite against the new chief; and the more so,
the more great and pure his idea of his new vocation. The friends
of the constitution and the Pompeians, though doing homage
with the lips to Caesar, bore yet in heart a grudge either
at monarchy or at least at the dynasty; the degenerate democracy
was in open rebellion against Caesar from the moment of its perceiving
that Caesar's objects were by no means its own; even the personal
adherents of Caesar murmured, when they found that their chief was
establishing instead of a state of condottieri a monarchy equal
and just towards all, and that the portions of gain accruing to them
were to be diminished by the accession of the vanquished.
This settlement of the commonwealth was acceptable to no party,
and had to be imposed on his associates no less than on his opponents.
Caesar's own position was now in a certain sense more imperilled
than before the victory; but what he lost, t