JULIUS CAESAR.* DR. SIHLER is Professor of the Latin Language
and Literature in New 'York University. He is also a prolific author ; and in the preface to his Caesar he enumerates thirteen other works for which he is responsible. To one of them, Testimonium Anima', he reprints thirteen laudatory advertisements. We have to reproduce Mr. Sihler's spelling of "anima" in quoting his title, though we protest as we do it; and we should have more confidence in his judgment if his Latin spelling were correct. His present volume is described more fully in the title-page as "a critical biography, with a survey of the sources ; for more advanced students of ancient history, and particularly for the use and service of instructors in Cmsar." The origin of his book, he says, " was in the lecture-room of my graduate students" ; and, except the first two chapters, the
• Annals of Caesar By E. G. Sihler, Ph.D. New York : Stechert and CO. [7s. 6d. net.]
work " is here presented substantially in the form. and sequence of the lectures." We can thus judge at the same time of Dr. Sihler in his workshop, and of the Latin teaching which is provided by him for the University of New York.
Dr. Sihler professes to be a detached and an impartial biographer. He claims that his "lectures were reared upon or constructed out of the ancient sources as their only material." For this good intention we commend him heartily; and we associate ourselves with his protest against the too frequent popularization and modernizing of ancient history and of its heroes. At the same time we should have wel- comed a great deal more than we find of the form, spirit, and manner of the old writers whom Dr. Sihler accepts for his authorities and models. Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Lucan, Suetonius, and, not least, Caesar himself, whatever their failings in some respects, all knew how to write well. They are all full of distinction and of charm. They are all artists of a high, and some of the highest, order. Of these qualities in his teachers Dr. Sihler has not been a proficient pupil. He may, indeed, have kept within their literal statements ; but he gives us only disjecta membra in his reproductions, from which the life and finish have departed. It is well, no doubt, to avoid every taint of sensational modern journalism in dealing with the ancient world ; but it is not necessary, in consequence, to be dull and slovenly: " Serpit humi tutus nimium." We cannot help saying that Dr. Sihler's volume is heavy and common- place, and its faults cannot be attributed altogether to its origin ; because there is no difference in style between the first two chapters, which profess to be " entirely recast and rewritten," and the remainder of the volume, which is a substantial reproduction of the lectures.
Besides these general defects there are many blemishes in detail, of which we can enumerate only a few. To "antagonize" instead of to " oppose " is a needless eccentricity. Marius is said to have been not " socially democratic," when it is meant that he was not democratic in his personal tastes and his matrimonial connexions. Metellus " Pins " should presumably be Pius." " Cinna was defeated and quit the soil of Italy " ; " Now Caesar quit and marched " : these are, at any rate, not our current English usage. Repristination for restoration, electicism for eclecticism, Ariovist for Ariovistus, are not to be commended ; and to describe Cicero as " a cultural enthusiast" is to read that correct and opulent master of phraseology in vain.
While Dr. Sillier is thus lax and reprehensible in his own way of writing, he is severe and even morose to some of his modern predecessors. There are six pages of sour criticism of Mommsen, some of which may be half true, but most of it seems to us hard, and therefore unintelligent. He does, how- ever, strike at a real and a too prevalent blemish in Mommsen when he accuses him of an "artificial modernity achieved by clothing those remoter figures with the political dress of yesterday." The expression is no doubt faulty, but the principle is sound, and, as Dr. Sihler points out, such history must be as ephemeral as the fashions and politics on which it relies. Very cordially also do we endorse Dr. Sihler's judgment of Ferrero. " The much heralded Ferrero is master of this vicious historiography : lie gives us a Tammany Hall' of Rome. These parallels glibly established are simply per- formances of literary audacity."
Froude is even more severely handled than Mommsen ; but 'the whole account of him is a tissue of injustice, prejudice, and inaccuracy. Dr. Sillier talks about Froude's "fellowship in Exeter Hall." Evidently he has not learnt enough about Oxford to distinguish between Exeter College and the hall of the college in which Froude's Nemesis of Faith. was burnt ; not "officially," as Dr. Sihler says, but by an ardent Fellow. "A man who can glorify Henry VIII. can do anything," Dr. Sibler adds. It is clear that he has not read Mr. Pollard's Henry VIII., which more than justifies Froude's English history, nor does he appear to know Mr. Herbert Paul's Life of Fronde, which is not only a brilliant vindication of its subject, but the most damag. ing exposure that has ever been written of Froude's detractors. " One cannot," says Dr. Sihler again, " smooth one's periods at sixty, become a classical scholar over. night, and occasionally dip into a very considerable mass of classical historiography." Now Froude's interests and pursuits were not limited to the classics. He never professed to be an expert in minute scholarship ; but no one can dispute his competence to read and under- stand the best Greek and Roman literature. And as to his English writing, it is not for Dr. Sihler to gird at one of the ablest and most virile prose authors of the Victorian age. "But to go on to the end," Dr. Sihler says, enumerating Froude's faults, " would be like counting the pustules on a small-pox patient." This way of speaking may be tolerated in the University of New York, but let us assure Dr. Sihler it will not be accepted either here or in the historic seats of learning in his own country as good literature. And with this elegance we may take leave of him in his literary capacity, commiserating those who have to read his thirteen other productions, and expressing our dissent from his thirteen eulogists. Lest, however, some careless reader may mistake our meaning, let us say with all the emphasis at our command that no one need suppose that we imagine Dr. Sihler's manner of writing history to be typical of the best or even of the average scholarship of America. The United States in her chief universities has scholars and professors of the highest repute— men worthy of all honour in their profession, and as incapable of his ineptitudes as are the teachers of Oxford and Cambridge, of London and our Provincial Universities, or of those of Scotland and Ireland.
As to Caesar himself, it is difficult to know what Dr. Sihler really thinks. He condemns all those historians who praise Caesar, but he does not leave us with any' precise notion of his own verdict. Few things in history and literature are more curious than the changing views of different generations about Julius Caesar. Much as we admire the eighteenth century, we think its view of Caesar was grievously, and even absurdly, wrong, because it was based on a fiction. It assumed that the Roman Republic in Caesar's day was a sound and popular form of government which secured liberty and order, whereas it did neither. It was a narrow, rapacious, corrupt, and tyrannical oligarchy which ignored and plundered the Roman people and outraged all the provinces. The Roman Empire, as it was in fact, had outgrown the theoretical Commonwealth of Rome, with its archaic city government. For a century before Caesar, demagogues and military despots bad alternately been the ruling forces. Nothing was ever more corrupt and inefficient than the Roman Senate in the last age of the Commonwealth. Italy itself was nearly lost in the Marsian war, and was almost ruined by the long disorder and misgovernment. The Roman conquests, and with them the Graeco-Latin civilization, would have been lost to the world if Rome itself had not been reconstructed. Caesar, at any rate, saw the urgent need of reconstruction. He understood some of the problems which had to be solved if the Roman State were to be saved, and to the political solution of those problems he was able to add his unequalled military genius. That he was altogether blameless and unselfish either in his private or public life cannot be maintained without exaggeration ; but it is more per- verse to hold, as Dr. Sihler seems to hold, that he was merely a schemer, an adventurer, making his profit out of troubles for which he was largely and deliberately responsible. Of all this we must confess that we can find no justification from an un- biased reading of the contemporary evidence. Even less can we hold "that the Keltio war was no imperial or political necessity, but rather an arena for Cremes [sic] ambition." With the Germans pouring into Gaul, where their settlement would have cut Italy from Spain, and whence they would soon have flooded Africa, we believe that Caesar's conquest was of the first necessity for the continuance and transmission of our European civilization. Far more true, as we think, than Dr. Sihler's crude prejudices are the mellow judgments in Pelham's recently" published Essays on Roman History, which we cannot commend too highly to those who wish to understand the problems which had to be faced by Julius and Augustus, and to judge those great rulers fairly. In Pelham's opinion Julius took a larger view than his successor, and his chief fault was, not his tyranny, nor his ambition, but that he was too far in advance of his own time. What Julius might have done we cannot tell. What Augustus did was to re-establish the Republic, so far as that was possible, on the most conservative lines. Neither be nor Tiberius, who adhered so faithfully to his methods; was responsible in any way for the later deterioration either of society or of the frincipate.
But, after all, Julius Caesar remains the wonder of the human race ; on the whole, its most astonishing production : " the greatest man of action who has ever lived," says Dr. Rice Holmes truly ; the greatest probably of all soldiers ; and possibly not less great in statesmanship if he bad had an equal chance. Certainly also one of the best and greatest of writers, as his Commentaries prove, and according to tradition not less great as an orator. The variety of his attainments was as unusual as the perfection with which he expressed them. He was a model of urbanity and good taste, and, above all, in a cruel age, a time of savage revolutions and reprisals, his clemency was inexhaustible. No doubt it was very largely the cause of his death; but perhaps his martyrdom was necessary to the cause for which he lived, namely, the eternity of Rome. Long ago, Dante judged between Caesar and his murderers, and competent scholarship more than endorses the opinion of Dante.
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