Ancient World

[Caesar aspires to be a soldier.] [His success and celebrity.]

[Pompey.]

[The Rubicon.]

There was a little stream in ancient times, in the north of Italy, which flowed westward into the Adriatic Sea, called the Rubicon. This stream has been immortalized by the transactions which we are now about to describe.

[Its insignificance as a stream.]

[The gathering armies.] [Pompey's preparations.] [Caesar at Brundusium.]

[Pursuit of the vanquished.] [Pompey recovers himself.]

[Caesar after the battle of Pharsalia.]

Caesar surveyed the field of battle after the victory of Pharsalia, not with the feelings of exultation which might have been expected in a victorious general, but with compassion and sorrow for the fallen soldiers whose dead bodies covered the ground. After gazing upon the scene sadly and in silence for a time, he said, "They would have it so," and thus dismissed from his mind all sense of his own responsibility for the consequences which had ensued.

[His clemency.] [Caesar pursues Pompey.]

[Caesar again at Rome.] [Combinations against him.] [Veni, vidi, vici.]

Caesar's greatness and glory came at last to a very sudden and violent end. He was assassinated. All the attendant circumstances of this deed, too, were of the most extraordinary character, and thus the dramatic interest which adorns all parts of the great conqueror's history marks strikingly its end.

[Jealousies awakened by Caesar's power.] [The Roman Constitution.] [Struggles and Conflicts.]

[Caesar receives many warnings of his approaching fate.]

The Athenian Tragedy. - Its Origin. - Thespis. - Phrynichus. - Aeschylus. - Analysis of the Tragedies of Aeschylus.

I. From the melancholy fate of Miltiades, we are now invited to a subject no less connected with this important period in the history of Athens. The interval of repose which followed the battle of Marathon allows us to pause, and notice the intellectual state to which the Athenians had progressed since the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons.