A FINE LIFE OF CAESAR

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 302, 16 September 1933, Page 19

A FINE LIFE OF CAESAR

“The Life of Caesar,” by Guglielmo Ferrero, translated bv A. E. Zimmern (London: Allen and Unwin). This fascinating biography of Julius Caesar was first published in English in an extended form In 1907 as volumes I and II of "The Greatness and Decline of Rome.” It has now been abridged by the author and issued in one volume with an explanatory preface in which he describes it as an antifascist or anti-bolshevist history. Professor Ferrero’s aim is to refute the widely-accepted thesis, developed in the nineteenth century by well-known historians such as Drumann, Mommsen and Dnruy, that Caesar had destroyed the Republic and assumed the dictatorship with the express purpose of giving the world a strong monarchical power. This representation was, he says, a romance. Caesar did not destroy the Republic or create the imperial government; the latter was the slow creation of several generations who owed nothing of their achievement to Caesar. “If Caesar occupies a great place in history.” he goes on, “it was not because he destroyed the Republic and founded the Empire, but because he conquered Gaul. The conquest of .Gaul was the beginning of European hist° r y” This romantic conception so popular last century seems to have sprung up as a counterpart to the Napoleonic legend. It faded, towards 1900, as the legend became discredited, but now “dispotie usurpations by individuals or groups,” as Professor Ferrero calls them, are in fashion again. These usurpations (he writes) have everywhere' awakened the old romantic illusion of the saviour tyrant. Even in privileged countries living under a legitimate government, there are many people who turn to Moscow or Rome, wondering whether a coup de main suppressing discussion and control of the government would not lie the quickest and safest remedy for the ills of the world. Everywhere people are again beginning to falsify the history of Julius Caesar and of other personages who might incarnate the romantic typo of the herousurper.

This is the reason why Professor Ferrero has adapted and re-issued his life of Caesar. The West, he says, must dissipate the legend of the hero-usurper and tlie saviour-tyrant and lay bare the underlying reality. Above all it must beware of the high-sounding promises of usurpers made In the belief that they can change the course of history.