The sinister purpose started occasionally into sight.
One obsequious senator proposed that every woman in Rome should be at his
disposition, and filthy libels against him were set floating under the
surface. The object, he perfectly understood, "was to draw him into a
position more and more invidious, that he might the sooner perish." [6]
The praise and the slander of such men were alike indifferent to him. So
far as he was concerned, they might call him what they pleased; god in
public, and devil in their epigrams, if it so seemed good to them. It was
difficult for him to know precisely how to act, but he declined his divine
honors; and he declined the ten years' consulship. Though he was sole
consul for the year, he took a colleague, and when his colleague died on
the last day of office, he named another, that the customary forms might
be observed. Let him do what he would, malice still misconstrued him.
Cicero, the most prominent now of his senatorial flatterers, was the
sharpest with his satire behind the scenes. "Caesar," he said, "had given
so active a consul that there was no sleeping under him." [7]
Caesar was more and more weary of it. He knew that the Senate hated him;
he knew that they would kill him, if they could. All these men whose lips
were running over with adulation, were longing to drive their daggers into
him.
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