naval battle.  A great number of galleys were introduced into the lake.  They were of the usual size employed in war.  These galleys were manned with numerous soldiers.  Tyrian captives were put upon one side, and Egyptian upon the other; and when all was ready, the two squadrons were ordered to approach and fight a real battle for the amusement of the enormous throngs of spectators that were assembled around.  As the nations from which the combatants in this conflict were respectively taken were hostile to each other, and as the men fought, of course, for their lives, the engagement was attended with the usual horrors of a desperate naval encounter.  Hundreds were slain.  The dead bodies of the combatants fell from the galleys into the lake and the waters of it were dyed with their blood.

There were land combats, too, on the same grand scale.  In one of them five hundred foot soldiers, twenty elephants, and a troop of thirty horse were engaged on each side.  This combat, therefore, was an action greater, in respect to the number of the combatants, than the famous battle of Lexington, which marked the commencement of the American war; and in respect to the slaughter which took place, it was very probably ten times greater.  The horror of these scenes proved to be too much even for the populace, fierce and merciless as it was, which they were intended to amuse.  Caesar, in his eagerness to outdo all former exhibitions and shows, went beyond the limits within which the seeing of men butchered in bloody combats and dying in agony and despair would serve for a pleasure and a pastime.  The people were shocked; and condemnations of Caesar’s cruelty were added to the other suppressed reproaches and criminations which every where arose.

Cleopatra, during her visit to Rome, lived openly with Caesar at his residence, and this excited very general displeasure.  In fact, while the people pitied Arsinoe, Cleopatra, notwithstanding her beauty and her thousand personal accomplishments and charms, was an object of general displeasure, so far as public attention, was turned toward her at all.  The public mind was, however, much engrossed by the great political movements made by Caesar and the ends toward which he seemed to be aiming.  Men accused him of designing to be made a king.  Parties were formed for and against him; and though men did not dare openly to utter their sentiments, their passions became the more violent in proportion to the external force by which they were suppressed.  Mark Antony was at Rome at this time.  He warmly espoused Caesar’s cause, and encouraged his design of making himself king.  He once, in fact, offered to place a royal diadem upon Caesar’s head at some public celebration; but the marks of public disapprobation which the act elicited caused him to desist.