jurisdiction. Hence the Ides of March.
After Caesar's death one of his intimates, Gaius Matius, was to lament: 'If he, for all his genius, could
not find a way out, who is going to find one now?' Caesar knew that his peers disliked being kept
waiting in his antechamber while he monopolized affairs. Yet what solution would they accept to the
political chaos and armed conflicts he had brought to an end? Augustus -was to avoid many of Caesar's
mistakes, including the celebrated clemency which left his most determined opponents alive. Yet
Augustus' solution was not so different, though he was more creative in adapting traditional language to
describe his paralysis of the constitution. The greatest difference lay in the attitude of others. Another
round of civil war had by then made peace in any form seem acceptable to those who survived.
Augustus was young and had time to evolve a solution. The Catos and the Ciceros were gone. Who was
there left who had seen the Republic?