‘Twas ever thus …

… Joseph Epstein: That Time a Republic Really Ended.  (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Josiah Osgood makes a valiant attempt not to choose sides between Caesar and Cato. Instead in measured prose he totes up their respective weaknesses and strengths. He mentions, though is not himself convinced of, Caesar’s Alexander Complex, in which Caesar, comparing himself to Alexander the Great at the same age, according to Suetonius "was heard to sigh impatiently: vexed, it seems, that at an age when Alexander had conquered the whole world, he himself had done nothing in the least epoch-making."