



Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger





                               THE LIVES
                                   OF
                           THE TWELVE CAESARS

                                   By
                       C. Suetonius Tranquillus;

                          To which are added,

         HIS LIVES OF THE GRAMMARIANS, RHETORICIANS, AND POETS.


                          The Translation of
                        Alexander Thomson, M.D.

                        revised and corrected by
                         T.Forester, Esq., A.M.




PREFACE


C. Suetonius Tranquillus was the son of a Roman knight who commanded a
legion, on the side of Otho, at the battle which decided the fate of the
empire in favour of Vitellius.  From incidental notices in the following
History, we learn that he was born towards the close of the reign of
Vespasian, who died in the year 79 of the Christian era.  He lived till
the time of Hadrian, under whose administration he filled the office of
secretary; until, with several others, he was dismissed for presuming on
familiarities with the empress Sabina, of which we have no further
account than that they were unbecoming his position in the imperial
court.  How long he survived this disgrace, which appears to have
befallen him in the year 121, we are not informed; but we find that the
leisure afforded him by his retirement, was employed in the composition
of numerous works, of which the only portions now extant are collected in
the present volume.

Several of the younger Pliny's letters are addressed to Suetonius, with
whom he lived in the closest friendship.  They afford some brief, but
generally pleasant, glimpses of his habits and career; and in a letter,
in which Pliny makes application on behalf of his friend to the emperor
Trajan, for a mark of favour, he speaks of him as "a most excellent,
honourable, and learned man, whom he had the pleasure of entertaining
under his own roof, and with whom the nearer he was brought into
communion, the more he loved him." [1]

The plan adopted by Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, led him
to be more diffuse on their personal conduct and habits than on public
events.  He writes Memoirs rather than History.  He neither dwells on the
civil wars which sealed the fall of the Republic, nor on the military
expeditions which extended the frontiers of the empire; nor does he
attempt to develop the causes of the great political changes which marked
the period of which he treats.

When we stop to gaze in a museum or gallery on the antique busts of the
Caesars, we perhaps endeavour to trace in their sculptured physiognomy
the characteristics of those princes, who, for good or evil, were in
their times masters of the destinies of a large portion of the human
race.  The pages of Suetonius will amply gratify this natural curiosity.
In them we find a series of individual portraits sketched to the life,
with perfect truth and rigorous impartiality.  La Harpe remarks of
Suetonius, "He is scrupulously exact, and strictly methodical.  He omits
nothing which concerns the person whose life he is writing; he relates
everything, but paints nothing.  His work is, in some sense, a collection
of anecdotes, but it is very curious to read and consult." [2]

Combining as it does amusement and information, Suetonius's "Lives of the
Caesars" was held in such estimation, that, so soon after the invention
of printing as the year 1500, no fewer than eighteen editions had been
published, and nearly one hundred have since been added to the number.
Critics of the highest rank have devoted themselves to the task of
correcting and commenting on the text, and the work has been translated
into most European languages.  Of the English translations, that of Dr.
Alexander Thomson, published in 1796, has been made the basis of the
present.  He informs us in his Preface, that a version of Suetonius was
with him only a secondary object, his principal design being to form a
just estimate of Roman literature, and to elucidate the state of
government, and the manners of the times; for which the work of Suetonius
seemed a fitting vehicle.  Dr. Thomson's remarks appended to each
successive reign, are reprinted nearly verbatim in the present edition.
His translation, however, was very diffuse, and retained most of the
inaccuracies of that of Clarke, on which it was founded; considerable
care therefore has been bestowed in correcting it, with the view of
producing, as far as possible, a literal and faithful version.

To render the works of Suetonius, as far as they are extant, complete,
his Lives of eminent Grammarians, Rhetoricians, and Poets, of which a
translation has not before appeared in English, are added.  These Lives
abound with anecdote and curious information connected with learning and
literary men during the period of which the author treats.
                                                            T. F.


CONTENTS

   I.  LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS
       1.  Julius Caesar
       2.  Augustus
       3.  Tiberius
       4.  Caligula
       5.  Claudius
       6.  Nero
       7.  Galba
       8.  Otho
       9.  Vitellius
      10.  Vespasian
      11.  Titus
      12.  Domitian
  II.  LIVES OF THE GRAMMARIANS AND THE HISTORIANS
 III.  LIVES OF THE POETS
       Terence
       Juvenal
       Persius
       Horace
       Lucan
       Pliny
 FOOTNOTES
 INDEX




(1)

THE TWELVE CAESARS.




CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR.


I.  Julius Caesar, the Divine [3], lost his father [4] when he was in the
sixteenth year of his age [5]; and the year following, being nominated to
the office of high-priest of Jupiter [6], he repudiated Cossutia, who was
very wealthy, although her family belonged only to the equestrian order,
and to whom he had been contracted when he was a mere boy.  He then
married (2) Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, who was four times consul;
and had by her, shortly afterwards, a daughter named Julia.  Resisting
all the efforts of the dictator Sylla to induce him to divorce Cornelia,
he suffered the penalty of being stripped of his sacerdotal office, his
wife's dowry, and his own patrimonial estates; and, being identified with
the adverse faction [7], was compelled to withdraw from Rome.  After
changing his place of concealment nearly every night [8], although he was
suffering from a quartan ague, and having effected his release by bribing
the officers who had tracked his footsteps, he at length obtained a
pardon through the intercession of the vestal virgins, and of Mamercus
Aemilius and Aurelius Cotta, his near relatives.  We are assured that
when Sylla, having withstood for a while the entreaties of his own best
friends, persons of distinguished rank, at last yielded to their
importunity, he exclaimed--either by a divine impulse, or from a shrewd
conjecture: "Your suit is granted, and you may take him among you; but
know," he added, "that this man, for whose safety you are so extremely
anxious, will, some day or other, be the ruin of the party of the nobles,
in defence of which you are leagued with me; for in this one Caesar, you
will find many a Marius."

II.  His first campaign was served in Asia, on the staff of the praetor,
M. Thermus; and being dispatched into Bithynia [9], to bring thence a
fleet, he loitered so long at the court of Nicomedes, as to give occasion
to reports of a criminal intercourse between him and that prince; which
received additional credit from his hasty return to Bithynia, under the
pretext of recovering a debt due to a freed-man, his client.  The rest of
his service was more favourable to his reputation; and (3) when Mitylene
[10] was taken by storm, he was presented by Thermus with the civic
crown. [11]

III.  He served also in Cilicia [12], under Servilius Isauricus, but only
for a short time; as upon receiving intelligence of Sylla's death, he
returned with all speed to Rome, in expectation of what might follow from
a fresh agitation set on foot by Marcus Lepidus.  Distrusting, however,
the abilities of this leader, and finding the times less favourable for
the execution of this project than he had at first imagined, he abandoned
all thoughts of joining Lepidus, although he received the most tempting
offers.

IV.  Soon after this civil discord was composed, he preferred a charge of
extortion against Cornelius Dolabella, a man of consular dignity, who had
obtained the honour of a triumph.  On the acquittal of the accused, he
resolved to retire to Rhodes [13], with the view not only of avoiding the
public odium (4) which he had incurred, but of prosecuting his studies
with leisure and tranquillity, under Apollonius, the son of Molon, at
that time the most celebrated master of rhetoric.  While on his voyage
thither, in the winter season, he was taken by pirates near the island of
Pharmacusa [14], and detained by them, burning with indignation, for
nearly forty days; his only attendants being a physician and two
chamberlains.  For he had instantly dispatched his other servants and the
friends who accompanied him, to raise money for his ransom [15].  Fifty
talents having been paid down, he was landed on the coast, when, having
collected some ships [16], he lost no time in putting to sea in pursuit
of the pirates, and having captured them, inflicted upon them the
punishment with which he had often threatened them in jest.  At that time
Mithridates was ravaging the neighbouring districts, and on Caesar's
arrival at Rhodes, that he might not appear to lie idle while danger
threatened the allies of Rome, he passed over into Asia, and having
collected some auxiliary forces, and driven the king's governor out of
the province, retained in their allegiance the cities which were
wavering, and ready to revolt.

V.  Having been elected military tribune, the first honour he received
from the suffrages of the people after his return to Rome, he zealously
assisted those who took measures for restoring the tribunitian authority,
which had been greatly diminished during the usurpation of Sylla.  He
likewise, by an act, which Plotius at his suggestion propounded to the
people, obtained the recall of Lucius Cinna, his wife's brother, and
others with him, who having been the adherents of Lepidus in the civil
disturbances, had after that consul's death fled to Sertorius [17]; which
law he supported by a speech.

VI.  During his quaestorship he pronounced funeral orations from the
rostra, according to custom, in praise of his aunt (5) Julia, and his
wife Cornelia.  In the panegyric on his aunt, he gives the following
account of her own and his father's genealogy, on both sides: "My aunt
Julia derived her descent, by the mother, from a race of kings, and by
her father, from the Immortal Gods.  For the Marcii Reges [18], her
mother's family, deduce their pedigree from Ancus Marcius, and the Julii,
her father's, from Venus; of which stock we are a branch.  We therefore
unite in our descent the sacred majesty of kings, the chiefest among men,
and the divine majesty of Gods, to whom kings themselves are subject."
To supply the place of Cornelia, he married Pompeia, the daughter of
Quintus Pompeius, and grand-daughter of Lucius Sylla; but he afterwards
divorced her, upon suspicion of her having been debauched by Publius
Clodius.  For so current was the report, that Clodius had found access to
her disguised as a woman, during the celebration of a religious solemnity
[19], that the senate instituted an enquiry respecting the profanation of
the sacred rites.

VII.  Farther-Spain [20] fell to his lot as quaestor; when there, as he
was going the circuit of the province, by commission from the praetor,
for the administration of justice, and had reached Gades, seeing a statue
of Alexander the Great in the temple of Hercules, he sighed deeply, as if
weary of his sluggish life, for having performed no memorable actions at
an age [21] at which Alexander had already conquered the world.  He,
therefore, immediately sued for his discharge, with the view of embracing
the first opportunity, which might present itself in The City, of
entering upon a more exalted career.  In the stillness of the night
following, he dreamt that he lay with his own mother; but his confusion
was relieved, and his hopes were raised to the highest pitch, by the
interpreters of his dream, who expounded it as an omen that he should
possess universal empire; for (6) that the mother who in his sleep he had
found submissive to his embraces, was no other than the earth, the common
parent of all mankind.

VIII.  Quitting therefore the province before the expiration of the usual
term, he betook himself to the Latin colonies, which were then eagerly
agitating the design of obtaining the freedom of Rome; and he would have
stirred them up to some bold attempt, had not the consuls, to prevent any
commotion, detained for some time the legions which had been raised for
service in Cilicia.  But this did not deter him from making, soon
afterwards, a still greater effort within the precincts of the city
itself.

IX.  For, only a few days before he entered upon the aedileship, he
incurred a suspicion of having engaged in a conspiracy with Marcus
Crassus, a man of consular rank; to whom were joined Publius Sylla and
Lucius Autronius, who, after they had been chosen consuls, were convicted
of bribery.  The plan of the conspirators was to fall upon the senate at
the opening of the new year, and murder as many of them as should be
thought necessary; upon which, Crassus was to assume the office of
dictator, and appoint Caesar his master of the horse [22].  When the
commonwealth had been thus ordered according to their pleasure, the
consulship was to have been restored to Sylla and Autronius.  Mention is
made of this plot by Tanusius Geminus [23] in his history, by Marcus
Bibulus in his edicts [24], and by Curio, the father, in his orations
[25]. Cicero likewise seems to hint at this in a letter to Axius, where
he says, that Caesar (7) had in his consulship secured to himself that
arbitrary power [26] to which he had aspired when he was edile.  Tanusius
adds, that Crassus, from remorse or fear, did not appear upon the day
appointed for the massacre of the senate; for which reason Caesar omitted
to give the signal, which, according to the plan concerted between them,
he was to have made.  The agreement, Curio says, was that he should shake
off the toga from his shoulder.  We have the authority of the same Curio,
and of M. Actorius Naso, for his having been likewise concerned in
another conspiracy with young Cneius Piso; to whom, upon a suspicion of
some mischief being meditated in the city, the province of Spain was
decreed out of the regular course [27].  It is said to have been agreed
between them, that Piso should head a revolt in the provinces, whilst the
other should attempt to stir up an insurrection at Rome, using as their
instruments the Lambrani, and the tribes beyond the Po.  But the
execution of this design was frustrated in both quarters by the death of
Piso.

X.  In his aedileship, he not only embellished the Comitium, and the rest
of the Forum [28], with the adjoining halls [29], but adorned the Capitol
also, with temporary piazzas, constructed for the purpose of displaying
some part of the superabundant collections (8) he had made for the
amusement of the people [30].  He entertained them with the hunting of
wild beasts, and with games, both alone and in conjunction with his
colleague.  On this account, he obtained the whole credit of the expense
to which they had jointly contributed; insomuch that his colleague,
Marcus Bibulus, could not forbear remarking, that he was served in the
manner of Pollux.  For as the temple [31] erected in the Forum to the two
brothers, went by the name of Castor alone, so his and Caesar's joint
munificence was imputed to the latter only.  To the other public
spectacles exhibited to the people, Caesar added a fight of gladiators,
but with fewer pairs of combatants than he had intended.  For he had
collected from all parts so great a company of them, that his enemies
became alarmed; and a decree was made, restricting the number of
gladiators which any one was allowed to retain at Rome.

XI.  Having thus conciliated popular favour, he endeavoured, through his
interest with some of the tribunes, to get Egypt assigned to him as a
province, by an act of the people.  The pretext alleged for the creation
of this extraordinary government, was, that the Alexandrians had
violently expelled their king [32], whom the senate had complimented with
the title of an ally and friend of the Roman people.  This was generally
resented; but, notwithstanding, there was so much opposition from the
faction of the nobles, that he could not carry his point.  In order,
therefore, to diminish their influence by every means in his power, he
restored the trophies erected in honour of Caius Marius, on account of
his victories over Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and the Teutoni, which had been
demolished by Sylla; and when sitting in judgment upon murderers, he
treated those as assassins, who, in the late proscription, had received
money from the treasury, for bringing in the heads of Roman citizens,
although they were expressly excepted in the Cornelian laws.

XII.  He likewise suborned some one to prefer an impeachment (9) for
treason against Caius Rabirius, by whose especial assistance the senate
had, a few years before, put down Lucius Saturninus, the seditious
tribune; and being drawn by lot a judge on the trial, he condemned him
with so much animosity, that upon his appealing to the people, no
circumstance availed him so much as the extraordinary bitterness of his
judge.

XIII.  Having renounced all hope of obtaining Egypt for his province, he
stood candidate for the office of chief pontiff, to secure which, he had
recourse to the most profuse bribery.  Calculating, on this occasion, the
enormous amount of the debts he had contracted, he is reported to have
said to his mother, when she kissed him at his going out in the morning
to the assembly of the people, "I will never return home unless I am
elected pontiff."  In effect, he left so far behind him two most powerful
competitors, who were much his superiors both in age and rank, that he
had more votes in their own tribes, than they both had in all the tribes
together.

XIV.  After he was chosen praetor, the conspiracy of Catiline was
discovered; and while every other member of the senate voted for
inflicting capital punishment on the accomplices in that crime [33], he
alone proposed that the delinquents should be distributed for safe
custody among the towns of Italy, their property being confiscated.  He
even struck such terror into those who were advocates for greater
severity, by representing to them what universal odium would be attached
to their memories by the Roman people, that Decius Silanus, consul elect,
did not hesitate to qualify his proposal, it not being very honourable to
change it, by a lenient interpretation; as if it had been understood in a
harsher sense than he intended, and Caesar would certainly have carried
his point, having brought over to his side a great number of the
senators, among whom was Cicero, the consul's brother, had not a speech
by Marcus Cato infused new vigour into the resolutions of the senate.  He
persisted, however, in obstructing the measure, until a body of the Roman
knights, who stood under arms as a guard, threatened him with instant
death, if he continued his determined opposition.  They even thrust at
him with their drawn swords, so that those who sat next him moved away;
(10) and a few friends, with no small difficulty, protected him, by
throwing their arms round him, and covering him with their togas.  At
last, deterred by this violence, he not only gave way, but absented
himself from the senate-house during the remainder of that year.

XV.  Upon the first day of his praetorship, he summoned Quintus Catulus
to render an account to the people respecting the repairs of the Capitol
[34]; proposing a decree for transferring the office of curator to
another person [35].  But being unable to withstand the strong opposition
made by the aristocratical party, whom he perceived quitting, in great
numbers, their attendance upon the new consuls [36], and fully resolved
to resist his proposal, he dropped the design.

XVI.  He afterwards approved himself a most resolute supporter of
Caecilius Metullus, tribune of the people, who, in spite of all
opposition from his colleagues, had proposed some laws of a violent
tendency [37], until they were both dismissed from office by a vote of
the senate.  He ventured, notwithstanding, to retain his post and
continue in the administration of justice; but finding that preparations
were made to obstruct him by force of arms, he dismissed the lictors,
threw off his gown, and betook himself privately to his own house, with
the resolution of being quiet, in a time so unfavourable to his
interests.  He likewise pacified the mob, which two days afterwards
flocked about him, and in a riotous manner made a voluntary tender of
their assistance in the vindication of his (11) honour.  This happening
contrary to expectation, the senate, who met in haste, on account of the
tumult, gave him their thanks by some of the leading members of the
house, and sending for him, after high commendation of his conduct,
cancelled their former vote, and restored him to his office.

XVII.  But he soon got into fresh trouble, being named amongst the
accomplices of Catiline, both before Novius Niger the quaestor, by Lucius
Vettius the informer, and in the senate by Quintus Curius; to whom a
reward had been voted, for having first discovered the designs of the
conspirators.  Curius affirmed that he had received his information from
Catiline.  Vettius even engaged to produce in evidence against him his
own hand-writing, given to Catiline.  Caesar, feeling that this treatment
was not to be borne, appealed to Cicero himself, whether he had not
voluntarily made a discovery to him of some particulars of the
conspiracy; and so baulked Curius of his expected reward.  He, therefore,
obliged Vettius to give pledges for his behaviour, seized his goods, and
after heavily fining him, and seeing him almost torn in pieces before the
rostra, threw him into prison; to which he likewise sent Novius the
quaestor, for having presumed to take an information against a magistrate
of superior authority.

XVIII.  At the expiration of his praetorship he obtained by lot the
Farther-Spain [38], and pacified his creditors, who were for detaining
him, by finding sureties for his debts [39].  Contrary, however, to both
law and custom, he took his departure before the usual equipage and
outfit were prepared.  It is uncertain whether this precipitancy arose
from the apprehension of an impeachment, with which he was threatened on
the expiration of his former office, or from his anxiety to lose no time
in relieving the allies, who implored him to come to their aid.  He had
no (12) sooner established tranquillity in the province, than, without
waiting for the arrival of his successor, he returned to Rome, with equal
haste, to sue for a triumph [40], and the consulship.  The day of
election, however, being already fixed by proclamation, he could not
legally be admitted a candidate, unless he entered the city as a private
person [41].  On this emergency he solicited a suspension of the laws in
his favour; but such an indulgence being strongly opposed, he found
himself under the necessity of abandoning all thoughts of a triumph, lest
he should be disappointed of the consulship.

XIX.  Of the two other competitors for the consulship, Lucius Luceius and
Marcus Bibulus, he joined with the former, upon condition that Luceius,
being a man of less interest but greater affluence, should promise money
to the electors, in their joint names.  Upon which the party of the
nobles, dreading how far he might carry matters in that high office, with
a colleague disposed to concur in and second his measures, advised
Bibulus to promise the voters as much as the other; and most of them
contributed towards the expense, Cato himself admitting that bribery;
under such circumstances, was for the public good [42].  He was
accordingly elected consul jointly with Bibulus.  Actuated still by the
same motives, the prevailing party took care to assign provinces of small
importance to the new consuls, such as the care of the woods and roads.
Caesar, incensed at this indignity, endeavoured by the most assiduous and
flattering attentions to gain to his side Cneius Pompey, at that time
dissatisfied with the senate for the backwardness they shewed to confirm
his acts, after his victories over Mithridates.  He likewise brought
about a reconciliation between Pompey and Marcus Crassus, who had been at
variance from (13) the time of their joint consulship, in which office
they were continually clashing; and he entered into an agreement with
both, that nothing should be transacted in the government, which was
displeasing to any of the three.

XX.  Having entered upon his office [43], he introduced a new regulation,
that the daily acts both of the senate and people should be committed to
writing, and published [44].  He also revived an old custom, that an
officer [45] should precede him, and his lictors follow him, on the
alternate months when the fasces were not carried before him.  Upon
preferring a bill to the people for the division of some public lands, he
was opposed by his colleague, whom he violently drove out of the forum.
Next day the insulted consul made a complaint in the senate of this
treatment; but such was the consternation, that no one having the courage
to bring the matter forward or move a censure, which had been often done
under outrages of less importance, he was so much dispirited, that until
the expiration of his office he never stirred from home, and did nothing
but issue edicts to obstruct his colleague's proceedings.  From that
time, therefore, Caesar had the sole management of public affairs;
insomuch that some wags, when they signed any instrument as witnesses,
did not add "in the consulship of Caesar and Bibulus," but, "of Julius
and Caesar;" putting the same person down twice, under his name and
surname.  The following verses likewise were currently repeated on this
occasion:

    Non Bibulo quidquam nuper, sed Caesare factum est;
      Nam Bibulo fieri consule nil memini.

          Nothing was done in Bibulus's year:
          No; Caesar only then was consul here.

(14) The land of Stellas, consecrated by our ancestors to the gods, with
some other lands in Campania left subject to tribute, for the support of
the expenses of the government, he divided, but not by lot, among upwards
of twenty thousand freemen, who had each of them three or more children.
He eased the publicans, upon their petition, of a third part of the sum
which they had engaged to pay into the public treasury; and openly
admonished them not to bid so extravagantly upon the next occasion.  He
made various profuse grants to meet the wishes of others, no one opposing
him; or if any such attempt was made, it was soon suppressed.  Marcus
Cato, who interrupted him in his proceedings, he ordered to be dragged
out of the senate-house by a lictor, and carried to prison.  Lucius
Lucullus, likewise, for opposing him with some warmth, he so terrified
with the apprehension of being criminated, that, to deprecate the
consul's resentment, he fell on his knees.  And upon Cicero's lamenting
in some trial the miserable condition of the times, he the very same day,
by nine o'clock, transferred his enemy, Publius Clodius, from a patrician
to a plebeian family; a change which he had long solicited in vain [46].
At last, effectually to intimidate all those of the opposite party, he by
great rewards prevailed upon Vettius to declare, that he had been
solicited by certain persons to assassinate Pompey; and when he was
brought before the rostra to name those who had been concerted between
them, after naming one or two to no purpose, not without great suspicion
of subornation, Caesar, despairing of success in this rash stratagem, is
supposed to have taken off his informer by poison.

XXI.  About the same time he married Calpurnia, the daughter of Lucius
Piso, who was to succeed him in the consulship, and gave his own daughter
Julia to Cneius Pompey; rejecting Servilius Caepio, to whom she had been
contracted, and by whose means chiefly he had but a little before baffled
Bibulus.  After this new alliance, he began, upon any debates in the
senate, to ask Pompey's opinion first, whereas he used before to give
that distinction to Marcus Crassus; and it was (15) the usual practice
for the consul to observe throughout the year the method of consulting
the senate which he had adopted on the calends (the first) of January.

XXII.  Being, therefore, now supported by the interest of his
father-in-law and son-in-law, of all the provinces he made choice of Gaul,
as most likely to furnish him with matter and occasion for triumphs.  At
first indeed he received only Cisalpine-Gaul, with the addition of
Illyricum, by a decree proposed by Vatinius to the people; but soon
afterwards obtained from the senate Gallia-Comata [47] also, the senators
being apprehensive, that if they should refuse it him, that province,
also, would be granted him by the people.  Elated now with his success, he
could not refrain from boasting, a few days afterwards, in a full
senate-house, that he had, in spite of his enemies, and to their great
mortification, obtained all he desired, and that for the future he would
make them, to their shame, submissive to his pleasure.  One of the
senators observing, sarcastically: "That will not be very easy for a woman
[48] to do," he jocosely replied, "Semiramis formerly reigned in Assyria,
and the Amazons possessed great part of Asia."

XXIII.  When the term of his consulship had expired, upon a motion being
made in the senate by Caius Memmius and Lucius Domitius, the praetors,
respecting the transactions of the year past, he offered to refer himself
to the house; but (16) they declining the business, after three days
spent in vain altercation, he set out for his province.  Immediately,
however, his quaestor was charged with several misdemeanors, for the
purpose of implicating Caesar himself.  Indeed, an accusation was soon
after preferred against him by Lucius Antistius, tribune of the people;
but by making an appeal to the tribune's colleagues, he succeeded in
having the prosecution suspended during his absence in the service of the
state.  To secure himself, therefore, for the time to come, he was
particularly careful to secure the good-will of the magistrates at the
annual elections, assisting none of the candidates with his interest, nor
suffering any persons to be advanced to any office, who would not
positively undertake to defend him in his absence for which purpose he
made no scruple to require of some of them an oath, and even a written
obligation.

XXIV.  But when Lucius Domitius became a candidate for the consulship,
and openly threatened that, upon his being elected consul, he would
effect that which he could not accomplish when he was praetor, and divest
him of the command of the armies, he sent for Crassus and Pompey to
Lucca, a city in his province, and pressed them, for the purpose of
disappointing Domitius, to sue again for the consulship, and to continue
him in his command for five years longer; with both which requisitions
they complied.  Presumptuous now from his success, he added, at his own
private charge, more legions to those which he had received from the
republic; among the former of which was one levied in Transalpine Gaul,
and called by a Gallic name, Alauda [49], which he trained and armed in
the Roman fashion, and afterwards conferred on it the freedom of the
city.  From this period he declined no occasion of war, however unjust
and dangerous; attacking, without any provocation, as well the allies of
Rome as the barbarous nations which were its enemies: insomuch, that the
senate passed a decree for sending commissioners to examine into the
condition of Gaul; and some members even proposed that he should be
delivered up to the enemy.  But so great had been the success of his
enterprises, that he had the honour of obtaining more days [50] (17) of
supplication, and those more frequently, than had ever before been
decreed to any commander.

XXV.  During nine years in which he held the government of the province,
his achievements were as follows: he reduced all Gaul, bounded by the
Pyrenean forest, the Alps, mount Gebenna, and the two rivers, the Rhine
and the Rhone, and being about three thousand two hundred miles in
compass, into the form of a province, excepting only the nations in
alliance with the republic, and such as had merited his favour; imposing
upon this new acquisition an annual tribute of forty millions of
sesterces.  He was the first of the Romans who, crossing the Rhine by a
bridge, attacked the Germanic tribes inhabiting the country beyond that
river, whom he defeated in several engagements.  He also invaded the
Britons, a people formerly unknown, and having vanquished them, exacted
from them contributions and hostages.  Amidst such a series of successes,
he experienced thrice only any signal disaster; once in Britain, when his
fleet was nearly wrecked in a storm; in Gaul, at Gergovia, where one of
his legions was put to the rout; and in the territory of the Germans, his
lieutenants Titurius and Aurunculeius were cut off by an ambuscade.

XXVI.  During this period [51] he lost his mother [52], whose death was
followed by that of his daughter [53], and, not long afterwards, of his
granddaughter.  Meanwhile, the republic being in consternation at the
murder of Publius Clodius, and the senate passing a vote that only one
consul, namely, Cneius Pompeius, should be chosen for the ensuing year,
he prevailed with the tribunes of the people, who intended joining him in
nomination with Pompey, to propose to the people a bill, enabling him,
though absent, to become a candidate for his second consulship, when the
term of his command should be near expiring, that he might not be obliged
on that account to quit his province too soon, and before the conclusion
of the war.  Having attained this object, carrying his views still
higher, and animated with the hopes of success, he omitted no (18)
opportunity of gaining universal favour, by acts of liberality and
kindness to individuals, both in public and private.  With money raised
from the spoils of the war, he began to construct a new forum, the
ground-plot of which cost him above a hundred millions of sesterces [54].
He promised the people a public entertainment of gladiators, and a feast
in memory of his daughter, such as no one before him had ever given.  The
more to raise their expectations on this occasion, although he had agreed
with victuallers of all denominations for his feast, he made yet farther
preparations in private houses.  He issued an order, that the most
celebrated gladiators, if at any time during the combat they incurred the
displeasure of the public, should be immediately carried off by force,
and reserved for some future occasion.  Young gladiators he trained up,
not in the school, and by the masters, of defence, but in the houses of
Roman knights, and even senators, skilled in the use of arms, earnestly
requesting them, as appears from his letters, to undertake the discipline
of those novitiates, and to give them the word during their exercises.
He doubled the pay of the legions in perpetuity; allowing them likewise
corn, when it was in plenty, without any restriction; and sometimes
distributing to every soldier in his army a slave, and a portion of land.

XXVII.  To maintain his alliance and good understanding with Pompey, he
offered him in marriage his sister's grand-daughter Octavia, who had been
married to Caius Marcellus; and requested for himself his daughter,
lately contracted to Faustus Sylla.  Every person about him, and a great
part likewise of the senate, he secured by loans of money at low
interest, or none at all; and to all others who came to wait upon him,
either by invitation or of their own accord, he made liberal presents;
not neglecting even the freed-men and slaves, who were favourites with
their masters and patrons.  He offered also singular and ready aid to all
who were under prosecution, or in debt, and to prodigal youths; excluding
from (19) his bounty those only who were so deeply plunged in guilt,
poverty, or luxury, that it was impossible effectually to relieve them.
These, he openly declared, could derive no benefit from any other means
than a civil war.

XXVIII.  He endeavoured with equal assiduity to engage in his interest
princes and provinces in every part of the world; presenting some with
thousands of captives, and sending to others the assistance of troops, at
whatever time and place they desired, without any authority from either
the senate or people of Rome.  He likewise embellished with magnificent
public buildings the most powerful cities not only of Italy, Gaul, and
Spain, but of Greece and Asia; until all people being now astonished, and
speculating on the obvious tendency of these proceedings, Claudius
Marcellus, the consul, declaring first by proclamation, that he intended
to propose a measure of the utmost importance to the state, made a motion
in the senate that some person should be appointed to succeed Caesar in
his province, before the term of his command was expired; because the war
being brought to a conclusion, peace was restored, and the victorious
army ought to be disbanded.  He further moved, that Caesar being absent,
his claims to be a candidate at the next election of consuls should not
be admitted, as Pompey himself had afterwards abrogated that privilege by
a decree of the people.  The fact was, that Pompey, in his law relating
to the choice of chief magistrates, had forgot to except Caesar, in the
article in which he declared all such as were not present incapable of
being candidates for any office; but soon afterwards, when the law was
inscribed on brass, and deposited in the treasury, he corrected his
mistake.  Marcellus, not content with depriving Caesar of his provinces,
and the privilege intended him by Pompey, likewise moved the senate, that
the freedom of the city should be taken from those colonists whom, by the
Vatinian law, he had settled at New Como [55]; because it had been
conferred upon them with ambitious views, and by a stretch of the laws.

(20) XXIX.  Roused by these proceedings, and thinking, as he was often
heard to say, that it would be a more difficult enterprise to reduce him,
now that he was the chief man in the state, from the first rank of
citizens to the second, than from the second to the lowest of all, Caesar
made a vigorous opposition to the measure, partly by means of the
tribunes, who interposed in his behalf, and partly through Servius
Sulpicius, the other consul.  The following year likewise, when Caius
Marcellus, who succeeded his cousin Marcus in the consulship, pursued the
same course, Caesar, by means of an immense bribe, engaged in his defence
Aemilius Paulus, the other consul, and Caius Curio, the most violent of
the tribunes.  But finding the opposition obstinately bent against him,
and that the consuls-elect were also of that party, he wrote a letter to
the senate, requesting that they would not deprive him of the privilege
kindly granted him by the people; or else that the other generals should
resign the command of their armies as well as himself; fully persuaded,
as it is thought, that he could more easily collect his veteran soldiers,
whenever he pleased, than Pompey could his new-raised troops.  At the
same time, he made his adversaries an offer to disband eight of his
legions and give up Transalpine-Gaul, upon condition that he might retain
two legions, with the Cisalpine province, or but one legion with
Illyricum, until he should be elected consul.

XXX.  But as the senate declined to interpose in the business, and his
enemies declared that they would enter into no compromise where the
safety of the republic was at stake, he advanced into Hither-Gaul [56],
and, having gone the circuit for the administration of justice, made a
halt at Ravenna, resolved to have recourse to arms if the senate should
proceed to extremity against the tribunes of the people who had espoused
his cause.  This was indeed his pretext for the civil war; but it is
supposed that there were other motives for his conduct.  Cneius Pompey
used frequently to say, that he sought to throw every thing into
confusion, because he was unable, with all his private wealth, to
complete the works he had begun, and answer, at his return, the vast
expectations which he had excited in the people.  Others pretend that he
was apprehensive of being (21) called to account for what he had done in
his first consulship, contrary to the auspices, laws, and the protests of
the tribunes; Marcus Cato having sometimes declared, and that, too, with
an oath, that he would prefer an impeachment against him, as soon as he
disbanded his army.  A report likewise prevailed, that if he returned as
a private person, he would, like Milo, have to plead his cause before the
judges, surrounded by armed men.  This conjecture is rendered highly
probable by Asinius Pollio, who informs us that Caesar, upon viewing the
vanquished and slaughtered enemy in the field of Pharsalia, expressed
himself in these very words: "This was their intention: I, Caius Caesar,
after all the great achievements I had performed, must have been
condemned, had I not summoned the army to my aid!"  Some think, that
having contracted from long habit an extraordinary love of power, and
having weighed his own and his enemies' strength, he embraced that
occasion of usurping the supreme power; which indeed he had coveted from
the time of his youth.  This seems to have been the opinion entertained
by Cicero, who tells us, in the third book of his Offices, that Caesar
used to have frequently in his mouth two verses of Euripides, which he
thus translates:

    Nam si violandum est jus, regnandi gratia
    Violandum est: aliis rebus pietatem colas.

    Be just, unless a kingdom tempts to break the laws,
    For sovereign power alone can justify the cause. [57]

XXXI.  When intelligence, therefore, was received, that the interposition
of the tribunes in his favour had been utterly rejected, and that they
themselves had fled from the city, he immediately sent forward some
cohorts, but privately, to prevent any suspicion of his design; and, to
keep up appearances, attended at a public spectacle, examined the model
of a fencing-school which he proposed to build, and, as usual, sat down
to table with a numerous party of his friends.  But after sun-set, mules
being put to his carriage from a neighbouring mill, he set forward on his
journey with all possible privacy, and a small retinue.  The lights going
out, he lost his way, and (22) wandered about a long time, until at
length, by the help of a guide, whom he found towards day-break, he
proceeded on foot through some narrow paths, and again reached the road.
Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, which was the
boundary of his province [58], he halted for a while, and, revolving in
his mind the importance of the step he was on the point of taking, he
turned to those about him, and said: "We may still retreat; but if we
pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in
arms."

XXXII.  While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred.  A
person remarkable for his noble mien and graceful aspect, appeared close
at hand, sitting and playing upon a pipe.  When, not only the shepherds,
but a number of soldiers also flocked from their posts to listen to him,
and some trumpeters among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them,
ran to the river with it, and sounding the advance with a piercing blast,
crossed to the other side.  Upon this, Caesar exclaimed, "Let us go
whither the omens of the Gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us.
The die is now cast."

XXXIII.  Accordingly, having marched his army over the river, he shewed
them the tribunes of the people, who, upon their being driven from the
city, had come to meet him; and, in the presence of that assembly, called
upon the troops to pledge him their fidelity, with tears in his eyes, and
his garment rent from his bosom.  It has been supposed, that upon this
occasion he promised to every soldier a knight's estate; but that opinion
is founded on a mistake.  For when, in his harangue to them, he
frequently held out a finger of his left hand, and declared, that to
recompense those who should support him in the defence of his honour, he
would willingly part even with his ring; the soldiers at a distance, who
could more easily see than hear him while he spoke, formed their
conception of what he said, by the eye, not by the ear; and accordingly
gave out, that he had promised to each of them the privilege (23) of
wearing the gold ring, and an estate of four hundred thousand sesterces.
[60]

XXXIV.  Of his subsequent proceedings I shall give a cursory detail, in
the order in which they occurred [61].  He took possession of Picenum,
Umbria, and Etruria; and having obliged Lucius Domitius, who had been
tumultuously nominated his successor, and held Corsinium with a garrison,
to surrender, and dismissed him, he marched along the coast of the Upper
Sea, to Brundusium, to which place the consuls and Pompey were fled with
the intention of crossing the sea as soon as possible.  After vain
attempts, by all the obstacles he could oppose, to prevent their leaving
the harbour, he turned his steps towards Rome, where he appealed to the
senate on the present state of public affairs; and then set out for
Spain, in which province Pompey had a numerous army, under the command of
three lieutenants, Marcus Petreius, Lucius Afranius, and Marcus Varro;
declaring amongst his friends, before he set forward, "That he was going
against an army without a general, and should return thence against a
general without an army."  Though his progress was retarded both by the
siege of Marseilles, which shut her gates against him, and a very great
scarcity of corn, yet in a short time he bore down all before him.

XXXV.  Thence he returned to Rome, and crossing the sea to Macedonia,
blocked up Pompey during almost four months, within a line of ramparts of
prodigious extent; and at last defeated him in the battle of Pharsalia.
Pursuing him in his flight to Alexandria, where he was informed of his
murder, he presently found himself also engaged, under all the
disadvantages of time and place, in a very dangerous war, with king
Ptolemy, who, he saw, had treacherous designs upon his life.  It was
winter, and he, within the walls of a well-provided and subtle enemy, was
destitute of every thing, and wholly unprepared (24) for such a conflict.
He succeeded, however, in his enterprise, and put the kingdom of Egypt
into the hands of Cleopatra and her younger brother; being afraid to make
it a province, lest, under an aspiring prefect, it might become the
centre of revolt.  From Alexandria he went into Syria, and thence to
Pontus, induced by intelligence which he had received respecting
Pharnaces.  This prince, who was son of the great Mithridates, had seized
the opportunity which the distraction of the times offered for making war
upon his neighbours, and his insolence and fierceness had grown with his
success.  Caesar, however, within five days after entering his country,
and four hours after coming in sight of him, overthrew him in one
decisive battle.  Upon which, he frequently remarked to those about him
the good fortune of Pompey, who had obtained his military reputation,
chiefly, by victory over so feeble an enemy.  He afterwards defeated
Scipio and Juba, who were rallying the remains of the party in Africa,
and Pompey's sons in Spain.

XXXVI.  During the whole course of the civil war, he never once suffered
any defeat, except in the case of his lieutenants; of whom Caius Curio
fell in Africa, Caius Antonius was made prisoner in Illyricum, Publius
Dolabella lost a fleet in the same Illyricum, and Cneius Domitius
Culvinus, an army in Pontus.  In every encounter with the enemy where he
himself commanded, he came off with complete success; nor was the issue
ever doubtful, except on two occasions: once at Dyrrachium, when, being
obliged to give ground, and Pompey not pursuing his advantage, he said
that "Pompey knew not how to conquer;" the other instance occurred in his
last battle in Spain, when, despairing of the event, he even had thoughts
of killing himself.

XXXVII.  For the victories obtained in the several wars, he triumphed
five different times; after the defeat of Scipio: four times in one
month, each triumph succeeding the former by an interval of a few days;
and once again after the conquest of Pompey's sons.  His first and most
glorious triumph was for the victories he gained in Gaul; the next for
that of Alexandria, the third for the reduction of Pontus, the fourth for
his African victory, and the last for that in Spain; and (25) they all
differed from each other in their varied pomp and pageantry.  On the day
of the Gallic triumph, as he was proceeding along the street called
Velabrum, after narrowly escaping a fall from his chariot by the breaking
of the axle-tree, he ascended the Capitol by torch-light, forty elephants
[62] carrying torches on his right and left.  Amongst the pageantry of
the Pontic triumph, a tablet with this inscription was carried before
him: I CAME, I SAW, I CONQUERED [63]; not signifying, as other mottos on
the like occasion, what was done, so much as the dispatch with which it
was done.

XXXVIII.  To every foot-soldier in his veteran legions, besides the two
thousand sesterces paid him in the beginning of the civil war, he gave
twenty thousand more, in the shape of prize-money.  He likewise allotted
them lands, but not in contiguity, that the former owners might not be
entirely dispossessed.  To the people of Rome, besides ten modii of corn,
and as many pounds of oil, he gave three hundred sesterces a man, which
he had formerly promised them, and a hundred more to each for the delay
in fulfilling his engagement.  He likewise remitted a year's rent due to
the treasury, for such houses in Rome as did not pay above two thousand
sesterces a year; and through the rest of Italy, for all such as did not
exceed in yearly rent five hundred sesterces.  To all this he added a
public entertainment, and a distribution of meat, and, after his Spanish
victory [64], two public dinners.  For, considering the first he had
given as too sparing, and unsuited to his profuse liberality, he, five
days afterwards, added another, which was most plentiful.

XXXIX.  The spectacles he exhibited to the people were of various kinds;
namely, a combat of gladiators [65], and stage-plays in the several wards
of the city, and in different languages; likewise Circensian games [66],
wrestlers, and the representation of a sea-fight.  In the conflict of
gladiators presented in the Forum, Furius Leptinus, a man of praetorian
family, entered the lists as a combatant, as did also Quintus Calpenus,
formerly a senator, and a pleader of causes.  The Pyrrhic dance was
performed by some youths, who were sons to persons of the first
distinction in Asia and Bithynia.  In the plays, Decimus Laberius, who
had been a Roman knight, acted in his own piece; and being presented on
the spot with five hundred thousand sesterces, and a gold ring, he went
from the stage, through the orchestra, and resumed his place in the seats
(27) allotted for the equestrian order.  In the Circensisn games; the
circus being enlarged at each end, and a canal sunk round it, several of
the young nobility drove chariots, drawn, some by four, and others by two
horses, and likewise rode races on single horses.  The Trojan game was
acted by two distinct companies of boys, one differing from the other in
age and rank.  The hunting of wild beasts was presented for five days
successively; and on the last day a battle was fought by five hundred
foot, twenty elephants, and thirty horse on each side.  To afford room
for this engagement, the goals were removed, and in their space two camps
were pitched, directly opposite to each other.  Wrestlers likewise
performed for three days successively, in a stadium provided for the
purpose in the Campus Martius.  A lake having been dug in the little
Codeta [67], ships of the Tyrian and Egyptian fleets, containing two,
three, and four banks of oars, with a number of men on board, afforded an
animated representation of a sea-fight.  To these various diversions
there flocked such crowds of spectators from all parts, that most of the
strangers were obliged to lodge in tents erected in the streets, or along
the roads near the city.  Several in the throng were squeezed to death,
amongst whom were two senators.

XL.  Turning afterwards his attention to the regulation of the
commonwealth, he corrected the calendar [68], which had for (28) some
time become extremely confused, through the unwarrantable liberty which
the pontiffs had taken in the article of intercalation.  To such a height
had this abuse proceeded, that neither the festivals designed for the
harvest fell in summer, nor those for the vintage in autumn.  He
accommodated the year to the course of the sun, ordaining that in future
it should consist of three hundred and sixty-five days without any
intercalary month; and that every fourth year an intercalary day should
be inserted.  That the year might thenceforth commence regularly with the
calends, or first of January, he inserted two months between November and
December; so that the year in which this regulation was made consisted of
fifteen months, including the month of intercalation, which, according to
the division of time then in use, happened that year.

XLI.  He filled up the vacancies in the senate, by advancing several
plebeians to the rank of patricians, and also increased the number of
praetors, aediles, quaestors, and inferior magistrates; restoring, at the
same time, such as had been degraded by the censors, or convicted of
bribery at elections.  The choice of magistrates he so divided with the
people, that, excepting only the candidates for the consulship, they
nominated one half of them, and he the other.  The method which he
practised in those cases was, to recommend such persons as he had pitched
upon, by bills dispersed through the several tribes to this effect:
"Caesar the dictator to such a tribe (naming it).  I recommend to you
(naming likewise the persons), that by the favour of your votes they may
attain to the honours for which they sue."  He likewise admitted to
offices the sons of those who had been proscribed.  The trial of causes
he restricted to two orders of judges, the equestrian and senatorial;
excluding the tribunes of the treasury who had before made a third class.
The revised census of the people he ordered to be taken neither in the
usual manner or place, but street by street, by the principal inhabitants
of the several quarters of the city; and he reduced the number of those
who received corn at the public cost, from three hundred and twenty, to a
hundred and fifty, thousand.  To prevent any tumults on account of the
census, he ordered that the praetor should every year fill up by lot the
vacancies occasioned by death, from those who were not enrolled for the
receipt of corn.

(29) XLII.  Eighty thousand citizens having been distributed into foreign
colonies [69], he enacted, in order to stop the drain on the population,
that no freeman of the city above twenty, and under forty, years of age,
who was not in the military service, should absent himself from Italy for
more than three years at a time; that no senator's son should go abroad,
unless in the retinue of some high officer; and as to those whose pursuit
was tending flocks and herds, that no less than a third of the number of
their shepherds free-born should be youths.  He likewise made all those
who practised physic in Rome, and all teachers of the liberal arts, free
of the city, in order to fix them in it, and induce others to settle
there.  With respect to debts, he disappointed the expectation which was
generally entertained, that they would be totally cancelled; and ordered
that the debtors should satisfy their creditors, according to the
valuation of their estates, at the rate at which they were purchased
before the commencement of the civil war; deducting from the debt what
had been paid for interest either in money or by bonds; by virtue of
which provision about a fourth part of the debt was lost.  He dissolved
all the guilds, except such as were of ancient foundation.  Crimes were
punished with greater severity; and the rich being more easily induced to
commit them because they were only liable to banishment, without the
forfeiture of their property, he stripped murderers, as Cicero observes,
of their whole estates, and other offenders of one half.

XLIII.  He was extremely assiduous and strict in the administration of
justice.  He expelled from the senate such members as were convicted of
bribery; and he dissolved the marriage of a man of pretorian rank, who
had married a lady two days after her divorce from a former husband,
although there was no suspicion that they had been guilty of any illicit
connection.  He imposed duties on the importation of foreign goods.  The
use of litters for travelling, purple robes, and jewels, he permitted
only to persons of a certain age and station, and on particular days.  He
enforced a rigid execution of the sumptuary laws; placing officers about
the markets, to seize upon all meats exposed to sale contrary to the
rules, and bring them to him; sometimes sending his lictors and soldiers
to (30) carry away such victuals as had escaped the notice of the
officers, even when they were upon the table.

XLIV.  His thoughts were now fully employed from day to day on a variety
of great projects for the embellishment and improvement of the city, as
well as for guarding and extending the bounds of the empire.  In the
first place, he meditated the construction of a temple to Mars, which
should exceed in grandeur every thing of that kind in the world.  For
this purpose, he intended to fill up the lake on which he had entertained
the people with the spectacle of a sea-fight.  He also projected a most
spacious theatre adjacent to the Tarpeian mount; and also proposed to
reduce the civil law to a reasonable compass, and out of that immense and
undigested mass of statutes to extract the best and most necessary parts
into a few books; to make as large a collection as possible of works in
the Greek and Latin languages, for the public use; the province of
providing and putting them in proper order being assigned to Marcus
Varro.  He intended likewise to drain the Pomptine marshes, to cut a
channel for the discharge of the waters of the lake Fucinus, to form a
road from the Upper Sea through the ridge of the Appenine to the Tiber;
to make a cut through the isthmus of Corinth, to reduce the Dacians, who
had over-run Pontus and Thrace, within their proper limits, and then to
make war upon the Parthians, through the Lesser Armenia, but not to risk
a general engagement with them, until he had made some trial of their
prowess in war.  But in the midst of all his undertakings and projects,
he was carried off by death; before I speak of which, it may not be
improper to give an account of his person, dress, and manners; together
with what relates to his pursuits, both civil and military.

XLV.  It is said that he was tall, of a fair complexion, round limbed,
rather full faced, with eyes black and piercing; and that he enjoyed
excellent health, except towards the close of his life, when he was
subject to sudden fainting-fits, and disturbance in his sleep.  He was
likewise twice seized with the falling sickness while engaged in active
service.  He was so nice in the care of his person, that he not only kept
the hair of his head closely cut and had his face smoothly shaved, but
(31) even caused the hair on other parts of the body to be plucked out by
the roots, a practice for which some persons rallied him.  His baldness
gave him much uneasiness, having often found himself upon that account
exposed to the jibes of his enemies.  He therefore used to bring forward
the hair from the crown of his head; and of all the honours conferred
upon him by the senate and people, there was none which he either
accepted or used with greater pleasure, than the right of wearing
constantly a laurel crown.  It is said that he was particular in his
dress.  For he used the Latus Clavus [70] with fringes about the wrists,
and always had it girded about him, but rather loosely.  This
circumstance gave origin to the expression of Sylla, who often advised
the nobles to beware of "the ill-girt boy."

XLVI.  He first inhabited a small house in the Suburra [71], but after
his advancement to the pontificate, he occupied a palace belonging to the
state in the Via Sacra.  Many writers say that he liked his residence to
be elegant, and his entertainments sumptuous; and that he entirely took
down a villa near the grove of Aricia, which he had built from the
foundation and finished at a vast expense, because it did not exactly
suit his taste, although he had at that time but slender means, and was
in debt; and that he carried about in his expeditions tesselated and
marble slabs for the floor of his tent.

XLVII.  They likewise report that he invaded Britain in hopes of finding
pearls [72], the size of which he would compare together, and ascertain
the weight by poising them in his hand; that he would purchase, at any
cost, gems, carved works, statues, and pictures, executed by the eminent
masters of antiquity; and that he would give for young and handy slaves a
price so extravagant, that he forbad its being entered in the diary of
his expenses.

XLVIII.  We are also told, that in the provinces he constantly maintained
two tables, one for the officers of the army, and the gentry of the
country, and the other for Romans of the highest rank, and provincials of
the first distinction.  He was so very exact in the management of his
domestic affairs, both little and great, that he once threw a baker into
prison, for serving him with a finer sort of bread than his guests; and
put to death a freed-man, who was a particular favourite, for debauching
the lady of a Roman knight, although no complaint had been made to him of
the affair.

XLIX.  The only stain upon his chastity was his having cohabited with
Nicomedes; and that indeed stuck to him all the days of his life, and
exposed him to much bitter raillery.  I will not dwell upon those
well-known verses of Calvus Licinius:

    Whate'er Bithynia and her lord possess'd,
    Her lord who Caesar in his lust caress'd. [73]

I pass over the speeches of Dolabella, and Curio, the father, in which
the former calls him "the queen's rival, and the inner-side of the royal
couch," and the latter, "the brothel of Nicomedes, and the Bithynian
stew."  I would likewise say nothing of the edicts of Bibulus, in which
he proclaimed his colleague under the name of "the queen of Bithynia;"
adding, that "he had formerly been in love with a king, but now coveted a
kingdom."  At which time, as Marcus Brutus relates, one Octavius, a man
of a crazy brain, and therefore the more free in his raillery, after he
had in a crowded assembly saluted Pompey by the title of king, addressed
Caesar by that of queen.  Caius Memmius likewise upbraided him with
serving the king at table, among the rest of his catamites, in the
presence of a large company, in which were some merchants from Rome, the
names of whom he mentions.  But Cicero was not content with writing in
some of his letters, that he was conducted by the royal attendants into
the king's bed-chamber, lay upon a bed of gold with a covering of purple,
and that the youthful bloom of this scion of Venus had been tainted in
Bithynia--but upon Caesar's pleading the cause of Nysa, the daughter of
(32) Nicomedes before the senate, and recounting the king's kindnesses to
him, replied, "Pray tell us no more of that; for it is well known what he
gave you, and you gave him."  To conclude, his soldiers in the Gallic
triumph, amongst other verses, such as they jocularly sung on those
occasions, following the general's chariot, recited these, which since
that time have become extremely common:

    The Gauls to Caesar yield, Caesar to Nicomede,
    Lo!  Caesar triumphs for his glorious deed,
    But Caesar's conqueror gains no victor's meed. [74]

L.  It is admitted by all that he was much addicted to women, as well as
very expensive in his intrigues with them, and that he debauched many
ladies of the highest quality; among whom were Posthumia, the wife of
Servius Sulpicius; Lollia, the wife of Aulus Gabinius; Tertulla, the wife
of Marcus Crassus; and Mucia, the wife of Cneius Pompey.  For it is
certain that the Curios, both father and son, and many others, made it a
reproach to Pompey, "That to gratify his ambition, he married the
daughter of a man, upon whose account he had divorced his wife, after
having had three children by her; and whom he used, with a deep sigh, to
call Aegisthus." [75]  But the mistress he most loved, was Servilia, the
mother of Marcus Brutus, for whom he purchased, in his first consulship
after the commencement of their intrigue, a pearl which cost him six
millions of sesterces; and in the civil war, besides other presents,
assigned to her, for a trifling consideration, some valuable farms when
they were exposed to public auction.  Many persons expressing their
surprise at the lowness of the price, Cicero wittily remarked, "To let
you know the real value of the purchase, between ourselves, Tertia was
deducted:" for Servilia was supposed to have prostituted her daughter
Tertia to Caesar. [76]

(34) LI.  That he had intrigues likewise with married women in the
provinces, appears from this distich, which was as much repeated in the
Gallic Triumph as the former:--

    Watch well your wives, ye cits, we bring a blade,
    A bald-pate master of the wenching trade.
    Thy gold was spent on many a Gallic w---e;
    Exhausted now, thou com'st to borrow more. [77]

LII.  In the number of his mistresses were also some queens; such as
Eunoe, a Moor, the wife of Bogudes, to whom and her husband he made, as
Naso reports, many large presents.  But his greatest favourite was
Cleopatra, with whom he often revelled all night until the dawn of day,
and would have gone with her through Egypt in dalliance, as far as
Aethiopia, in her luxurious yacht, had not the army refused to follow
him.  He afterwards invited her to Rome, whence he sent her back loaded
with honours and presents, and gave her permission to call by his name a
son, who, according to the testimony of some Greek historians, resembled
Caesar both in person and gait.  Mark Antony declared in the senate, that
Caesar had acknowledged the child as his own; and that Caius Matias,
Caius Oppius, and the rest of Caesar's friends knew it to be true.  On
which occasion, Oppius, as if it had been an imputation which he was
called upon to refute, published a book to shew, "that the child which
Cleopatra fathered upon Caesar, was not his."  Helvius Cinna, tribune of
the people, admitted to several persons the fact, that he had a bill
ready drawn, which Caesar had ordered him to get enacted in his absence,
allowing him, with the hope of leaving issue, to take any wife he chose,
and as many of them as he pleased; and to leave no room for doubt of his
infamous character for unnatural lewdness and adultery, Curio, the
father, says, in one of his speeches, "He was every woman's man, and
every man's woman."

LIII.  It is acknowledged even by his enemies, that in regard to wine, he
was abstemious.  A remark is ascribed to Marcus Cato, "that Caesar was
the only sober man amongst all those who were engaged in the design to
subvert (35) the government."  In the matter of diet, Caius Oppius
informs us, "that he was so indifferent, that when a person in whose
house he was entertained, had served him with stale, instead of fresh,
oil [78], and the rest of the company would not touch it, he alone ate
very heartily of it, that he might not seem to tax the master of the
house with rusticity or want of attention."

LIV.  But his abstinence did not extend to pecuniary advantages, either
in his military commands, or civil offices; for we have the testimony of
some writers, that he took money from the proconsul, who was his
predecessor in Spain, and from the Roman allies in that quarter, for the
discharge of his debts; and plundered at the point of the sword some
towns of the Lusitanians, notwithstanding they attempted no resistance,
and opened their gates to him upon his arrival before them.  In Gaul, he
rifled the chapels and temples of the gods, which were filled with rich
offerings, and demolished cities oftener for the sake of their spoil,
than for any ill they had done.  By this means gold became so plentiful
with him, that he exchanged it through Italy and the provinces of the
empire for three thousand sesterces the pound.  In his first consulship
he purloined from the Capitol three thousand pounds' weight of gold, and
substituted for it the same quantity of gilt brass.  He bartered likewise
to foreign nations and princes, for gold, the titles of allies and kings;
and squeezed out of Ptolemy alone near six thousand talents, in the name
of himself and Pompey.  He afterwards supported the expense of the civil
wars, and of his triumphs and public spectacles, by the most flagrant
rapine and sacrilege.

LV.  In eloquence and warlike achievements, he equalled at least, if he
did not surpass, the greatest of men.  After his prosecution of
Dolabella, he was indisputably reckoned one of the most distinguished
advocates.  Cicero, in recounting to Brutus the famous orators, declares,
"that he does not see that Caesar was inferior to any one of them;" and
says, "that he (36) had an elegant, splendid, noble, and magnificent vein
of eloquence."  And in a letter to Cornelius Nepos, he writes of him in
the following terms: "What!  Of all the orators, who, during the whole
course of their lives, have done nothing else, which can you prefer to
him?  Which of them is more pointed or terse in his periods, or employs
more polished and elegant language?"  In his youth, he seems to have
chosen Strabo Caesar for his model; from whose oration in behalf of the
Sardinians he has transcribed some passages literally into his
Divination.  In his delivery he is said to have had a shrill voice, and
his action was animated, but not ungraceful.  He has left behind him some
speeches, among which are ranked a few that are not genuine, such as that
on behalf of Quintus Metellus.  These Augustus supposes, with reason, to
be rather the production of blundering short-hand writers, who were not
able to keep pace with him in the delivery, than publications of his own.
For I find in some copies that the title is not "For Metellus," but "What
he wrote to Metellus;" whereas the speech is delivered in the name of
Caesar, vindicating Metellus and himself from the aspersions cast upon
them by their common defamers.  The speech addressed "To his soldiers in
Spain," Augustus considers likewise as spurious.  We meet with two under
this title; one made, as is pretended, in the first battle, and the other
in the last; at which time, Asinius Pollio says, he had not leisure to
address the soldiers, on account of the suddenness of the enemy's attack.

LVI.  He has likewise left Commentaries of his own actions both in the
war in Gaul, and in the civil war with Pompey; for the author of the
Alexandrian, African, and Spanish wars is not known with any certainty.
Some think they are the production of Oppius, and some of Hirtius; the
latter of whom composed the last book, which is imperfect, of the Gallic
war.  Of Caesar's Commentaries, Cicero, in his Brutus, speaks thus: "He
wrote his Commentaries in a manner deserving of great approbation: they
are plain, precise, and elegant, without any affectation of rhetorical
ornament.  In having thus prepared materials for others who might be
inclined to write his history, he may perhaps have encouraged some silly
creatures to enter upon such a work, who will needs be dressing up his
actions in all the extravagance a (37) bombast; but he has discouraged
wise men from ever attempting the subject."  Hirtius delivers his opinion
of these Commentaries in the following terms: "So great is the
approbation with which they are universally perused, that, instead of
rousing, he seems to have precluded, the efforts of any future historian.
Yet, with respect to this work, we have more reason to admire him than
others; for they only know how well and correctly he has written, but we
know, likewise, how easily and quickly he did it."  Pollio Asinius thinks
that they were not drawn up with much care, or with a due regard to
truth; for he insinuates that Caesar was too hasty of belief in regard to
what was performed by others under his orders; and that, he has not given
a very faithful account of his own acts, either by design, or through
defect of memory; expressing at the same time an opinion that Caesar
intended a new and more correct edition.  He has left behind him likewise
two books on Analogy, with the same number under the title of Anti-Cato,
and a poem entitled The Itinerary.  Of these books, he composed the first
two in his passage over the Alps, as he was returning to the army after
making his circuit in Hither-Gaul; the second work about the time of the
battle of Munda; and the last during the four-and-twenty days he employed
in his journey from Rome to Farther-Spain.  There are extant some letters
of his to the senate, written in a manner never practised by any before
him; for they are distinguished into pages in the form of a memorandum
book whereas the consuls and commanders till then, used constantly in
their letters to continue the line quite across the sheet, without any
folding or distinction of pages.  There are extant likewise some letters
from him to Cicero, and others to his friends, concerning his domestic
affairs; in which, if there was occasion for secrecy, he wrote in
cyphers; that is, he used the alphabet in such a manner, that not a
single word could be made out.  The way to decipher those epistles was to
substitute the fourth for the first letter, as d for a, and so for the
other letters respectively.  Some things likewise pass under his name,
said to have been written by him when a boy, or a very young man; as the
Encomium of Hercules, a tragedy entitled Oedipus, and a collection of
Apophthegms; all which Augustus forbad to be published, in a short and
plain letter to Pompeius Macer, who was employed by him in the
arrangement of his libraries.

(38) LVII.  He was perfect in the use of arms, an accomplished rider, and
able to endure fatigue beyond all belief.  On a march, he used to go at
the head of his troops, sometimes on horseback, but oftener on foot, with
his head bare in all kinds of weather.  He would travel post in a light
carriage [79] without baggage, at the rate of a hundred miles a day; and
if he was stopped by floods in the rivers, he swam across, or floated on
skins inflated with wind, so that he often anticipated intelligence of
his movements. [80]

LVIII.  In his expeditions, it is difficult to say whether his caution or
his daring was most conspicuous.  He never marched his army by roads
which were exposed to ambuscades, without having previously examined the
nature of the ground by his scouts.  Nor did he cross over to Britain,
before he had carefully examined, in person [81], the navigation, the
harbours, and the most convenient point of landing in the island.  When
intelligence was brought to him of the siege of his camp in Germany, he
made his way to his troops, through the enemy's stations, in a Gaulish
dress.  He crossed the sea from Brundisium and Dyrrachium, in the winter,
through the midst of the enemy's fleets; and the troops, under orders to
join him, being slow in their movements, notwithstanding repeated
messages to hurry them, but to no purpose, he at last went privately, and
alone, aboard a small vessel in the night time, with his head muffled up;
nor did he make himself known, or suffer the master to put about,
although the wind blew strong against them, until they were ready to
sink.

LIX.  He was never deterred from any enterprise, nor retarded in the
prosecution of it, by superstition [82].  When a victim, which he was
about to offer in sacrifice, made its (39) escape, he did not therefore
defer his expedition against Scipio and Juba.  And happening to fall,
upon stepping out of the ship, he gave a lucky turn to the omen, by
exclaiming, "I hold thee fast, Africa."  To chide the prophecies which
were spread abroad, that the name of the Scipios was, by the decrees of
fate, fortunate and invincible in that province, he retained in the camp
a profligate wretch, of the family of the Cornelii, who, on account of
his scandalous life, was surnamed Salutio.

LX.  He not only fought pitched battles, but made sudden attacks when an
opportunity offered; often at the end of a march, and sometimes during
the most violent storms, when nobody could imagine he would stir.  Nor
was he ever backward in fighting, until towards the end of his life.  He
then was of opinion, that the oftener he had been crowned with success,
the less he ought to expose himself to new hazards; and that nothing he
could gain by a victory would compensate for what he might lose by a
miscarriage.  He never defeated the enemy without driving them from their
camp; and giving them no time to rally their forces.  When the issue of a
battle was doubtful, he sent away all the horses, and his own first, that
having no means of flight, they might be under the greater necessity of
standing their ground.

LXI.  He rode a very remarkable horse, with feet almost like those of a
man, the hoofs being divided in such a manner as to have some resemblance
to toes.  This horse he had bred himself, and the soothsayers having
interpreted these circumstances into an omen that its owner would be
master of the world, he brought him up with particular care, and broke
him in himself, as the horse would suffer no one else to mount him.  A
statue of this horse was afterwards erected by Caesar's order before the
temple of Venus Genitrix.

LXII.  He often rallied his troops, when they were giving way, by his
personal efforts; stopping those who fled, keeping others in their ranks,
and seizing them by their throat turned them towards the enemy; although
numbers were so terrified, that an eagle-bearer [83], thus stopped, made
a thrust at him with (40) the spear-head; and another, upon a similar
occasion, left the standard in his hand.

LXIII.  The following instances of his resolution are equally, and even
more remarkable.  After the battle of Pharsalia, having sent his troops
before him into Asia, as he was passing the straits of the Hellespont in
a ferry-boat, he met with Lucius Cassius, one of the opposite party, with
ten ships of war; and so far from endeavouring to escape, he went
alongside his ship, and calling upon him to surrender, Cassius humbly
gave him his submission.

LXIV.  At Alexandria, in the attack of a bridge, being forced by a sudden
sally of the enemy into a boat, and several others hurrying in with him,
he leaped into the sea, and saved himself by swimming to the next ship,
which lay at the distance of two hundred paces; holding up his left hand
out of the water, for fear of wetting some papers which he held in it;
and pulling his general's cloak after him with his teeth, lest it should
fall into the hands of the enemy.

LXV.  He never valued a soldier for his moral conduct or his means, but
for his courage only; and treated his troops with a mixture of severity
and indulgence; for he did not always keep a strict hand over them, but
only when the enemy was near.  Then indeed he was so strict a
disciplinarian, that he would give no notice of a march or a battle until
the moment of action, in order that the troops might hold themselves in
readiness for any sudden movement; and he would frequently draw them out
of the camp without any necessity for it, especially in rainy weather,
and upon holy-days.  Sometimes, giving them orders not to lose sight of
him, he would suddenly depart by day or by night, and lengthen the
marches in order to tire them out, as they followed him at a distance.

LXVI.  When at any time his troops were dispirited by reports of the
great force of the enemy, he rallied their courage; not by denying the
truth of what was said, or by diminishing the facts, but, on the
contrary, by exaggerating every particular.  (41) Accordingly, when his
troops were in great alarm at the expected arrival of king Juba, he
called them together, and said, "I have to inform you that in a very few
days the king will be here, with ten legions, thirty thousand horse, a
hundred thousand light-armed foot, and three hundred elephants.  Let none
of you, therefore, presume to make further enquiry, or indulge in
conjectures, but take my word for what I tell you, which I have from
undoubted intelligence; otherwise I shall put them aboard an old crazy
vessel, and leave them exposed to the mercy of the winds, to be
transported to some other country."

LXVII.  He neither noticed all their transgressions, nor punished them
according to strict rule.  But for deserters and mutineers he made the
most diligent enquiry, and their punishment was most severe: other
delinquencies he would connive at.  Sometimes, after a great battle
ending in victory, he would grant them a relaxation from all kinds of
duty, and leave them to revel at pleasure; being used to boast, "that his
soldiers fought nothing the worse for being well oiled."  In his
speeches, he never addressed them by the title of "Soldiers," but by the
kinder phrase of "Fellow-soldiers;" and kept them in such splendid order,
that their arms were ornamented with silver and gold, not merely for
parade, but to render the soldiers more resolute to save them in battle,
and fearful of losing them.  He loved his troops to such a degree, that
when he heard of the defeat of those under Titurius, he neither cut his
hair nor shaved his beard, until he had revenged it upon the enemy; by
which means he engaged their devoted affection, and raised their valour
to the highest pitch.

LXVIII.  Upon his entering on the civil war, the centurions of every
legion offered, each of them, to maintain a horseman at his own expense,
and the whole army agreed to serve gratis, without either corn or pay;
those amongst them who were rich, charging themselves with the
maintenance of the poor.  No one of them, during the whole course of the
war, deserted to the enemy; and many of those who were made prisoners,
though they were offered their lives, upon condition of bearing arms
against him, refused to accept the terms.  They endured want, and other
hardships, not only (42) when they were besieged themselves, but when
they besieged others, to such a degree, that Pompey, when blocked up in
the neighbourhood of Dyrrachium, upon seeing a sort of bread made of an
herb, which they lived upon, said, "I have to do with wild beasts," and
ordered it immediately to be taken away; because, if his troops should
see it, their spirit might be broken by perceiving the endurance and
determined resolution of the enemy.  With what bravery they fought, one
instance affords sufficient proof; which is, that after an unsuccessful
engagement at Dyrrachium, they called for punishment; insomuch that their
general found it more necessary to comfort than to punish them.  In other
battles, in different quarters, they defeated with ease immense armies of
the enemy, although they were much inferior to them in number.  In short,
one cohort of the sixth legion held out a fort against four legions
belonging to Pompey, during several hours; being almost every one of them
wounded by the vast number of arrows discharged against them, and of
which there were found within the ramparts a hundred and thirty thousand.
This is no way surprising, when we consider the conduct of some
individuals amongst them; such as that of Cassius Scaeva, a centurion, or
Caius Acilius, a common soldier, not to speak of others.  Scaeva, after
having an eye struck out, being run through the thigh and the shoulder,
and having his shield pierced in an hundred and twenty places, maintained
obstinately the guard of the gate of a fort, with the command of which he
was intrusted.  Acilius, in the sea-fight at Marseilles, having seized a
ship of the enemy's with his right hand, and that being cut off, in
imitation of that memorable instance of resolution in Cynaegirus amongst
the Greeks, boarded the enemy's ship, bearing down all before him with
the boss of his shield.

LXIX.  They never once mutinied during all the ten years of the Gallic
war, but were sometimes refractory in the course of the civil war.
However, they always returned quickly to their duty, and that not through
the indulgence, but in submission to the authority, of their general; for
he never yielded to them when they were insubordinate, but constantly
resisted their demands.  He disbanded the whole ninth legion with
ignominy at Placentia, although Pompey was still in arms, and would (43)
not receive them again into his service, until they had not only made
repeated and humble entreaties, but until the ringleaders in the mutiny
were punished.

LXX.  When the soldiers of the tenth legion at Rome demanded their
discharge and rewards for their service, with violent threats and no
small danger to the city, although the war was then raging in Africa, he
did not hesitate, contrary to the advice of his friends, to meet the
legion, and disband it.  But addressing them by the title of "Quirites,"
instead of "Soldiers," he by this single word so thoroughly brought them
round and changed their determination, that they immediately cried out,
they were his "soldiers," and followed him to Africa, although he had
refused their service.  He nevertheless punished the most mutinous among
them, with the loss of a third of their share in the plunder, and the
land destined for them.

LXXI.  In the service of his clients, while yet a young man, he evinced
great zeal and fidelity.  He defended the cause of a noble youth,
Masintha, against king Hiempsal, so strenuously, that in a scuffle which
took place upon the occasion, he seized by the beard the son of king
Juba; and upon Masintha's being declared tributary to Hiempsal, while the
friends of the adverse party were violently carrying him off, he
immediately rescued him by force, kept him concealed in his house a long
time, and when, at the expiration of his praetorship, he went to Spain,
he took him away in his litter, in the midst of his lictors bearing the
fasces, and others who had come to attend and take leave of him.

LXXII.  He always treated his friends with such kindness and good-nature,
that when Caius Oppius, in travelling with him through a forest, was
suddenly taken ill, he resigned to him the only place there was to
shelter them at night, and lay upon the ground in the open air.  When he
had placed himself at the head of affairs, he advanced some of his
faithful adherents, though of mean extraction, to the highest offices;
and when he was censured for this partiality, he openly said, "Had I been
assisted by robbers and cut-throats in the defence of my honour, I should
have made them the same recompense."

(44) LXXIII.  The resentment he entertained against any one was never so
implacable that he did not very willingly renounce it when opportunity
offered.  Although Caius Memmius had published some extremely virulent
speeches against him, and he had answered him with equal acrimony, yet he
afterwards assisted him with his vote and interest, when he stood
candidate for the consulship.  When C. Calvus, after publishing some
scandalous epigrams upon him, endeavoured to effect a reconciliation by
the intercession of friends, he wrote to him, of his own accord, the
first letter.  And when Valerius Catullus, who had, as he himself
observed, fixed such a stain upon his character in his verses upon
Mamurra as never could be obliterated, he begged his pardon, invited him
to supper the same day; and continued to take up his lodging with his
father occasionally, as he had been accustomed to do.

LXXIV.  His temper was also naturally averse to severity in retaliation.
After he had captured the pirates, by whom he had been taken, having
sworn that he would crucify them, he did so indeed; but he first ordered
their throats to be cut [84].  He could never bear the thought of doing
any harm to Cornelius Phagitas, who had dogged him in the night when he
was sick and a fugitive, with the design of carrying him to Sylla, and
from whose hands he had escaped with some difficulty by giving him a
bribe.  Philemon, his amanuensis, who had promised his enemies to poison
him, he put to death without torture.  When he was summoned as a witness
against Publicus Clodius, his wife Pompeia's gallant, who was prosecuted
for the profanation of religious ceremonies, he declared he knew nothing
of the affair, although his mother Aurelia, and his sister Julia, gave
the court an exact and full account of the circumstances.  And being
asked why then he had divorced his wife?  "Because," he said, "my family
should not only be free from guilt, but even from the suspicion of it."

LXXV.  Both in his administration and his conduct towards the vanquished
party in the civil war, he showed a wonderful moderation and clemency.
For while Pompey declared that he would consider those as enemies who did
not take arms in defence of the republic, he desired it to be understood,
that he (45) should regard those who remained neuter as his friends.
With regard to all those to whom he had, on Pompey's recommendation,
given any command in the army, he left them at perfect liberty to go over
to him, if they pleased.  When some proposals were made at Ileria [85]
for a surrender, which gave rise to a free communication between the two
camps, and Afranius and Petreius, upon a sudden change of resolution, had
put to the sword all Caesar's men who were found in the camp, he scorned
to imitate the base treachery which they had practised against himself.
On the field of Pharsalia, he called out to the soldiers "to spare their
fellow-citizens," and afterwards gave permission to every man in his army
to save an enemy.  None of them, so far as appears, lost their lives but
in battle, excepting only Afranius, Faustus, and young Lucius Caesar; and
it is thought that even they were put to death without his consent.
Afranius and Faustus had borne arms against him, after obtaining their
pardon; and Lucius Caesar had not only in the most cruel manner destroyed
with fire and sword his freed-men and slaves, but cut to pieces the wild
beasts which he had prepared for the entertainment of the people.  And
finally, a little before his death, he permitted all whom he had not
before pardoned, to return into Italy, and to bear offices both civil and
military.  He even replaced the statues of Sylla and Pompey, which had
been thrown down by the populace.  And after this, whatever was devised
or uttered, he chose rather to check than to punish it.  Accordingly,
having detected certain conspiracies and nocturnal assemblies, he went no
farther than to intimate by a proclamation that he knew of them; and as
to those who indulged themselves in the liberty of reflecting severely
upon him, he only warned them in a public speech not to persist in their
offence.  He bore with great moderation a virulent libel written against
him by Aulus Caecinna, and the abusive lampoons of Pitholaus, most highly
reflecting on his reputation.

LXXVI.  His other words and actions, however, so far outweigh all his
good qualities, that it is thought he abused his power, and was justly
cut off.  For he not only obtained excessive honours, such as the
consulship every year, the dictatorship for life, and the censorship, but
also the title of emperor [86], (46) and the surname of FATHER OF HIS
COUNTRY [87], besides having his statue amongst the kings [88], and a
lofty couch in the theatre.  He even suffered some honours to be decreed
to him, which were unbefitting the most exalted of mankind; such as a
gilded chair of state in the senate-house and on his tribunal, a
consecrated chariot, and banners in the Circensian procession, temples,
altars, statues among the gods, a bed of state in the temples, a priest,
and a college of priests dedicated to himself, like those of Pan; and
that one of the months should be called by his name.  There were, indeed,
no honours which he did not either assume himself, or grant to others, at
his will and pleasure.  In his third and fourth consulship, he used only
the title of the office, being content with the power of dictator, which
was conferred upon him with the consulship; and in both years he
substituted other consuls in his room, during the three last months; so
that in the intervals he held no assemblies of the people, for the
election of magistrates, excepting only tribunes and ediles of the
people; and appointed officers, under the name of praefects, instead of
the praetors, to administer the affairs of the city during his absence.
The office of consul having become vacant, by the sudden death of one of
the consuls the day before the calends of January [the 1st Jan.], he
conferred it on a person who requested it of him, for a few hours.
Assuming the same licence, and regardless of the customs of his country,
he appointed magistrates to hold their offices for terms of years.  He
granted the insignia of the consular dignity to ten persons of pretorian
rank.  He admitted into the senate some men who had been made free of the
city, and even natives of Gaul, who were semi-barbarians.  (47) He
likewise appointed to the management of the mint, and the public revenue
of the state, some servants of his own household; and entrusted the
command of three legions, which he left at Alexandria, to an old catamite
of his, the son of his freed-man Rufinus.

LXXVII.  He was guilty of the same extravagance in the language he
publicly used, as Titus Ampius informs us; according to whom he said,
"The republic is nothing but a name, without substance or reality.  Sylla
was an ignorant fellow to abdicate the dictatorship.  Men ought to
consider what is becoming when they talk with me, and look upon what I
say as a law."  To such a pitch of arrogance did he proceed, that when a
soothsayer announced to him the unfavourable omen, that the entrails of a
victim offered for sacrifice were without a heart, he said, "The entrails
will be more favourable when I please; and it ought not to be regarded as
a prodigy that a beast should be found wanting a heart."

LXXVIII.  But what brought upon him the greatest odium, and was thought
an unpardonable insult, was his receiving the whole body of the conscript
fathers sitting, before the temple of Venus Genitrix, when they waited
upon him with a number of decrees, conferring on him the highest
dignities.  Some say that, on his attempting to rise, he was held down by
Cornelius Balbus; others, that he did not attempt to rise at all, but
frowned on Caius Trebatius, who suggested to him that he should stand up
to receive the senate.  This behaviour appeared the more intolerable in
him, because, when one of the tribunes of the people, Pontius Aquila,
would not rise up to him, as he passed by the tribunes' seat during his
triumph, he was so much offended, that he cried out, "Well then, you
tribune, Aquila, oust me from the government."  And for some days
afterwards, he never promised a favour to any person, without this
proviso, "if Pontus Aquila will give me leave."

LXXIX.  To this extraordinary mark of contempt for the senate, he added
another affront still more outrageous.  For when, after the sacred rites
of the Latin festival, he was returning home, amidst the immoderate and
unusual acclamations (48) of the people, a man in the crowd put a laurel
crown, encircled with a white fillet [89], on one of his statues; upon
which, the tribunes of the people, Epidius Marullus, and Caesetius
Flavus, ordered the fillet to be removed from the crown, and the man to
be taken to prison.  Caesar, being much concerned either that the idea of
royalty had been suggested to so little purpose, or, as was said, that he
was thus deprived of the merit of refusing it, reprimanded the tribunes
very severely, and dismissed them from their office.  From that day
forward, he was never able to wipe off the scandal of affecting the name
of king, although he replied to the populace, when they saluted him by
that title, "I am Caesar, and no king."  And at the feast of the
Lupercalia [90], when the consul Antony placed a crown upon his head in
the rostra several times, he as often put it away, and sent it to the
Capitol for Jupiter, the Best and the Greatest.  A report was very
current, that he had a design of withdrawing to Alexandria or Ilium,
whither he proposed to transfer the imperial power, to drain Italy by new
levies, and to leave the government of the city to be administered by his
friends.  To this report it was added, that in the next meeting of the
senate, Lucius Cotta, one of the fifteen [91], would make a motion, that
as there was in the Sibylline books a prophecy, that the Parthians would
never be subdued but by a king, Caesar should have that title conferred
upon him.

LXXX.  For this reason the conspirators precipitated the execution of
their design [92], that they might not be obliged to give their assent to
the proposal.  Instead, therefore, of caballing any longer separately, in
small parties, they now united their counsels; the people themselves
being dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, both privately and
publicly (49) condemning the tyranny under which they lived, and calling
on patriots to assert their cause against the usurper.  Upon the
admission of foreigners into the senate, a hand-bill was posted up in
these words: "A good deed! let no one shew a new senator the way to the
house."  These verses were likewise currently repeated:

    The Gauls he dragged in triumph through the town,
    Caesar has brought into the senate-house,
    And changed their plaids [93] for the patrician gown.

    Gallos Caesar in triumphum ducit: iidem in curiam
    Galli braccas deposuerunt, latum clavum sumpserunt.

When Quintus Maximus, who had been his deputy in the consulship for the
last three months, entered the theatre, and the lictor, according to
custom, bid the people take notice who was coming, they all cried out,
"He is no consul."  After the removal of Caesetius and Marullus from
their office, they were found to have a great many votes at the next
election of consuls.  Some one wrote under the statue of Lucius Brutus,
"Would you were now alive!" and under the statue of Caesar himself these
lines:

    Because he drove from Rome the royal race,
    Brutus was first made consul in their place.
    This man, because he put the consuls down,
    Has been rewarded with a royal crown.

    Brutus, quia reges ejecit, consul primus factus est:
    Hic, quia consules ejecit, rex postremo factus est.

About sixty persons were engaged in the conspiracy against him, of whom
Caius Cassius, and Marcus and Decimus Brutus were the chief.  It was at
first debated amongst them, whether they should attack him in the Campus
Martius when he was taking the votes of the tribes, and some of them
should throw him off the bridge, whilst others should be ready to stab
him upon his fall; or else in the Via Sacra, or at the entrance of the
theatre.  But after public notice had been given by proclamation for the
senate to assemble upon the ides of March [15th March], in the
senate-house built by Pompey, they approved both of the time and place,
as most fitting for their purpose.

LXXXI.  Caesar had warning given him of his fate by indubitable (50)
omens.  A few months before, when the colonists settled at Capua, by
virtue of the Julian law, were demolishing some old sepulchres, in
building country-houses, and were the more eager at the work, because
they discovered certain vessels of antique workmanship, a tablet of brass
was found in a tomb, in which Capys, the founder of Capua, was said to
have been buried, with an inscription in the Greek language to this
effect "Whenever the bones of Capys come to be discovered, a descendant
of Iulus will be slain by the hands of his kinsmen, and his death
revenged by fearful disasters throughout Italy."  Lest any person should
regard this anecdote as a fabulous or silly invention, it was circulated
upon the authority of Caius Balbus, an intimate friend of Caesar's.  A
few days likewise before his death, he was informed that the horses,
which, upon his crossing the Rubicon, he had consecrated, and turned
loose to graze without a keeper, abstained entirely from eating, and shed
floods of tears.  The soothsayer Spurinna, observing certain ominous
appearances in a sacrifice which he was offering, advised him to beware
of some danger, which threatened to befall him before the ides of March
were past.  The day before the ides, birds of various kinds from a
neighbouring grove, pursuing a wren which flew into Pompey's senate-house
[94], with a sprig of laurel in its beak, tore it in pieces.  Also, in
the night on which the day of his murder dawned, he dreamt at one time
that he was soaring above the clouds, and, at another, that he had joined
hands with Jupiter.  His wife Calpurnia fancied in her sleep that the
pediment of the house was falling down, and her husband stabbed on her
bosom; immediately upon which the chamber doors flew open.  On account of
these omens, as well as his infirm health, he was in some doubt whether
he should not remain at home, and defer to some other opportunity the
business which he intended to propose to the senate; but Decimus Brutus
advising him not to disappoint the senators, who were numerously
assembled, and waited his coming, he was prevailed upon to go, and
accordingly (51) set forward about the fifth hour.  In his way, some
person having thrust into his hand a paper, warning him against the plot,
he mixed it with some other documents which he held in his left hand,
intending to read it at leisure.  Victim after victim was slain, without
any favourable appearances in the entrails; but still, disregarding all
omens, he entered the senate-house, laughing at Spurinna as a false
prophet, because the ides of March were come, without any mischief having
befallen him.  To which the soothsayer replied, "They are come, indeed,
but not past."

LXXXII.  When he had taken his seat, the conspirators stood round him,
under colour of paying their compliments; and immediately Tullius Cimber,
who had engaged to commence the assault, advancing nearer than the rest,
as if he had some favour to request, Caesar made signs that he should
defer his petition to some other time.  Tullius immediately seized him by
the toga, on both shoulders; at which Caesar crying out, "Violence is
meant!" one of the Cassii wounded him a little below the throat.  Caesar
seized him by the arm, and ran it through with his style [95]; and
endeavouring to rush forward was stopped by another wound.  Finding
himself now attacked on all hands with naked poniards, he wrapped the
toga [96] about his head, and at the same moment drew the skirt round his
legs with his left hand, that he might fall more decently with the lower
part of his body covered.  He was stabbed with three and twenty wounds,
uttering a groan only, but no cry, at the first wound; although some
authors relate, that when Marcus Brutus fell upon him, he exclaimed,
"What! art thou, too, one of them?  Thou, my son!" [97]  The whole
assembly instantly (52) dispersing, he lay for some time after he
expired, until three of his slaves laid the body on a litter, and carried
it home, with one arm hanging down over the side.  Among so many wounds,
there was none that was mortal, in the opinion of the surgeon Antistius,
except the second, which he received in the breast.  The conspirators
meant to drag his body into the Tiber as soon as they had killed him; to
confiscate his estate, and rescind all his enactments; but they were
deterred by fear of Mark Antony, and Lepidus, Caesar's master of the
horse, and abandoned their intentions.

LXXXIII.  At the instance of Lucius Piso, his father-in-law, his will was
opened and read in Mark Antony's house.  He had made it on the ides
[13th] of the preceding September, at his Lavican villa, and committed it
to the custody of the chief of the Vestal Virgins.  Quintus Tubero
informs us, that in all the wills he had signed, from the time of his
first consulship to the breaking out of the civil war, Cneius Pompey was
appointed his heir, and that this had been publicly notified to the army.
But in his last will, he named three heirs, the grandsons of his sisters;
namely, Caius Octavius for three fourths of his estate, and Lucius
Pinarius and Quintus Pedius for the remaining fourth.  Other heirs [in
remainder] were named at the close of the will, in which he also adopted
Caius Octavius, who was to assume his name, into his family; and
nominated most of those who were concerned in his death among the
guardians of his son, if he should have any; as well as Decimus Brutus
amongst his heirs of the second order.  Be bequeathed to the Roman people
his gardens near the Tiber, and three hundred sesterces each man.

LXXXIV.  Notice of his funeral having been solemnly proclaimed, a pile
was erected in the Campus Martius, near the tomb of his daughter Julia;
and before the Rostra was placed a gilded tabernacle, on the model of the
temple of Venus Genitrix; within which was an ivory bed, covered with
purple and cloth of gold.  At the head was a trophy, with the
[bloodstained] robe in which he was slain.  It being considered that the
whole day would not suffice for carrying the funeral oblations in solemn
procession before the corpse, directions were given for every one,
without regard to order, to carry them from the city into the Campus
Martius, by what way they pleased.  To raise pity and indignation for his
murder, in the plays acted at the funeral, a passage was sung from
Pacuvius's tragedy, entitled, "The Trial for Arms:"

    That ever I, unhappy man, should save
    Wretches, who thus have brought me to the grave! [98]

And some lines also from Attilius's tragedy of "Electra," to the same
effect.  Instead of a funeral panegyric, the consul Antony ordered a
herald to proclaim to the people the decree of the senate, in which they
had bestowed upon him all honours, divine and human; with the oath by
which they had engaged themselves for the defence of his person; and to
these he added only a few words of his own.  The magistrates and others
who had formerly filled the highest offices, carried the bier from the
Rostra into the Forum.  While some proposed that the body should be burnt
in the sanctuary of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and others in
Pompey's senate-house; on a sudden, two men, with swords by their sides,
and spears in their hands, set fire to the bier with lighted torches.
The throng around immediately heaped upon it dry <DW19>s, the tribunals
and benches of the adjoining courts, and whatever else came to hand.
Then the musicians and players stripped off the dresses they wore on the
present occasion, taken from the wardrobe of his triumph at spectacles,
rent them, and threw them into the flames.  The legionaries, also, of his
(54) veteran bands, cast in their armour, which they had put on in honour
of his funeral.  Most of the ladies did the same by their ornaments, with
the bullae [99], and mantles of their children.  In this public mourning
there joined a multitude of foreigners, expressing their sorrow according
to the fashion of their respective countries; but especially the Jews
[100], who for several nights together frequented the spot where the body
was burnt.

LXXXV.  The populace ran from the funeral, with torches in their hands,
to the houses of Brutus and Cassius, and were repelled with difficulty.
Going in quest of Cornelius Cinna, who had in a speech, the day before,
reflected severely upon Caesar, and mistaking for him Helvius Cinna, who
happened to fall into their hands, they murdered the latter, and carried
his head about the city on the point of a spear.  They afterwards erected
in the Forum a column of Numidian marble, formed of one stone nearly
twenty feet high, and inscribed upon it these words, TO THE FATHER OF HIS
COUNTRY.  At this column they continued for a long time to offer
sacrifices, make vows, and decide controversies, in which they swore by
Caesar.

LXXXVI.  Some of Caesar's friends entertained a suspicion, that he
neither desired nor cared to live any longer, on account of his declining
health; and for that reason slighted all the omens of religion, and the
warnings of his friends.  Others are of opinion, that thinking himself
secure in the late decree of the senate, and their oaths, he dismissed
his Spanish guards who attended him with drawn swords.  Others again
suppose, that he chose rather to face at once the dangers which
threatened him on all sides, than to be for ever on the watch against
them.  Some tell us that he used to say, the commonwealth was more
interested in the safety of his person than himself: for that he had for
some time been satiated with power and glory; but that the commonwealth,
if any thing should befall him, would have no rest, and, involved in
another civil war, would be in a worse state than before.

(55) LXXXVII.  This, however, was generally admitted, that his death was
in many respects such as he would have chosen.  For, upon reading the
account delivered by Xenophon, how Cyrus in his last illness gave
instructions respecting his funeral, Caesar deprecated a lingering death,
and wished that his own might be sudden and speedy.  And the day before
he died, the conversation at supper, in the house of Marcus Lepidus,
turning upon what was the most eligible way of dying, he gave his opinion
in favour of a death that is sudden and unexpected.

LXXXVIII.  He died in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was ranked
amongst the Gods, not only by a formal decree, but in the belief of the
vulgar.  For during the first games which Augustus, his heir, consecrated
to his memory, a comet blazed for seven days together, rising always
about eleven o'clock; and it was supposed to be the soul of Caesar, now
received into heaven: for which reason, likewise, he is represented on
his statue with a star on his brow.  The senate-house in which he was
slain, was ordered to be shut up [101], and a decree made that the ides
of March should be called parricidal, and the senate should never more
assemble on that day.

LXXXIX.  Scarcely any of those who were accessary to his murder, survived
him more than three years, or died a natural death [102].  They were all
condemned by the senate: some were taken off by one accident, some by
another.  Part of them perished at sea, others fell in battle; and some
slew themselves with the same poniard with which they had stabbed Caesar
[103].

(56) [104] The termination of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey
forms a new epoch in the Roman History, at which a Republic, which had
subsisted with unrivalled glory during a period of about four hundred and
sixty years, relapsed into a state of despotism, whence it never more
could emerge.  So sudden a transition from prosperity to the ruin of
public freedom, without the intervention of any foreign enemy, excites a
reasonable conjecture, that the constitution in which it could take
place, however vigorous in appearance, must have lost that soundness of
political health which had enabled it to endure through so many ages.  A
short view of its preceding state, and of that in which it was at the
time of the revolution now mentioned, will best ascertain the foundation
of such a conjecture.

Though the Romans, upon the expulsion of Tarquin, made an essential
change in the political form of the state, they did not carry their
detestation of regal authority so far as to abolish the religious
institutions of Numa Pompilius, the second of their kings, according to
which, the priesthood, with all the influence annexed to that order, was
placed in the hands of the aristocracy.  By this wise policy a restraint
was put upon the fickleness and violence of the people in matters of
government, and a decided superiority given to the Senate both in the
deliberative and executive parts of administration.  This advantage was
afterwards indeed diminished by the creation of Tribunes of the people; a
set of men whose ambition often embroiled the Republic in civil
dissensions, and who at last abused their authority to such a degree,
that they became instruments of aggrandizement to any leading men in the
state who could purchase their friendship.  In general, however, the
majority of the Tribunes being actuated by views which comprehended the
interests of the multitude, rather than those of individuals, they did
not so much endanger the liberty, as they interrupted the tranquillity,
of the public; and when the occasional commotions subsided, there
remained no permanent ground for the establishment of personal
usurpation.

In every government, an object of the last importance to the peace and
welfare of society is the morals of the people; and in proportion as a
community is enlarged by propagation, or the accession of a multitude of
new members, a more strict attention is requisite to guard against that
dissolution of manners to which a crowded and extensive capital has a
natural tendency.  Of this (57) the Romans became sensible in the growing
state of the Republic.  In the year of the City 312, two magistrates were
first created for taking an account of the number of the people, and the
value of their estates; and soon after, they were invested with the
authority not only of inspecting the morals of individuals, but of
inflicting public censure for any licentiousness of conduct, or violation
of decency.  Thus both the civil and religious institutions concurred to
restrain the people within the bounds of good order and obedience to the
laws; at the same time that the frugal life of the ancient Romans proved
a strong security against those vices which operate most effectually
towards sapping the foundations of a state.

But in the time of Julius Caesar the barriers of public liberty were
become too weak to restrain the audacious efforts of ambitious and
desperate men.  The veneration for the constitution, usually a powerful
check to treasonable designs, had been lately violated by the usurpations
of Marius and Sylla.  The salutary terrors of religion no longer
predominated over the consciences of men.  The shame of public censure
was extinguished in general depravity.  An eminent historian, who lived
at that time, informs us, that venality universally prevailed amongst the
Romans; and a writer who flourished soon after, observes, that luxury and
dissipation had encumbered almost all so much with debt, that they beheld
with a degree of complacency the prospect of civil war and confusion.

The extreme degree of profligacy at which the Romans were now arrived is
in nothing more evident, than that this age gave birth to the most
horrible conspiracy which occurs in the annals of humankind, viz. that of
Catiline.  This was not the project of a few desperate and abandoned
individuals, but of a number of men of the most illustrious rank in the
state; and it appears beyond doubt, that Julius Caesar was accessary to
the design, which was no less than to extirpate the Senate, divide
amongst themselves both the public and private treasures, and set Rome on
fire.  The causes which prompted to this tremendous project, it is
generally admitted, were luxury, prodigality, irreligion, a total
corruption of manners, and above all, as the immediate cause, the
pressing necessity in which the conspirators were involved by their
extreme dissipation.

The enormous debt in which Caesar himself was early involved,
countenances an opinion that his anxiety to procure the province of Gaul
proceeded chiefly from this cause.  But during nine years in which he
held that province, he acquired such riches as must have rendered him,
without competition, the most opulent person in the state.  If nothing
more, therefore, than a (58) splendid establishment had been the object
of his pursuit, he had attained to the summit of his wishes.  But when we
find him persevering in a plan of aggrandizement beyond this period of
his fortunes, we can ascribe his conduct to no other motive than that of
outrageous ambition.  He projected the building of a new Forum at Rome,
for the ground only of which he was to pay 800,000 pounds; he raised
legions in Gaul at his own charges: he promised such entertainments to
the people as had never been known at Rome from the foundation of the
city.  All these circumstances evince some latent design of procuring
such a popularity as might give him an uncontrolled influence in the
management of public affairs.  Pompey, we are told, was wont to say, that
Caesar not being able, with all his riches, to fulfil the promises which
he had made, wished to throw everything into confusion.  There may have
been some foundation for this remark: but the opinion of Cicero is more
probable, that Caesar's mind was seduced with the temptations of
chimerical glory.  It is observable that neither Cicero nor Pompey
intimates any suspicion that Caesar was apprehensive of being impeached
for his conduct, had he returned to Rome in a private station.  Yet, that
there was reason for such an apprehension, the positive declaration of L.
Domitius leaves little room to doubt: especially when we consider the
number of enemies that Caesar had in the Senate, and the coolness of his
former friend Pompey ever after the death of Julia.  The proposed
impeachment was founded upon a notorious charge of prosecuting measures
destructive of the interests of the commonwealth, and tending ultimately
to an object incompatible with public freedom.  Indeed, considering the
extreme corruption which prevailed amongst the Romans at this time, it is
more than probable that Caesar would have been acquitted of the charge,
but at such an expense as must have stripped him of all his riches, and
placed him again in a situation ready to attempt a disturbance of the
public tranquillity.  For it is said, that he purchased the friendship of
Curio, at the commencement of the civil war, with a bribe little short of
half a million sterling.

Whatever Caesar's private motive may have been for taking arms against
his country, he embarked in an enterprise of a nature the most dangerous:
and had Pompey conducted himself in any degree suitable to the reputation
which he had formerly acquired, the contest would in all probability have
terminated in favour of public freedom.  But by dilatory measures in the
beginning, by imprudently withdrawing his army from Italy into a distant
province, and by not pursuing the advantage he had gained by the vigorous
repulse of Caesar's troops in their attack upon his camp, this commander
lost every opportunity of extinguishing a war which was to determine the
fate, and even the existence, of the Republic.  It was accordingly
determined on the plains of Pharsalia, where Caesar obtained a victory
which was not more decisive than unexpected.  He was now no longer
amenable either to the tribunal of the Senate or the power of the laws,
but triumphed at once over his enemies and the constitution of his
country.

It is to the honour of Caesar, that when he had obtained the supreme
power, he exercised it with a degree of moderation beyond what was
generally expected by those who had fought on the side of the Republic.
Of his private life either before or after this period, little is
transmitted in history.  Henceforth, however, he seems to have lived
chiefly at Rome, near which he had a small villa, upon an eminence,
commanding a beautiful prospect.  His time was almost entirely occupied
with public affairs, in the management of which, though he employed many
agents, he appears to have had none in the character of actual minister.
He was in general easy of access: but Cicero, in a letter to a friend,
complains of having been treated with the indignity of waiting a
considerable time amongst a crowd in an anti-chamber, before he could
have an audience.  The elevation of Caesar placed him not above
discharging reciprocally the social duties in the intercourse of life.
He returned the visits of those who waited upon him, and would sup at
their houses.  At table, and in the use of wine, he was habitually
temperate.  Upon the whole, he added nothing to his own happiness by all
the dangers, the fatigues, and the perpetual anxiety which he had
incurred in the pursuit of unlimited power.  His health was greatly
impaired: his former cheerfulness of temper, though not his magnanimity,
appears to have forsaken him; and we behold in his fate a memorable
example of illustrious talents rendered, by inordinate ambition,
destructive to himself, and irretrievably pernicious to his country.

From beholding the ruin of the Roman Republic, after intestine divisions,
and the distractions of civil war, it will afford some relief to take a
view of the progress of literature, which flourished even during those
calamities.

The commencement of literature in Rome is to be dated from the reduction
of the Grecian States, when the conquerors imported into their own
country the valuable productions of the Greek language, and the first
essay of Roman genius was in dramatic composition.  Livius Andronicus,
who flourished about 240 years before the Christian aera, formed the
Fescennine verses into a kind of regular drama, upon the model of the
Greeks.  He was followed some time after by Ennius, who, besides dramatic
and other compositions, (60) wrote the annals of the Roman Republic in
heroic verse.  His style, like that of Andronicus, was rough and
unpolished, in conformity to the language of those times; but for
grandeur of sentiment and energy of expression, he was admired by the
greatest poets in the subsequent ages.  Other writers of distinguished
reputation in the dramatic department were Naevius, Pacuvius, Plautus,
Afranius, Caecilius, Terence, Accius, etc.  Accius and Pacuvius are
mentioned by Quintilian as writers of extraordinary merit.  Of
twenty-five comedies written by Plautus, the number transmitted to
posterity is nineteen; and of a hundred and eight which Terence is said to
have translated from Menander, there now remain only six.  Excepting a few
inconsiderable fragments, the writings of all the other authors have
perished.  The early period of Roman literature was distinguished for the
introduction of satire by Lucilius, an author celebrated for writing with
remarkable ease, but whose compositions, in the opinion of Horace, though
Quintilian thinks otherwise, were debased with a mixture of feculency.
Whatever may have been their merit, they also have perished, with the
works of a number of orators, who adorned the advancing state of letters
in the Roman Republic.  It is observable, that during this whole period,
of near two centuries and a half, there appeared not one historian of
eminence sufficient to preserve his name from oblivion.

Julius Caesar himself is one of the most eminent writers of the age in
which he lived.  His commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars are
written with a purity, precision, and perspicuity, which command
approbation.  They are elegant without affectation, and beautiful without
ornament.  Of the two books which he composed on Analogy, and those under
the title of Anti-Cato, scarcely any fragment is preserved; but we may be
assured of the justness of the observations on language, which were made
by an author so much distinguished by the excellence of his own
compositions.  His poem entitled The Journey, which was probably an
entertaining narrative, is likewise totally lost.

The most illustrious prose writer of this or any other age is M. Tullius
Cicero; and as his life is copiously related in biographical works, it
will be sufficient to mention his writings.  From his earliest years, he
applied himself with unremitting assiduity to the cultivation of
literature, and, whilst he was yet a boy, wrote a poem, called Glaucus
Pontius, which was extant in Plutarch's time.  Amongst his juvenile
productions was a translation into Latin verse, of Aratus on the
Phaenomena of the Heavens; of which many fragments are still extant.  He
also published a poem of the heroic kind, in honour of his countryman C.
Marius, who was born at Arpinum, the birth-place of Cicero.  (61) This
production was greatly admired by Atticus; and old Scaevola was so much
pleased with it, that in an epigram written on the subject, he declares
that it would live as long as the Roman name and learning subsisted.
From a little specimen which remains of it, describing a memorable omen
given to Marina from an oak at Arpinum, there is reason to believe that
his poetical genius was scarcely inferior to his oratorical, had it been
cultivated with equal industry.  He published another poem called Limon,
of which Donatus has preserved four lines in the life of Terence, in
praise of the elegance and purity of that poet's style.  He composed in
the Greek language, and in the style and manner of Isocrates, a
Commentary or Memoirs of the Transactions of his Consulship.  This he
sent to Atticus, with a desire, if he approved it, to publish it in
Athens and the cities of Greece.  He sent a copy of it likewise to
Posidonius of Rhodes, and requested of him to undertake the same subject
in a more elegant and masterly manner.  But the latter returned for
answer, that, instead of being encouraged to write by the perusal of his
tract, he was quite deterred from attempting it.

Upon the plan of those Memoirs, he afterwards composed a Latin poem in
three books, in which he carried down the history to the end of his
exile, but did not publish it for several years, from motives of
delicacy.  The three books were severally inscribed to the three Muses;
but of this work there now remain only a few fragments, scattered in
different parts of his other writings.  He published, about the same
time, a collection of the principal speeches which he had made in his
consulship, under the title of his Consular Orations.  They consisted
originally of twelve; but four are entirely lost, and some of the rest
are imperfect.  He now published also, in Latin verse, a translation of
the Prognostics of Aratus, of which work no more than two or three small
fragments now remain.  A few years after, he put the last hand to his
Dialogues upon the Character and Idea of the perfect Orator.  This
admirable work remains entire; a monument both of the astonishing
industry and transcendent abilities of its author.  At his Cuman villa,
he next began a Treatise on Politics, or on the best State of a City, and
the Duties of a Citizen.  He calls it a great and a laborious work, yet
worthy of his pains, if he could succeed in it.  This likewise was
written in the form of a dialogue, in which the speakers were Scipio,
Laelius, Philus, Manilius, and other great persons in the former times of
the Republic.  It was comprised in six books, and survived him for
several ages, though it is now unfortunately lost.  From the fragments
which remain, it appears to have been a masterly production, in which all
the important questions in politics and morality were discussed with
elegance and accuracy.

(62) Amidst all the anxiety for the interests of the Republic, which
occupied the thoughts of this celebrated personage, he yet found leisure
to write several philosophical tracts, which still subsist, to the
gratification of the literary world.  He composed a treatise on the
Nature of the Gods, in three books, containing a comprehensive view of
religion, faith, oaths, ceremonies, etc.  In elucidating this important
subject, he not only delivers the opinions of all the philosophers who
had written anything concerning it, but weighs and compares attentively
all the arguments with each other; forming upon the whole such a rational
and perfect system of natural religion, as never before was presented to
the consideration of mankind, and approaching nearly to revelation.  He
now likewise composed in two books, a discourse on Divination, in which
he discusses at large all the arguments that may be advanced for and
against the actual existence of such a species of knowledge.  Like the
preceding works, it is written in the form of dialogue, and in which the
chief speaker is Laelius.  The same period gave birth to his treatise on
Old Age, called Cato Major; and to that on Friendship, written also in
dialogue, and in which the chief speaker is Laelius.  This book,
considered merely as an essay, is one of the most entertaining
productions of ancient times; but, beheld as a picture drawn from life,
exhibiting the real characters and sentiments of men of the first
distinction for virtue and wisdom in the Roman Republic, it becomes
doubly interesting to every reader of observation and taste.  Cicero now
also wrote his discourse on Fate, which was the subject of a conversation
with Hirtius, in his villa near Puteoli; and he executed about the same
time a translation of Plato's celebrated Dialogue, called Timaeus, on the
nature and origin of the universe.  He was employing himself also on a
history of his own times, or rather of his own conduct; full of free and
severe reflections on those who had abused their power to the oppression
of the Republic.  Dion Cassius says, that he delivered this book sealed
up to his son, with strict orders not to read or publish it till after
his death; but from this time he never saw his son, and it is probable
that he left the work unfinished.  Afterwards, however, some copies of it
were circulated; from which his commentator, Asconius, has quoted several
particulars.

During a voyage which he undertook to Sicily, he wrote his treatise on
Topics, or the Art of finding Arguments on any Question.  This was an
abstract from Aristotle's treatise on the same subject; and though he had
neither Aristotle nor any other book to assist him, he drew it up from
his memory, and finished it as he sailed along the coast of Calabria.
The last (63) work composed by Cicero appears to have been his Offices,
written for the use of his son, to whom it is addressed.  This treatise
contains a system of moral conduct, founded upon the noblest principles
of human action, and recommended by arguments drawn from the purest
sources of philosophy.

Such are the literary productions of this extraordinary man, whose
comprehensive understanding enabled him to conduct with superior ability
the most abstruse disquisitions into moral and metaphysical science.
Born in an age posterior to Socrates and Plato, he could not anticipate
the principles inculcated by those divine philosophers, but he is justly
entitled to the praise, not only of having prosecuted with unerring
judgment the steps which they trod before him, but of carrying his
researches to greater extent into the most difficult regions of
philosophy.  This too he had the merit to perform, neither in the station
of a private citizen, nor in the leisure of academic retirement, but in
the bustle of public life, amidst the almost constant exertions of the
bar, the employment of the magistrate, the duty of the senator, and the
incessant cares of the statesman; through a period likewise chequered
with domestic afflictions and fatal commotions in the Republic.  As a
philosopher, his mind appears to have been clear, capacious, penetrating,
and insatiable of knowledge.  As a writer, he was endowed with every
talent that could captivate either the judgment or taste.  His researches
were continually employed on subjects of the greatest utility to mankind,
and those often such as extended beyond the narrow bounds of temporal
existence.  The being of a God, the immortality of the soul, a future
state of rewards and punishments, and the eternal distinction of good and
evil; these were in general the great objects of his philosophical
enquiries, and he has placed them in a more convincing point of view than
they ever were before exhibited to the pagan world.  The variety and
force of the arguments which he advances, the splendour of his diction,
and the zeal with which he endeavours to excite the love and admiration
of virtue, all conspire to place his character, as a philosophical
writer, including likewise his incomparable eloquence, on the summit of
human celebrity.

The form of dialogue, so much used by Cicero, he doubtless adopted in
imitation of Plato, who probably took the hint of it from the colloquial
method of instruction practised by Socrates.  In the early stage of
philosophical enquiry, this mode of composition was well adapted, if not
to the discovery, at least to the confirmation of moral truth; especially
as the practice was then not uncommon, for speculative men to converse
together on important subjects, for mutual information.  In treating of
any subject respecting which the different sects of philosophers differed
(64) from each other in point of sentiment, no kind of composition could
be more happily suited than dialogue, as it gave alternately full scope
to the arguments of the various disputants.  It required, however, that
the writer should exert his understanding with equal impartiality and
acuteness on the different sides of the question; as otherwise he might
betray a cause under the appearance of defending it.  In all the
dialogues of Cicero, he manages the arguments of the several disputants
in a manner not only the most fair and interesting, but also such as
leads to the most probable and rational conclusion.

After enumerating the various tracts composed and published by Cicero, we
have now to mention his Letters, which, though not written for
publication, deserve to be ranked among the most interesting remains of
Roman literature.  The number of such as are addressed to different
correspondents is considerable, but those to Atticus alone, his
confidential friend, amount to upwards of four hundred; among which are
many of great length.  They are all written in the genuine spirit of the
most approved epistolary composition; uniting familiarity with elevation,
and ease with elegance.  They display in a beautiful light the author's
character in the social relations of life; as a warm friend, a zealous
patron, a tender husband, an affectionate brother, an indulgent father,
and a kind master.  Beholding them in a more extensive view, they exhibit
an ardent love of liberty and the constitution of his country: they
discover a mind strongly actuated with the principles of virtue and
reason; and while they abound in sentiments the most judicious and
philosophical, they are occasionally blended with the charms of wit, and
agreeable effusions of pleasantry.  What is likewise no small addition to
their merit, they contain much interesting description of private life,
with a variety of information relative to public transactions and
characters of that age.  It appears from Cicero's correspondence, that
there was at that time such a number of illustrious Romans, as never
before existed in any one period of the Republic.  If ever, therefore,
the authority of men the most respectable for virtue, rank, and
abilities, could have availed to overawe the first attempts at a
violation of public liberty, it must have been at this period; for the
dignity of the Roman senate was now in the zenith of its splendour.

Cicero has been accused of excessive vanity, and of arrogating to himself
an invidious superiority, from his extraordinary talents but whoever
peruses his letters to Atticus, must readily acknowledge, that this
imputation appears to be destitute of truth.  In those excellent
productions, though he adduces the strongest arguments for and against
any object of consideration, that the (65) most penetrating understanding
can suggest, weighs them with each other, and draws from them the most
rational conclusions, he yet discovers such a diffidence in his own
opinion, that he resigns himself implicitly to the judgment and direction
of his friend; a modesty not very compatible with the disposition of the
arrogant, who are commonly tenacious of their own opinion, particularly
in what relates to any decision of the understanding.

It is difficult to say, whether Cicero appears in his letters more great
or amiable: but that he was regarded by his contemporaries in both these
lights, and that too in the highest degree, is sufficiently evident.  We
may thence infer, that the great poets in the subsequent age must have
done violence to their own liberality and discernment, when, in
compliment to Augustus, whose sensibility would have been wounded by the
praises of Cicero, and even by the mention of his name, they have so
industriously avoided the subject, as not to afford the most distant
intimation that this immortal orator and philosopher had ever existed.
Livy however, there is reason to think, did some justice to his memory:
but it was not until the race of the Caesars had become extinct, that he
received the free and unanimous applause of impartial posterity.  Such
was the admiration which Quintilian entertained of his writings, that he
considered the circumstance or being delighted with them, as an
indubitable proof of judgment and taste in literature.  Ille se
profecisse sciat, cui Cicero valde placebit. [105]

In this period is likewise to be placed M. Terentius Varro, the
celebrated Roman grammarian, and the Nestor of ancient learning.  The
first mention made of him is, that he was lieutenant to Pompey in his
piratical wars, and obtained in that service a naval crown.  In the civil
wars he joined the side of the Republic, and was taken by Caesar; by whom
he was likewise proscribed, but obtained a remission of the sentence.  Of
all the ancients, he has acquired the greatest fame for his extensive
erudition; and we may add, that he displayed the same industry in
communicating, as he had done in collecting it.  His works originally
amounted to no less than five hundred volumes, which have all perished,
except a treatise De Lingua Latina, and one De Re Rustica.  Of the former
of these, which is addressed to Cicero, three books at the beginning are
also lost.  It appears from the introduction of the fourth book, that
they all related to etymology.  The first contained such observations as
might be made against it; the second, such as might be made in its
favour; and the third, observations upon it.  He next proceeds to
investigate the origin of (66) Latin words.  In the fourth book, he
traces those which relate to place; in the fifth, those connected with
the idea of time; and in the sixth, the origin of both these classes, as
they appear in the writings of the poets.  The seventh book is employed
on declension; in which the author enters upon a minute and extensive
enquiry, comprehending a variety of acute and profound observations on
the formation of Latin nouns, and their respective natural declinations
from the nominative case.  In the eighth, he examines the nature and
limits of usage and analogy in language; and in the ninth and last book
on the subject, takes a general view of what is the reverse of analogy,
viz. anomaly.  The precision and perspicuity which Varro displays in this
work merit the highest encomiums, and justify the character given him in
his own time, of being the most learned of the Latin grammarians.  To the
loss of the first three books, are to be added several chasms in the
others; but fortunately they happen in such places as not to affect the
coherency of the author's doctrine, though they interrupt the
illustration of it.  It is observable that this great grammarian makes
use of quom for quum, heis for his, and generally queis for quibus.  This
practice having become rather obsolete at the time in which he wrote, we
must impute his continuance of it to his opinion of its propriety, upon
its established principles of grammar, and not to any prejudice of
education, or an affectation of singularity.  As Varro makes no mention
of Caesar's treatise on Analogy, and had commenced author long before
him, it is probable that Caesar's production was of a much later date;
and thence we may infer, that those two writers differed from each other,
at least with respect to some particulars on that subject.

This author's treatise De Re Rustica was undertaken at the desire of a
friend, who, having purchased some lands, requested of Varro the favour
of his instructions relative to farming, and the economy of a country
life, in its various departments.  Though Varro was at this time in his
eightieth year, he writes with all the vivacity, though without the
levity, of youth, and sets out with invoking, not the Muses, like Homer
and Ennius, as he observes, but the twelve deities supposed to be chiefly
concerned in the operations of agriculture.  It appears from the account
which he gives, that upwards of fifty Greek authors had treated of this
subject in prose, besides Hesiod and Menecrates the Ephesian, who both
wrote in verse; exclusive likewise of many Roman writers, and of Mago the
Carthaginian, who wrote in the Punic language.  Varro's work is divided
into three books, the first of which treats of agriculture; the second,
of rearing of cattle; and the third, of feeding animals for the use of
the table.  (67) In the last of these, we meet with a remarkable instance
of the prevalence of habit and fashion over human sentiment, where the
author delivers instructions relative to the best method of fattening
rats.

We find from Quintilian, that Varro likewise composed satires in various
kinds of verse.  It is impossible to behold the numerous fragments of
this venerable author without feeling the strongest regret for the loss
of that vast collection of information which he had compiled, and of
judicious observations which he had made on a variety of subjects, during
a life of eighty-eight years, almost entirely devoted to literature.  The
remark of St. Augustine is well founded, That it is astonishing how
Varro, who read such a number of books, could find time to compose so
many volumes; and how he who composed so many volumes, could be at
leisure to peruse such a variety of books, and to gain so much literary
information.

Catullus is said to have been born at Verona, of respectable parents; his
father and himself being in the habit of intimacy with Julius Caesar.  He
was brought to Rome by Mallius, to whom several of his epigrams are
addressed.  The gentleness of his manners, and his application to study,
we are told, recommended him to general esteem; and he had the good
fortune to obtain the patronage of Cicero.  When he came to be known as a
poet, all these circumstances would naturally contribute to increase his
reputation for ingenuity; and accordingly we find his genius applauded by
several of his contemporaries.  It appears that his works are not
transmitted entire to posterity; but there remain sufficient specimens by
which we may be enabled to appreciate his poetical talents.

Quintilian, and Diomed the grammarian, have ranked Catullus amongst the
iambic writers, while others have placed him amongst the lyric.  He has
properly a claim to each of these stations; but his versification being
chiefly iambic, the former of the arrangements seems to be the most
suitable.  The principal merit of Catullus's Iambics consists in a
simplicity of thought and expression.  The thoughts, however, are often
frivolous, and, what is yet more reprehensible, the author gives way to
gross obscenity: in vindication of which, he produces the following
couplet, declaring that a good poet ought to be chaste in his own person,
but that his verses need not be so.

    Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
    Ipsum: versiculos nihil necesse est.

This sentiment has been frequently cited by those who were inclined to
follow the example of Catullus; but if such a practice be in any case
admissible, it is only where the poet personates (68) a profligate
character; and the instances in which it is adopted by Catullus are not
of that description.  It had perhaps been a better apology, to have
pleaded the manners of the times; for even Horace, who wrote only a few
years after, has suffered his compositions to be occasionally debased by
the same kind of blemish.

Much has been said of this poet's invective against Caesar, which
produced no other effect than an invitation to sup at the dictator's
house.  It was indeed scarcely entitled to the honour of the smallest
resentment.  If any could be shewn, it must have been for the freedom
used by the author, and not for any novelty in his lampoon.  There are
two poems on this subject, viz. the twenty-ninth and fifty-seventh, in
each of which Caesar is joined with Mamurra, a Roman knight, who had
acquired great riches in the Gallic war.  For the honour of Catullus's
gratitude, we should suppose that the latter is the one to which
historians allude: but, as poetical compositions, they are equally
unworthy of regard.  The fifty seventh is nothing more than a broad
repetition of the raillery, whether well or ill founded, with which
Caesar was attacked on various occasions, and even in the senate, after
his return from Bithynia.  Caesar had been taunted with this subject for
upwards of thirty years; and after so long a familiarity with reproach,
his sensibility to the scandalous imputation must now have been much
diminished, if not entirely extinguished.  The other poem is partly in
the same strain, but extended to greater length, by a mixture of common
jocular ribaldry of the Roman soldiers, expressed nearly in the same
terms which Caesar's legions, though strongly attached to his person,
scrupled not to sport publicly in the streets of Rome, against their
general, during the celebration of his triumph.  In a word, it deserves
to be regarded as an effusion of Saturnalian licentiousness, rather than
of poetry.  With respect to the Iambics of Catullus, we may observe in
general, that the sarcasm is indebted for its force, not so much to
ingenuity of sentiment, as to the indelicate nature of the subject, or
coarseness of expression.

The descriptive poems of Catullus are superior to the others, and
discover a lively imagination.  Amongst the best of his productions, is a
translation of the celebrated ode of Sappho:

    Ille mi par esse Deo videtur,
    me, etc.

This ode is executed both with spirit and elegance; it is, however,
imperfect; and the last stanza seems to be spurious.  Catullus's epigrams
are entitled to little praise, with regard either to sentiment or point;
and on the whole, his merit, as a poet, appears to have been magnified
beyond its real extent.  He is said to have died about the thirtieth year
of his age.

(69) Lucretius is the author of a celebrated poem, in six books, De Rerum
Natura; a subject which had been treated many ages before by Empedocles,
a philosopher and poet of Agrigentum.  Lucretius was a zealous partizan
of Democritus, and the sect of Epicurus, whose principles concerning the
eternity of matter, the materiality of the soul, and the non-existence of
a future state of rewards and punishments, he affects to maintain with a
certainty equal to that of mathematical demonstration.  Strongly
prepossessed with the hypothetical doctrines of his master, and ignorant
of the physical system of the universe, he endeavours to deduce from the
phenomena of the material world conclusions not only unsupported by
legitimate theory, but repugnant to the principles of the highest
authority in metaphysical disquisition.  But while we condemn his
speculative notions as degrading to human nature, and subversive of the
most important interests of mankind, we must admit that he has prosecuted
his visionary hypothesis with uncommon ingenuity.  Abstracting from it
the rhapsodical nature of this production, and its obscurity in some
parts, it has great merit as a poem.  The style is elevated, and the
versification in general harmonious.  By the mixture of obsolete words,
it possesses an air of solemnity well adapted to abstruse researches; at
the same time that by the frequent resolution of diphthongs, it instils
into the Latin the sonorous and melodious powers of the Greek language.

While Lucretius was engaged in this work, he fell into a state of
insanity, occasioned, as is supposed, by a philtre, or love-potion, given
him by his wife Lucilia.  The complaint, however, having lucid intervals,
he employed them in the execution of his plan, and, soon after it was
finished, laid violent hands upon himself, in the forty-third year of his
age.  This fatal termination of his life, which perhaps proceeded from
insanity, was ascribed by his friends and admirers to his concern for the
banishment of one Memmius, with whom he was intimately connected, and for
the distracted state of the republic.  It was, however, a catastrophe
which the principles of Epicurus, equally erroneous and irreconcilable to
resignation and fortitude, authorized in particular circumstances.  Even
Atticus, the celebrated correspondent of Cicero, a few years after this
period, had recourse to the same desperate expedient, by refusing all
sustenance, while he laboured under a lingering disease.

It is said that Cicero revised the poem of Lucretius after the death of
the author, and this circumstance is urged by the abettors of atheism, as
a proof that the principles contained in the work had the sanction of his
authority.  But no inference in favour of Lucretius's doctrine can justly
be drawn from this circumstance.  (70) Cicero, though already
sufficiently acquainted with the principles of the Epicurean sect, might
not be averse to the perusal of a production, which collected and
enforced them in a nervous strain of poetry; especially as the work was
likely to prove interesting to his friend Atticus, and would perhaps
afford subject for some letters or conversation between them.  It can
have been only with reference to composition that the poem was submitted
to Cicero's revisal: for had he been required to exercise his judgment
upon its principles, he must undoubtedly have so much mutilated the work,
as to destroy the coherency of the system.  He might be gratified with
the shew of elaborate research, and confident declamation, which it
exhibited, but he must have utterly disapproved of the conclusions which
the author endeavoured to establish.  According to the best information,
Lucretius died in the year from the building of Rome 701, when Pompey was
the third time consul.  Cicero lived several years beyond this period,
and in the two last years of his life, he composed those valuable works
which contain sentiments diametrically repugnant to the visionary system
of Epicurus.  The argument, therefore, drawn from Cicero's revisal, so
far from confirming the principle of Lucretius, affords the strongest
tacit declaration against their validity; because a period sufficient for
mature consideration had elapsed, before Cicero published his own
admirable system of philosophy.  The poem of Lucretius, nevertheless, has
been regarded as the bulwark of atheism--of atheism, which, while it
impiously arrogates the support of reason, both reason and nature
disclaim.

Many more writers flourished in this period, but their works have totally
perished.  Sallust was now engaged in historical productions; but as they
were not yet completed, they will be noticed in the next division of the
review.




FOOTNOTES:


[1]  Plin. Epist.  i. 18, 24, iii. 8, v. 11, ix. 34, x. 95.

[2]  Lycee, part I. liv. III. c. i.

[3]  Julius Caesar Divus.  Romulus, the founder of Rome, had the honour
of an apotheosis conferred on him by the senate, under the title of
Quirinus, to obviate the people's suspicion of his having been taken off
by a conspiracy of the patrician order.  Political circumstances again
concurred with popular superstition to revive this posthumous adulation
in favour of Julius Caesar, the founder of the empire, who also fell by
the hands of conspirators.  It is remarkable in the history of a nation
so jealous of public liberty, that, in both instances, they bestowed the
highest mark of human homage upon men who owed their fate to the
introduction of arbitrary power.

[4]  Pliny informs us that Caius Julius, the father of Julius Caesar, a
man of pretorian rank, died suddenly at Pisa.

[5]  A.U.C. (in the year from the foundation of Rome) 670; A.C. (before
Christ) about 92.

[6]  Flamen Dialis.  This was an office of great dignity, but subjected
the holder to many restrictions.  He was not allowed to ride on
horseback, nor to absent himself from the city for a single night.  His
wife was also under particular restraints, and could not be divorced.  If
she died, the flamen resigned his office, because there were certain
sacred rites which he could not perform without her assistance.  Besides
other marks of distinction, he wore a purple robe called laena, and a
conical mitre called apex.

[7]  Two powerful parties were contending at Rome for the supremacy;
Sylla being at the head of the faction of the nobles, while Marius
espoused the cause of the people.  Sylla suspected Julius Caesar of
belonging to the Marian party, because Marius had married his aunt Julia.

[8]  He wandered about for some time in the Sabine territory.

[9]  Bithynia, in Asia Minor, was bounded on the south by Phrygia, on the
west by the Bosphorus and Propontis; and on the north by the Euxine sea.
Its boundaries towards the east are not clearly ascertained, Strabo,
Pliny, and Ptolemy differing from each other on the subject.

[10]  Mitylene was a city in the island of <DW26>s, famous for the study
of philosophy and eloquence.  According to Pliny, it remained a free city
and in power one thousand five hundred years.  It suffered much in the
Peloponnesian war from the Athenians, and in the Mithridatic from the
Romans, by whom it was taken and destroyed.  But it soon rose again,
having recovered its ancient liberty by the favour of Pomnpey; and was
afterwards much embellished by Trajan, who added to it the splendour of
his own name.  This was the country of Pittacus, one of the seven wise
men of Greece, as well as of Alcaeus and Sappho.  The natives showed a
particular taste for poetry, and had, as Plutarch informs us, stated
times for the celebration of poetical contests.

[11]  The civic crown was made of oak-leaves, and given to him who had
saved the life of a citizen.  The person thus decorated, wore it at
public spectacles, and sat next the senators.  When he entered, the
audience rose up, as a mark of respect.

[12]  A very extensive country of Hither Asia; lying between Pamphylia to
the west, Mount Taurus and Amanus to the north, Syria to the east, and
the Mediterranean to the south.  It was anciently famous for saffron; and
hair-cloth, called by the Romans ciliciun, was the manufacture of this
country.

[13] A city and an island, near the coast of Caria famous for the huge
statue of the Sun, called the Colossus.  The Rhodians were celebrated not
only for skill in naval affairs, but for learning, philosophy, and
eloquence.  During the latter periods of the Roman republic, and under
some of the emperors, numbers resorted there to prosecute their studies;
and it also became a place of retreat to discontented Romans.

[14]  Pharmacusa, an island lying off the coast of Asia, near Miletus.
It is now called Parmosa.

[15]  The ransom, too large for Caesar's private means, was raised by the
voluntary contributions of the cities in the Asiatic province, who were
equally liberal from their public funds in the case of other Romans who
fell into the hands of pirates at that period.

[16]  From Miletus, as we are informed by Plutarch.

[17]  Who commanded in Spain.

[18]  Rex, it will be easily understood, was not a title of dignity in a
Roman family, but the surname of the Marcii.

[19]  The rites of the Bona Dea, called also Fauna, which were performed
in the night, and by women only.

[20]  Hispania Boetica; the Hither province being called Hispania
Tarraconensis.

[21]  Alexander the Great was only thirty-three years at the time of his
death.

[22]  The proper office of the master of the horse was to command the
knights, and execute the orders of the dictator.  He was usually
nominated from amongst persons of consular and praetorian dignity; and
had the use of a horse, which the dictator had not, without the order of
the people.

[23]  Seneca compares the annals of Tanusius to the life of a fool,
which, though it may he long, is worthless; while that of a wise man,
like a good book, is valuable, however short.--Epist. 94.

[24]  Bibulus was Caesar's colleague, both as edile and consul.  Cicero
calls his edicts "Archilochian," that is, as full of spite as the verses
of Archilochus.--Ad. Attic. b. 7. ep. 24.

[25]  A.U.C. 689.  Cicero holds both the Curio's, father and son, very
cheap.--Brut. c. 60.

[26]  Regnum, the kingly power, which the Roman people considered an
insupportable tyranny.

[27]  An honourable banishment.

[28]  The assemblies of the people were at first held in the open Forum.
Afterwards, a covered building, called the Comitium, was erected for that
purpose.  There are no remains of it, but Lumisden thinks that it
probably stood on the south side of the Forum, on the site of the present
church of The Consolation.--Antiq. of Rome, p. 357.

[29]  Basilicas, from Basileus; a king.  They were, indeed, the palaces
of the sovereign people; stately and spacious buildings, with halls,
which served the purpose of exchanges, council chambers, and courts of
justice.  Some of the Basilicas were afterwards converted into Christian
churches.  "The form was oblong; the middle was an open space to walk in,
called Testudo, and which we now call the nave.  On each side of this
were rows of pillars, which formed what we should call the side-aisles,
and which the ancients called Porticus.  The end of the Testudo was
curved, like the apse of some of our churches, and was called Tribunal,
from causes being heard there.  Hence the term Tribune is applied to that
part of the Roman churches which is behind the high altar."--Burton's
Antiq. of Rome, p. 204.

[30]  Such as statues and pictures, the works of Greek artists.

[31]  It appears to have stood at the foot of the Capitoline hill.
Piranesi thinks that the two beautiful columns of white marble, which are
commonly described as belonging to the portico of the temple of Jupiter
Stator, are the remains of the temple of Castor and Pollux.

[32] Ptolemy Auletes, the son of Cleopatra.

[33]  Lentulus, Cethegus, and others.

[34]  The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was commenced and completed by
the Tarquins, kings of Rome, but not dedicated till the year after their
expulsion, when that honour devolved on M. Horatius Fulvillus, the first
of the consuls.  Having been burnt down during the civil wars, A.U.C.
670, Sylla restored it on the same foundations, but did not live to
consecrate it.

[35]  Meaning Pompey; not so much for the sake of the office, as having
his name inserted in the inscription recording the repairs of the
Capitol, instead of Catulus.  The latter, however, secured the honour,
and his name is still seen inscribed in an apartment at the Capitol, as
its restorer.

[36]  It being the calends of January, the first day of the year, on
which the magistrates solemnly entered on their offices, surrounded by
their friends.

[37]  Among others, one for recalling Pompey from Asia, under the pretext
that the commonwealth was in danger.  Cato was one of the colleagues who
saw through the design and opposed the decree.

[38]  See before, p. 5. This was in A.U.C. 693.

[39]  Plutarch informs us, that Caesar, before he came into office, owed
his creditors 1300 talents, somewhat more than 565,000 pounds of our
money.  But his debts increased so much after this period, if we may
believe Appian, that upon his departure for Spain, at the expiration of
his praetorship, he is reported to have said, Bis millies et quingenties
centena minis sibi adesse oportere, ut nihil haberet: i. e. That he was
2,000,000 and nearly 20,000 sesterces worse than penniless.  Crassus
became his security for 830 talents, about 871,500 pounds.

[40]  For his victories in Gallicia and Lusitania, having led his army to
the shores of the ocean, which had not before been reduced to submission.

[41]  Caesar was placed in this dilemma, that if he aspired to a triumph,
he must remain outside the walls until it took place, while as a
candidate for the consulship, he must be resident in the city.

[42]  Even the severe censor was biassed by political expediency to
sanction a system, under which what little remained of public virtue, and
the love of liberty at Rome, were fast decaying.  The strict laws against
bribery at elections were disregarded, and it was practised openly, and
accepted without a blush.  Sallust says that everything was venal, and
that Rome itself might be bought, if any one was rich enough to purchase
it.  Jugurth, viii. 20, 3.

[43]  A.U.C. 695.

[44]  The proceedings of the senate were reported in short notes taken by
one of their own order, "strangers" not being admitted at their sittings.
These notes included speeches as well as acts.  These and the proceedings
of the assemblies of the people, were daily published in journals
[diurna] which contained also accounts of the trials at law, with
miscellaneous intelligence of births and deaths, marriages and divorces.
The practice of publishing the proceedings of the senate, introduced by
Julius Caesar, was discontinued by Augustus.

[45]  Within the city, the lictors walked before only one of the consuls,
and that commonly for a month alternately.  A public officer, called
Accensus, preceded the other consul, and the lictors followed.  This
custom had long been disused, but was now restored by Caesar.

[46]  In order that he might be a candidate for the tribuneship of the
people; it was done late in the evening, at an unusual hour for public
business.

[47]  Gaul was divided into two provinces, Transalpine, or Gallia
Ulterior, and Cisalpina, or Citerior.  The Citerior, having nearly the
same limits as Lombardy in after times, was properly a part of Italy,
occupied by colonists from Gaul, and, having the Rubicon, the ancient
boundary of Italy, on the south.  It was also called Gallia Togata, from
the use of the Roman toga; the inhabitants being, after the social war,
admitted to the right of citizens.  The Gallia Transalpina, or Ulterior,
was called Comata, from the people wearing their hair long, while the
Romans wore it short; and the southern part, afterwards called
Narbonensis, came to have the epithet Braccata, from the use of the
braccae, which were no part of the Roman dress.  Some writers suppose the
braccae to have been breeches, but Aldus, in a short disquisition on the
subject, affirms that they were a kind of upper dress.  And this opinion
seems to be countenanced by the name braccan being applied by the modern
Celtic nations, the descendants of the Gallic Celts, to signify their
upper garment, or plaid.

[48]  Alluding, probably, to certain scandals of a gross character
which were rife against Caesar.  See before, c. ii. (p. 2) and see also
c. xlix.

[49]  So called from the feathers on their helmets, resembling the crest
of a lark; Alauda, Fr. Alouette.

[50]  Days appointed by the senate for public thanksgiving in the temples
in the name of a victorious general, who had in the decrees the title of
emperor, by which they were saluted by the legions.

[51]  A.U.C. 702.

[52]  Aurelia.

[53]  Julia, the wife of Pompey, who died in childbirth.

[54] Conquest had so multiplied business at Rome, that the Roman Forum
became too little for transacting it, and could not be enlarged without
clearing away the buildings with which it was surrounded.  Hence the
enormous sum which its site is said to have cost, amounting, it is
calculated, to 809,291 pounds of our money.  It stood near the old forum,
behind the temple of Romulus and Remus, but not a vestige of it remains.

[55]  Comum was a town of the Orobii, of ancient standing, and formerly
powerful.  Julius Caesar added to it five thousand new colonists; whence
it was generally called Novocomum.  But in time it recovered its ancient
name, Comum; Pliny the younger, who was a native of this place, calling
it by no other name.

[56]  A.U.C. 705.

[57]  Eiper gar adikein chrae, tyrannidos peri
      Kalliston adikein talla de eusebein chreon.
--Eurip. Phoeniss. Act II, where Eteocles aspires to become the tyrant of
Thebes.

[58]  Now the Pisatello; near Rimini.  There was a very ancient law of
the republic, forbidding any general, returning from the wars, to cross
the Rubicon with his troops under arms.

[59]  The ring was worn on the finger next to the little finger of the
left hand.

[60]  Suetonius here accounts for the mistake of the soldiers with great
probability.  The class to which they imagined they were to be promoted,
was that of the equites, or knights, who wore a gold ring, and were
possessed of property to the amount stated in the text.  Great as was the
liberality of Caesar to his legions, the performance of this imaginary
promise was beyond all reasonable expectation.

[61]  A.U.C. 706.

[62]  Elephants were first introduced at Rome by Pompey the Great, in his
African triumph.

[63]  VENI, VIDI, VICI.

[64]  A.U.C. 708.

[65]  Gladiators were first publicly exhibited at Rome by two brothers
called Bruti, at the funeral of their father, A.U.C. 490; and for some
time they were exhibited only on such occasions.  But afterwards they
were also employed by the magistrates, to entertain the people,
particularly at the Saturnalia, and feasts of Minerva.  These cruel
spectacles were prohibited by Constantine, but not entirely suppressed
until the time of Honorius.

[66]  The Circensian games were shews exhibited in the Circus Maximus,
and consisted of various kinds: first, chariot and horse-races, of which.
the Romans were extravagantly fond.  The charioteers were distributed
into four parties, distinguished by the colour of their dress.  The
spectators, without regarding the speed of the horses, or the skill of
the men, were attracted merely by one or the other of the colours, as
caprice inclined them.  In the time of Justinian, no less than thirty
thousand men lost their lives at Constantinople, in a tumult raised by a
contention amongst the partizans of the several colours.  Secondly,
contests of agility and strength; of which there were five kinds, hence
called Pentathlum.  These were, running, leaping, boxing, wrestling, and
throwing the discus or quoit.  Thirdly, Ludus Trojae, a mock-fight,
performed by young noblemen on horseback, revived by Julius Caesar, and
frequently celebrated by the succeeding emperors.  We meet with a
description of it in the fifth book of the Aeneid, beginning with the
following lines:

    Incedunt pueri, pariterque ante ora parentum
    Fraenatis lucent in equis: quos omnis euntes
    Trinacriae mirata fremit Trojaeque juventus.

Fourthly, Venatio, which was the fighting of wild beasts with one
another, or with men called Bestiarii, who were either forced to the
combat by way of punishment, as the primitive Christians were, or fought
voluntarily, either from a natural ferocity of disposition, or induced by
hire.  An incredible number of animals of various kinds were brought from
all quarters, at a prodigious expense, for the entertainment of the
people.  Pompey, in his second consulship, exhibited at once five hundred
lions, which were all dispatched in five days; also eighteen elephants.
Fifthly the representation of a horse and foot battle, with that of an
encampment or a siege.  Sixthly, the representation of a sea-fight
(Naumachia), which was at first made in the Circus Maximus, but
afterwards elsewhere.  The combatants were usually captives or condemned
malefactors, who fought to death, unless saved by the clemency of the
emperor.  If any thing unlucky happened at the games, they were renewed,
and often more than once.

[67]  A meadow beyond the Tiber, in which an excavation was made,
supplied with water from the river.

[68]  Julius Caesar was assisted by Sosigenes, an Egyptian philosopher,
in correcting the calendar.  For this purpose he introduced an additional
day every fourth year, making February to consist of twenty-nine days
instead of twenty-eight, and, of course, the whole year to consist of
three hundred and sixty-six days.  The fourth year was denominated
Bissextile, or leap year, because the sixth day before the calends, or
first of March, was reckoned twice.

The Julian year was introduced throughout the Roman empire, and continued
in general use till the year 1582.  But the true correction was not six
hours, but five hours, forty-nine minutes; hence the addition was too
great by eleven minutes.  This small fraction would amount in one hundred
years to three-fourths of a day, and in a thousand years to more than
seven days.  It had, in fact, amounted, since the Julian correction, in
1582, to more than seven days.  Pope Gregory XIII., therefore, again
reformed the calendar, first bringing forward the year ten days, by
reckoning the 5th of October the 15th, and then prescribing the rule
which has gradually been adopted throughout Christendom, except in
Russia, and the Greek church generally.

[69]  Principally Carthage and Corinth.

[70]  The Latus Clavus was a broad stripe of purple, on the front of the
toga.  Its width distinguished it from that of the knights, who wore it
narrow.

[71]  The Suburra lay between the Celian and Esquiline hills.  It was one
of the most frequented quarters of Rome.

[72]  Bede, quoting Solinus, we believe, says that excellent pearls were
found in the British seas, and that they were of all colours, but
principally white.  Eccl. Hist. b. i. c. 1.

[73]  --------Bithynia quicquid
      Et predicator Caesaris unquam habuit.

[74]  Gallias Caesar subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem;
      Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat, qui subegit Gallias:
      Nicomedes non triumphat, qui subegit Caesarem.

[75]  Aegisthus, who, like Caesar, was a pontiff, debauched Clytemnestra
while Agamemnon was engaged in the Trojan war, as Caesar did Mucia, the
wife of Pompey, while absent in the war against Mithridates.

[76]  A double entendre; Tertia signifying the third [of the value of the
farm], as well as being the name of the girl, for whose favours the
deduction was made.

[77]  Urbani, servate uxores; moechum calvum adducimus:
      Aurum in Gallia effutuisti, hic sumpsisti mutuum.

[78]  Plutarch tells us that the oil was used in a dish of asparagus.
Every traveller knows that in those climates oil takes the place of
butter as an ingredient in cookery, and it needs no experience to fancy
what it is when rancid.

[79]  Meritoria rheda; a light four-wheeled carriage, apparently hired
either for the journey or from town to town.  They were tolerably
commodious, for Cicero writes to Atticus, (v. 17.) Hanc epistolam dictavi
sedens in rheda, cum in castra proficiscerer.

[80]  Plutarch informs us that Caesar travelled with such expedition,
that he reached the Rhone on the eighth day after he left Rome.

[81]  Caesar tells us himself that he employed C. Volusenus to
reconnoitre the coast of Britain, sending him forward in a long ship,
with orders to return and make his report before the expedition sailed.

[82]  Religione; that is, the omens being unfavourable.

[83]  The standard of the Roman legions was an eagle fixed on the head of
a spear.  It was silver, small in size, with expanded wings, and
clutching a golden thunderbolt in its claw.

[84]  To save them from the torture of a lingering death.

[85]  Now Lerida, in Catalonia.

[86]  The title of emperor was not new in Roman history; 1. It was
sometimes given by the acclamations of the soldiers to those who
commanded them.  2. It was synonymous with conqueror, and the troops
hailed him by that title after a victory.  In both these cases it was
merely titular, and not permanent, and was generally written after the
proper name, as Cicero imperator, Lentulo imperatore.  3. It assumed a
permanent and royal character first in the person of Julius Caesar, and
was then generally prefixed to the emperor's name in inscriptions, as
IMP. CAESAR. DIVI. etc.

[87]  Cicero was the first who received the honour of being called "Pater
patriae."

[88]  Statues were placed in the Capitol of each of the seven kings of
Rome, to which an eighth was added in honour of Brutus, who expelled the
last.  The statue of Julius Caesar was afterwards raised near them.

[89]  The white fillet was one of the insignia of royalty.  Plutarch, on
this occasion, uses the expression, diadaemati basiliko, a royal diadem.

[90]  The Lupercalia was a festival, celebrated in a place called the
Lupercal, in the month of February, in honour of Pan.  During the
solemnity, the Luperci, or priests of that god, ran up and down the city
naked, with only a girdle of goat's skin round their waist, and thongs of
the same in their hands; with which they struck those they met,
particularly married women, who were thence supposed to be rendered
prolific.

[91]  Persons appointed to inspect and expound the Sibylline books.

[92]  A.U.C. 709.

[93]  See before, c. xxii.

[94]  This senate-house stood in that part of the Campus Martius which is
now the Campo di Fiore, and was attached by Pompey, "spoliis Orientis
Onustus," to the magnificent theatre, which he built A.U.C. 698, in his
second consulship.  His statue, at the foot of which Caesar fell, as
Plutarch tells us, was placed in it.  We shall find that Augustus caused
it to be removed.

[95] The stylus, or graphium, was an iron pen, broad at one end, with a
sharp point at the other, used for writing upon waxen tables, the leaves
or bark of trees, plates of brass, or lead, etc.  For writing upon paper
or parchment, the Romans employed a reed, sharpened and split in the
point like our pens, called calamus, arundo, or canna.  This they dipped
in the black liquor emitted by the cuttle fish, which served for ink.

[96]  It was customary among the ancients, in great extremities to shroud
the face, in order to conceal any symptoms of horror or alarm which the
countenance might express.  The skirt of the toga was drawn round the
lower extremities, that there might be no exposure in falling, as the
Romans, at this period, wore no covering for the thighs and legs.

[97]  Caesar's dying apostrophe to Brutus is represented in all the
editions of Suetonius as uttered in Greek, but with some variations.  The
words, as here translated, are Kai su ei ekeinon; kai su teknon.  The
Salmasian manuscript omits the latter clause.  Some commentators suppose
that the words "my son," were not merely expressive of the difference of
age, or former familiarity between them, but an avowal that Brutus was
the fruit of the connection between Julius and Servilia, mentioned before
[see p. 33].  But it appears very improbable that Caesar, who had never
before acknowledged Brutus to be his son, should make so unnecessary an
avowal, at the moment of his death.  Exclusively of this objection, the
apostrophe seems too verbose, both for the suddenness and urgency of the
occasion.  But this is not all.  Can we suppose that Caesar, though a
perfect master of Greek, would at such a time have expressed himself in
that language, rather than in Latin, his familiar tongue, and in which he
spoke with peculiar elegance?  Upon the whole, the probability is, that
the words uttered by Caesar were, Et tu Brute! which, while equally
expressive of astonishment with the other version, and even of
tenderness, are both more natural, and more emphatic.

[98]  Men' me servasse, ut essent qui me perderent?

[99]  The Bulla, generally made of gold, was a hollow globe, which boys
wore upon their breast, pendant from a string or ribbon put round the
neck.  The sons of freedmen and poor citizens used globes of leather.

[100]  Josephus frequently mentions the benefits conferred on his
countrymen by Julius Caesar.  Antiq. Jud. xiv. 14, 15, 16.

[101]  Appian informs us that it was burnt by the people in their fury,
B. c. xi. p. 521.

[102]  Suetonius particularly refers to the conspirators, who perished at
the battle of Philippi, or in the three years which intervened.  The
survivors were included in the reconciliation of Augustus, Antony, and
Pompey, A.U.C. 715.

[103]  Suetonius alludes to Brutus and Cassius, of whom this is related
by Plutarch and Dio.

[104]  For observations on Dr. Thomson's Essays appended to Suetonius's
History of Julius Caesar, and the succeeding Emperors, see the Preface to
this volume.

[105]  He who has a devoted admiration of Cicero, may be sure that he has
made no slight proficiency himself.





End of Project Gutenberg's Caius Julius Caesar, by C. Suetonius Tranquillus

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