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.