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His work is, in some sense, a collection of anecdotes, but it is very curious to read and consult."
Julius Caesar, the Divine 3, lost his father 4 when he was in the sixteenth
being nominated to the office of high-priest of Jupiter 6
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Caesar, despairing of success in this rash stratagem, is supposed to have taken off his informer by poison.
and gave his own daughter Julia to Cneius Pompey; rejecting Servilius Caepio, to whom she had been contracted,
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.
senators observing, sarcastically: "That will not be very easy for a woman 48 to do,"
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.
He also invaded the Britons, a people formerly unknown, and having vanquished them, exacted from them contributions and hostages. Amidst
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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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;
prefer an impeachment ag...
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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,
Be just, unless a kingdom tempts to break the laws, For sovereign power alone can justify the cause.
on the banks of the Rubicon,
which was the boundary of his province
He succeeded, however, in his enterprise, and put the kingdom of Egypt into the hands of Cleopatra and her younger brother;
the other instance occurred in his last battle in Spain, when, despairing of the event, he even had thoughts of killing himself.
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
In the conflict of gladiators presented in the Forum,
Campus Martius.
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
"Caesar the dictator
he reduced the number of those who received corn at the public cost, from three hundred and twenty, to a hundred and fifty, thousand.
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.
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.
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.
He therefore used to bring forward the hair from the crown of his head;
he carried about in his expeditions tesselated and marble slabs for the floor of his tent.
his greatest favourite was Cleopatra, with whom he often revelled all night until the dawn of day,
"He was every woman's man, and every man's woman."
Which of them is more pointed or terse in his periods, or employs more polished and elegant language?"
He never valued a soldier for his moral conduct or his means, but for his courage only;
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.
and that one of the months should be called by his name.
Men ought to consider what is becoming when they talk with me, and look upon what I say as a law."
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."
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.
Caius Cassius, and Marcus and Decimus Brutus
