JULIUS CAESAR, the divine, lost his
					father when he was in the
					sixteenth year of his age; and the year following, being nominated to
					the office of high-priest of Jupiter ,
						 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 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, was compelled to withdraw from Rome . After changing his place of concealment
					nearly every night, 
					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."

His first campaign was served in Asia ,
					on the staff of the praetor, M. Thermus; and being dispatched into Bithynia , to bring thence a fleet, he loitered so
					long at the court of Nicomedes, as to give occasion to reports of lewd
					proceedings 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 freedman, his client. The rest of his
					service was more favourable to his reputation; and when Mitylene 
					 was taken by storm, he was presented by Thermus with the civic crown.

He served also in Cilicia , 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.

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 , with the view not only of avoiding the public
					odium 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, 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. Fifty talents having been paid down, he was landed on the coast, when,
					having collected some ships, 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.

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; which law he supported by a speech.

During his quaestorship he pronounced funeral orations from the rostra, according
					to custom, in praise of his aunt 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, 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, that the senate instituted an inquiry respecting the
					profanation of the sacred rites.

Farther-Spain 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 ages 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 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.

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.

For, only a few days before he entered upon the edileship, 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. 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 in his history, by Marcus Bibulus in his edicts, and by Curio, the father, in his orations. Cicero likewise seems to hint at this in a letter to
						 Axius , where he says, that Caesar
					had in his consulship secured to himself that arbitrary power 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. 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.

In his edileship, he not only embellished the Comitium, and the rest of the Forum, with the adjoining halls, but adorned the Capitol also, with
					temporary piazzas, constructed for the purpose of displaying some part of the
					superabundant collections he had made for the amusement of the people. 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 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 .

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, 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 honor 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.

He likewise suborned some one to prefer an impeachment 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.

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.

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, 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 of 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; 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.

Upon the first day of his praetorship, he summoned Quintus Catulus to render an
					account to the people respecting the repairs to the Capitol; proposing a decree for transferring the office of curator to
					another person. 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, and fully resolved to resist his proposal, he dropped the
					design.

He afterwards approved himself a most resolute supporter of Caecilius Metellus,
					tribune of the people, who, in spite of all opposition from his colleagues, had
					proposed some laws of a violent tendency, 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 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.

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.

At the expiration of his praetorship he obtained by lot the Farther- Spain , and pacified his creditors, who were for
					detaining him, by finding sureties for his debts. 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 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, 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. 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.

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. 
					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 showed 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 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.

Having entered upon his office, he
					introduced a new regulation, that the daily acts both of the senate and people
					should be committed to writing, and published. He also revived an old custom, that an
						officer 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. 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. 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.

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 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.

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 also, the senators being apprehensive, that if they should refuse
					it to 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 to do," he jocosely
					replied, "Semiramis formerly reigned in Assyria, and the Amazons possessed great
					part of Asia ."

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
					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 this 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.

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 with 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, 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 of supplication, and
					those more frequently, than had ever before been decreed to any commander.

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.

During this period he lost his
						mother, whose death was followed by that
					of his daughter, 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 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. 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.

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 freedmen 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 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.

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; because it had been conferred upon them with ambitious views, and by a
					stretch of the laws.

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, on condition that
					he might retain two legions, with the Cisalpine province, or but one legion with
						 Illyricum , until he should be
					elected consul.

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, 
					and, having gone to 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
					called to account for what he had done in his 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: aiis rebus pietatem colas. 
					 Be just, unless a kingdom tempts to break the laws, 
						 For sovereign power alone can justify the cause.

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 wandered 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, 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."

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 where the omens of the Gods and the iniquity
					of our enemies call us. The die is now cast."

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 honor, 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 of
					wearing the gold ring, and an estate of four hundred thousand sesterces.

Of his subsequent proceedings I shall give a cursory detail, in the order in
					which they occurred. 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 ra general
					without an army." Though his progress was retarded both by the siege of
						 Marseilles , which shut her agates
					against him, and a very great scarcity of corn, yet in a short time he bore down
					all before him.

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 tinformed 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 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 .

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 Calvinus, 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.

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 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 an axle-tree, he as cended the Capitol by
					torch-light, forty elephants 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; not
					signifying, as other mottos on the like occasion, what was done, so much as the
					dispatch with which it was done.

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, 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.

The spectacles he exhibited to the people were of various kinds; namely. a combat
					of gladiators, and stage-plays in the
					several wards of the city, and in different languages; likewise Circensian
					games, 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
					ol 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
					allotted for the equestrian order. In the Circensian 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, 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.

Turning afterwards his attention to the regulation of the commonwealth, he
					corrected the calendar, which had for 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.

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.

Eighty thousand citizens having been distributed into foreign colonies, 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.

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 praetorian 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
					carry away such victuals as had escaped the notice of the officers, even when
					they were upon the table.

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.

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 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 on 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 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."

He first inhabited a small house in the Suburra, 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.

They likewise report that he invaded Britain in hopes of finding pearls, 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.

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 highest 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.



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." 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.

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.

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 Ethiopia , 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 to 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."

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 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, 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."

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.

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 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.

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 productions 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 of
					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 (Edipus, 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.

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 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.

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, 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,
					notwithstand, ing 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.

He was never deterred from any enterprise, nor retarded in the prosecution of it,
					by superstition. When a
					victim, which he was about to offer in sacrifice, made its 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.

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.

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.

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, 
					thus stopped, made a thrust at him with the spear-head; and another, upon a
					similar occasion, left the standard in his hand.

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 ferryboat, 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.

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.

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.

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. 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."

He neither noticed all their trangressions, 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 defense of my honour, I
					should have made them the same recompense."

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
					them 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.

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.
						 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 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."

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 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 Ilerda 
					 for a
					surrender, which gave rise to a free communication between the two camps, and
					Afranius and Petreius, upon a sudden change of resolu* tion, 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 freedmen 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 Pitholaiis, most highly reflecting on his
					reputation.

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, and the surname of FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY,
						 besides having his statue amongst the kings, 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
					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 praetorian rank. He admitted into the senate some men who had
					made free of the city, and even natives of Gaul, who were semi-barbarians. 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.

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."

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."

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 of the
					people, a man in the crowd put a laurel crown, encircled with a white
						fillet, 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, 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,
						 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.

For this reason the conspirators precipitated the execution of their design, 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 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 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 Cesetius 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, or some bf
					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.

Casar had warning given him of his fate by indubitable omens. A few months
					before, when the colonists settled at Capua , by virtue of the Julian law, were demolishing some old
					sepulchres, in building countryhouses, 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, 
					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 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."

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, Casar made signs that he
					should defer his petition to some other time. Tullius immediately seized him by
					the toga, on both shoulders; at which Casar 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; and endeavouring to rush forward, was stopped by another wound.
					Finding himself now attacked on all hands with naked poniards, he wrapped the
						toga 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!" The
					whole assembly instantly 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.

At the instance of Lucius Piso, his fatherin-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 Lavica 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. He bequeathed to the Roman people his gardens near the Tiber , and three hundred sesterces each
					man.

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
					[blood-stained] 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? 
					 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 faggots, 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 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 , 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, who for several nights together frequented the spot where the body was
					burnt.

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.

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 anything
					should befall him, would have no rest, and, involved in another civil war, would
					be in a worse state than before.

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_unagx pected.

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, and a decree made that the ides of March
					should be called parricidal, and the senate should never more assemble on that
					day.

Scarcely any of those who were accessory to his murder, survived him more than
					three years, or died a natural death. 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.

Remarks on Julius Caesar 
				 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 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 Casar 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 human kind, 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 accessory 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 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 $4,ooo000,000; he raised legions in
						 Gaul at his own charges; he
					promised such entertamments 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 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.