In the course of his sixteenth year he
 lost his father. In the next consulate, having previously been nominated priest of
 Jupiter, he broke his engagement with Cossutia, a lady of only
 equestrian rank, but very wealthy, who had been betrothed to him before he assumed the
 gown of manhood, and married Cornelia, daughter of that Cinna who was four times
 consul, by whom he presently had a daughter Julia; and the dictator Sulla could by no
 means force him to put away his wife.

Therefore besides being punished by the loss of his priesthood, his wife’s dowry, and
 his family inheritances, Caesar was held to be one of the opposite party. He was
 accordingly forced to go into hiding, and though suffering from a severe attack of
 quartan ague, to change from one covert to another almost every night, and save
 himself from Sulla’s detectives by bribes. But at last, through the good offices of
 the Vestal virgins and of his near kinsmen, Aemilius Mamercus and Aurelius Cotta, he
 obtained forgiveness.

Everyone knows that when Sulla had long held out against the most
 devoted and eminent men of his party who interceded for Caesar, and they obstinately
 persisted, he at last gave way and cried, either by divine inspiration or a shrewd
 forecast: Have your way and take him; only bear in mind that the man
 you are so eager to save will one day deal the death blow to the cause of the
 aristocracy, which you have joined with me in upholding; for in this Caesar there is
 more than one Marius.

He served his first campaign in Asia on the personal staff of
 Marcus Thermus, governor of the province. Being sent by Thermus to Bithynia, to fetch
 a fleet, he dawdled so long at the court of Nicodemes that he was suspected of
 improper relations with the king; and he lent colour to this scandal by going back to
 Bithynia a few days after his return, with the alleged purpose of collecting a debt
 for a freedman, one of his dependents. During the rest of the campaign he enjoyed a
 better reputation, and at the storming of Mytilene Thermus awarded him the civic
 crown.

He served too under Servilius Isauricus in Cilicia, but only for
 a short time; for learning of the death of Sulla, and at the same time hoping to
 profit by a counter revolution which Marcus Lepidus was setting on foot, he hurriedly
 returned to Rome. But he did not make common cause with Lepidus, although he was
 offered highly favourable terms, through lack of confidence both in that leader’s
 capacity and in the outlook, which he found less promising than he had expected.

Then, after the civil disturbance had been quieted, he brought a
 charge of extortion against Cornelius Dolabella, an ex-consul who had been honoured with a triumph. On the acquittal of Dolabella Caesar determined to
 withdraw to Rhodes, to escape from the ill-will which he had incurred, and at the same
 time to rest and have leisure to study under Apollonius Molo, the most eminent teacher
 of oratory of that time. While crossing to Rhodes, after the winter season had already
 begun, he was taken by pirates near the island of Pharmacussa and remained in their
 custody for nearly forty days in a state of intense vexation, attended only by a
 single physician and two body-servants;

for he had sent off his travelling companions and the rest of his attendants at the
 outset, to raise money for his ransom. Once he was set on shore on payment of fifty
 talents, he did not delay then and there to launch a fleet and pursue the departing
 pirates, and the moment they were in his power to inflict on them the punishment which
 he had often threatened when joking with them. He then proceeded to Rhodes, but as Mithridates was devastating the
 neighbouring regions, he crossed over into Asia, to avoid the appearance of inaction
 when the allies of the Roman people were in danger. There he levied a band of
 auxiliaries and drove the king’s prefect from the province, thus holding the wavering
 and irresolute states to their allegiance.

While serving as military tribune, the first office which was
 conferred on him by vote of the people after his return to Rome, he ardently supported
 the leaders in the attempt to re-establish the authority of the tribunes of the
 commons, the extent of which Sulla had curtailed. Furthermore, through a bill proposed
 by one Plotius, he effected the recall of his wife’s brother Lucius Cinna, as well as of the others who had taken part with Lepidus in his revolution and
 after the consul’s death had fled to Sertorius; and he personally spoke in favour of
 the measure.

When quaestor, he pronounced the customary orations from the
 rostra in praise of his aunt Julia and his wife Cornelia, who had both died. And in
 the eulogy of his aunt he spoke in the following terms of her paternal and maternal
 ancestry and that of his own father: The family of my aunt Julia is
 descended by her mother from the kings, and on her father’s side is akin to the
 immortal Gods; for the Marcii Reges (her mother’s family name) go back to Ancus
 Marcius, and the Julii, the family of which ours is a branch, to Venus. Our stock
 therefore has at once the sanctity of kings, whose power is supreme among mortal
 men, and the claim to reverence which attaches to the Gods, who hold sway over kings
 themselves.

In place of Cornelia he took to wife Pompeia, daughter of
 Quintus Pompeius and granddaughter of Lucius Sulla. But he afterward divorced her,
 suspecting her of adultery with Publius Clodius; and in fact the report that Clodius
 had gained access to her in woman’s garb during a public religious ceremony was
 so persistent, that the senate decreed that the pollution of the sacred rites be
 judicially investigated.

As quaestor it fell to his lot to serve in Farther Spain. When
 he was there, while making the circuit of the assize-towns, to hold court under
 commission from the praetor, he came to Gades, and noticing a statue of Alexander the
 Great in the temple of Hercules, he heaved a sigh, and as if out of patience with his
 own incapacity in having as yet done nothing noteworthy at a time of
 life when Alexander had already brought the world to his feet, he straightway asked
 for his discharge, to grasp the first opportunity for greater enterprises at Rome.

Furthermore, when he was dismayed by a dream the following night (for he thought that
 he had offered violence to his mother) the soothsayers inspired him with high hopes by
 their interpretation, which was: that he was destined to rule the world, since the
 mother whom he had seen in his power was none other than the earth, which is regarded
 as the common parent of all mankind.

Departing therefore before his term was over, he went to the
 Latin colonies which were in a state of unrest and meditating a demand for
 citizenship ; and
 he might have spurred them on to some rash act, had not the consuls, in anticipation
 of that very danger, detained there for a time the legions which had been enrolled for
 service in Cilicia.

For all that he presently made a more daring attempt at Rome;
 for a few days before he entered upon his aedileship he was suspected of having made a
 conspiracy with Marcus Crassus, an ex-consul, and likewise with Publius Sulla and
 Lucius Autronius, who, after their election to the consulship, had been found guilty
 of corrupt practices. The design was to set upon the senate at the opening of the year
 and put to the sword as many as they thought good; then Crassus was to usurp the
 dictatorship, naming Caesar as his master of horse, and when they had organized the
 state according to their pleasure, the consulship was to be restored to Sulla and
 Autronius.

This plot is mentioned by Tanusius Geminus in his History, by Marcus
 Bibulus in his edicts, and by Gaius Curio the elder in his speeches. Cicero too seems
 to hint at it in a letter to Axius, where he says that Caesar in his consulship
 established the despotism which he had had in mind when he was aedile. Tanusius adds
 that Crassus, either conscience-stricken or moved by fear, did not appear on the day
 appointed for the massacre, and that therefore Caesar did not give the signal which it
 had been agreed that he should give;

and Curio says that the arrangement was that Caesar should let his toga fall from his
 shoulder. Not only Curio, but Marcus Actorius Naso as well declare that Caesar made
 another plot with Gnaeus Piso, a young man to whom the province of Spain had been
 assigned unasked and out of the regular order, because he was suspected of political
 intrigues at Rome; that they agreed to rise in revolt at the same time, Piso abroad
 and Caesar at Rome, aided by the Ambrani and the peoples beyond the Po; but that
 Piso’s death brought both their designs to naught.

When aedile, Caesar decorated not only the Comitium and the Forum with its
 adjacent basilicas, but the Capitol as well, building temporary colonnades for the
 display of a part of his material. He exhibited combats with wild beasts and
 stage-plays too, both with his colleague and independently. The result was that Caesar
 alone took all the credit even for what they spent in common, and his colleague Marcus
 Bibulus openly said that his was the fate of Pollux: For, said
 he, just as the temple erected in the Forum to the twin brethren,
 bears only the name of Castor, so the joint liberality of Caesar and myself is
 credited to Caesar alone.

Caesar gave a gladiatorial show besides, but with somewhat fewer pairs
 of combatants than he had purposed; for the huge band which he assembled from all
 quarters so terrified his opponents, that a bill was passed limiting the number of
 gladiators which anyone was to be allowed to keep in the city.

Having won the goodwill of the masses, Caesar made an attempt
 through some of the tribunes to have the charge of Egypt given him by a decree of the
 commons, seizing the opportunity to ask for so irregular an appointment because the
 citizens of Alexandria had deposed their king, who had been named by the senate an
 ally and friend of the Roman people, and their action was generally condemned. He
 failed however because of the opposition of the aristocratic party; wishing therefore
 to impair their prestige in every way he could, he restored the trophies commemorating
 the victories of Gaius Marius over Jugurtha and over the Cimbri and Teutones, which
 Sulla had long since demolished. Furthermore in conducting prosecutions for
 murder, he included in the number of murderers even those who
 had received moneys from the public treasury during the proscriptions for bringing in
 the heads of Roman citizens, although they were expressly exempted by the Cornelian
 laws.

He also bribed a man to bring a charge of high treason against
 Gaius Rabirius, who some years before had rendered conspicuous service to the senate
 in repressing the seditious designs of the tribune Lucius Saturninus; and when he had
 been selected by lot to sentence the accused, he did so with such eagerness,
 that when Rabirius appealed to the people, nothing was so much in his
 favour as the bitter hostility of his judge.

After giving up hope of the special commission, he announced his candidacy
 for the office of pontifex maximus, resorting to the most lavish bribery. Thinking on
 the enormous debt which he had thus contracted, he is said to have declared to his
 mother on the morning of the election, as she kissed him when he was starting for the
 polls, that he would never return except as pontifex. And in fact he so decisively
 defeated two very strong competitors (for they were greatly his superiors in age and
 rank), that he polled more votes in their tribes than were cast for both of them in
 all the tribes.

When the conspiracy of Catiline was detected, and all the rest
 of the senate favoured inflicting the extreme penalty on those implicated in the plot,
 Caesar, who was now praetor elect, alone proposed that their goods be confiscated and
 that they be imprisoned each in a separate town. Nay, more, he inspired such fear in
 those who favoured severer measures, by picturing the hatred which the Roman commons
 would feel for them for all future time, that Decimus Silanus, consul elect, was not
 ashamed to give a milder interpretation to his proposal (since it would have been
 humiliating to change it) alleging that it had been understood in a harsher sense than
 he intended.

Caesar would have prevailed too, for a number had already gone over to him, including
 Cicero, the consul’s brother, had not the address of Marcus Cato kept the wavering
 senate in line. Yet not even then did he cease to delay the proceedings, but only when
 an armed troop of Roman knights that stood on guard about the place
 threatened him with death as he persisted in his headstrong opposition. They even drew
 their swords and made such passes at him that his friends who sat next him forsook
 him, while a few had much ado to shield him in their embrace or with their robes.
 Then, in evident fear, he not only yielded the point, but for the rest of the year
 kept aloof from the House.

On the first day of his praetorship, he called upon Quintus
 Catulus to render an account to the people touching the restoration of the Capitol,
 proposing a bill for turning over the commission to another. But he withdrew the measure, since he could not
 cope with the united opposition of the aristocrats, seeing that they had at once
 dropped their attendance on the newly elected consulsnote and hastily gathered in throngs, resolved on an obstinate
 resistance.

Nevertheless, when Caecilius Metellus, tribune of the commons,
 brought forward some bills of a highly seditious nature in spite of the veto of his
 colleagues, Caesar abetted him and espoused his cause in the stubbornest fashion,
 until at last both were suspended from the exercise of their public functions by a
 decree of the senate. Yet in spite of this Caesar had the audacity to continue in
 office and to hold court; but when he learned that some were ready to stop him by
 force of arms, he dismissed his lictors, laid aside his robe of office, and slipped
 off privily to his house, intending to remain in retirement because of the state of
 the times.

Indeed, when the populace on the following day flocked to him quite of their own
 accord, and with riotous demonstrations offered him their aid in
 recovering his position, he held them in check. Since this action of his was wholly
 unexpected, the senate, which had been hurriedly convoked to take action about that
 very gathering, publicly thanked him through its leading men; then summoning him to
 the House and lauding him in the strongest terms, they rescinded their former decree
 and restored him to his rank.

He again fell into danger by being named among the accomplices
 of Catiline, both before the commissioner Novius Niger by an informer called Lucius
 Vettius and in the senate by Quintus Curius, who had been voted a sum of money from
 the public funds as the first to disclose the plans of the conspirators. Curius
 alleged that his information came directly from Catiline, while Vettius actually
 offered to produce a letter to Catiline in Caesar’s handwriting.

But Caesar, thinking that such an indignity could in no wise be endured, showed by
 appealing to Cicero’s testimony that he had of his own accord reported to the consul
 certain details of the plot, and thus prevented Curius from getting the reward. As for
 Vettius, after his bond was declared forfeit and his goods seized, he was roughly
 handled by the populace assembled before the rostra, and all but torn to pieces.
 Caesar then put him in prison, and Novius the commissioner went there too, for
 allowing an official of superior rank to be arraigned before his tribunal.

Being allotted the province of Farther Spain after his
 praetorship, Caesar got rid of his creditors, who tried to detain him, by means of
 sureties and contrary both to precedent and law was on his way before
 the provinces were provided for , possibly through fear
 of a private impeachment or perhaps to respond more promptly to the entreaties of the
 allies for help. After restoring order in his province, he made off with equal haste,
 and without waiting for the arrival of his successor, to sue at the same time for a
 triumph and the consulship.

But inasmuch as the day for the elections had already been announced and no account
 be taken of Caesar’s candidacy unless he entered the city as a private citizen, and
 since his intrigues to gain exemption from the laws met with general protest, he was
 forced to forgo the triumph, to avoid losing the consul­ship.

Of the two other candidates for this office, Lucius Lucceius and
 Marcus Bibulus, Caesar joined forces with the former, making a bargain with him that
 since Lucceius had less influence but more funds, he should in their common name
 promise largess to the electors from his own pocket. When this became known, the
 aristocracy authorized Bibulus to promise the same amount, being seized with fear that
 Caesar would stick at nothing when he became chief magistrate, if he had a colleague
 who was heart and soul with him. Many of them contributed to the fund, and even Cato
 did not deny that bribery under such circumstances was for the good of the
 commonwealth.

So Caesar was chosen consul with Bibulus. With the same motives
 the aristocracy took care that provinces of the smallest importance should be assigned
 to the newly elected consuls; that is, mere woods and pastures. Thereupon Caesar,
 especially incensed by this slight, by every possible attention courted the goodwill of Gnaeus Pompeius, who was at odds with the senate because of
 its tardiness in ratifying his acts after his victory over king Mithridates. He also
 patched up a peace between Pompeius and Marcus Crassus, who had been enemies since
 their consulship, which had been one of constant wrangling. Then he made a compact
 with both of them, that no step should be taken in public affairs which did not suit
 any one of the three.

Caesar’s very first enactment after becoming consul was, that
 the proceedings both of the senate and of the people should day by day be compiled and
 published. He also revived a by-gone custom, that during the months when he did not
 have the fasces an orderly should walk before him, while the lictors followed him.He
 brought forward an agrarian law too, and when his colleague announced adverse
 omens, he resorted to arms and
 drove him from the Forum; and when next day Bibulus made complaint in the senate and
 no one could be found who ventured to make a motion, or even to express an opinion
 about so high-handed a proceeding (although decrees had often been passed touching
 less serious breaches of the peace), Caesar’s conduct drove him to such a pitch of
 desperation, that from that time until the end of his term he did not leave his house,
 but merely issued proclamations announcing adverse omens.

From that time on Caesar managed all the affairs of state alone and after his own
 pleasure; so that sundry witty fellows, pretending by way of jest to sign and seal
 testamentary documents, wrote Done in the
 consulship of Julius and Caesar, instead of Bibulus and
 Caesar, writing down the same man twice, by name and by surname.
 Presently too the following verses were on everyone’s lips:— In Caesar’s year, not Bibulus’, an act took place of
 late; 
 For naught do I remember done in Bibulus’ consulate.

The plain called Stellas, which had been devoted to the gods by
 the men of by-gone days, and the Campanian territory, which had been reserved to pay
 revenues for the aid of the government, he divided without casting lots among twenty
 thousand citizens who had three or more children each. When the publicans asked for
 relief, he freed them from a third part of their obligation, and openly warned them in
 contracting for taxes in the future not to bid too recklessly. He freely granted
 everything else that anyone took it into his head to ask, either without opposition or
 by intimidating anyone who attempted it.

Marcus Cato, who tried to delay proceedings, was dragged
 from the House by a lictor at Caesar’s command and taken off to prison. When Lucius
 Lucullus was somewhat too outspoken in his opposition,he filled him with such fear of
 malicious prosecution, that Lucullus actually fell on his knees before him. Because
 Cicero, while pleading in court, deplored the state of the times, Caesar transferred
 the orator’s enemy Publius Clodius that very same day from the patricians to the
 plebeians, a thing for which Clodius had for a long time been vainly striving; and
 that too at the ninth hour.

Finally taking action against all the opposition in a body, he bribed an informer to
 declare that he had been egged on by certain men to murder Pompey, and
 to come out upon the rostra and name the guilty parties according to a prearranged
 plot. But when the informer had named one or two to no purpose and not without
 suspicion of double-dealing, Caesar, hopeless of the success of his over-hasty
 attempt, is supposed to have had him taken off by poison.

At about the same time he took to wife Calpurnia, daughter of
 Lucius Piso, who was to succeed him in the consulship, and affianced his own daughter
 Julia to Gnaeus Pompeius, breaking a previous engagement with Servilius Caepio,
 although the latter had shortly before rendered him conspicuous service in his contest
 with Bibulus. And after this new alliance he began to call upon Pompey first to give
 his opinion in the senate, although it had been his habit to begin with Crassus, and
 it was the rule for the consul in calling for opinions to continue throughout the year
 the order which he had established on the Kalends of January.

Backed therefore by his father-in-law and son-in-law, out of all
 the numerous provinces he made the Gauls his choice, as the most likely to enrich him
 and furnish suitable material for triumphs. At first, it is true, by the bill of
 Vatinius he received only Cisalpine Gaul with the addition of Illyricum;

but presently he was assigned Gallia Comata as well by the senate, since the members
 feared that even if they should refuse it, the people would give him this also.
 Transported with joy at this success, he could not keep from boasting a few days later
 before a crowded house, that having gained his heart’s desire to the grief and
 lamentation of his opponents, he would therefore from that time mount 
 on their heads; and when someone insultingly remarked that that would be no
 easy matter for any woman, he replied in the same vein that Semiramis too had been
 queen in Syria and the Amazons in days of old had held sway over a great part of Asia.

When at the close of his consulship the praetors Gaius Memmius
 and Lucius Domitius moved an inquiry into his conduct during the previous year, Caesar
 laid the matter before the senate; and when they failed to take it up, and three days
 had been wasted in fruitless wrangling, went off to his province. Whereupon his
 quaestor was at once arraigned on several counts, as a preliminary to his own
 impeachment. Presently he himself too was prosecuted by Lucius Antistius, tribune of
 the commons, and it was only by appealing to the whole college that he contrived not
 to be brought to trial, on the ground that he was absent on public service.

Then to secure himself for the future, he took great pains always to put the
 magistrates for the year under personal obligation, and not to aid any candidates or
 suffer any to be elected, save such as guaranteed to defend him in his absence. And he
 did not hesitate in some cases to exact an oath to keep this pledge or even a written
 contract.

When however Lucius Domitius, candidate for the consulship,
 openly threatened to effect as consul what he had been unable to do as praetor, and to
 take his armies from him, Caesar compelled Pompeius and Crassus to come to Luca, a
 city in his province, where he prevailed on them to stand for a second consulship, to
 defeat Domitius; and he also succeeded through their influence in
 having his term as governor of Gaul made five years longer.

Encouraged by this, he added to the legions which he had received from the state
 others at his own cost, one actually composed of men of Transalpine Gaul and bearing a
 Gallic name too (for it was called Alauda ), which he trained in the Roman tactics and equipped with Roman
 arms; and later on he gave every man of it citizenship.

After that he did not let slip any pretext for war, however unjust and dangerous it
 might be, picking quarrels as well with allied, as with hostile and barbarous nations;
 so that once the senate decreed that a commission be sent to inquire into the
 condition of the Gallic provinces, and some even recommended that Caesar be handed
 over to the enemy. But as his enterprises prospered, thanksgivings were appointed in
 his honour oftener and for longer periods than for anyone before his time.

During the nine years of his command this is in substance what
 he did. All that part of Gaul which is bounded by the Pyrenees, the Alps and the
 Cervennes, and by the Rhine and Rhone rivers, a circuit of some 3,200 miles, with the exception of some allied states which had
 rendered him good service, he reduced to the form of a province; and imposed upon it a
 yearly tribute of 40,000,000 sesterces.

He was the first Roman to build a bridge and attack the Germans beyond the Rhine,
 inflicting heavy losses upon them. He invaded the Britons too, a people unknown
 before, vanquished them, and exacted moneys and hostages. Amid all these
 successes he met with adverse fortune but three times in all: in Britain, where his
 fleet narrowly escaped destruction in a violent storm; in Gaul, when one of his
 legions was routed at Gergovia; and in the land of Germany, when his lieutenants
 Titurius and Aurunculeius were ambushed and slain.

Within this same space of time he lost first his mother, then
 his daughter, and soon afterwards his grandson. Meanwhile, as the community was aghast
 at the murder of Publius Clodius, the senate had voted that only one consul should be
 chosen, and expressly named Gnaeus Pompeius. When the tribunes planned to make him
 Pompey’s colleague, Caesar urged them rather to propose to the people that he be
 permitted to stand for a second consulship without coming to Rome, when the term of
 his governorship drew near its end, to prevent his being forced for the sake of the
 office to leave his province prematurely and without finishing the war.

On the granting of this, aiming still higher and flushed with hope, he neglected
 nothing in the way of lavish expenditure or of favours to anyone, either in his public
 capacity or privately. He began a forum with the proceeds of his spoils, the ground
 for which cost more than a hundred million sesterces. He announced a combat of
 gladiators and a feast for the people in memory of his daughter, a thing quite without
 precedent. To raise the expectation of these events to the highest possible pitch, he
 had the material for the banquet prepared in part by his own household, although he
 had let contracts to the markets as well.

He gave orders too that whenever famous gladiators fought without winning the favour
 of the people, 
 they should be rescued by force and kept for him. He had the novices trained, not in a
 gladiatorial school by professionals, but in private houses by Roman knights and even
 by senators who were skilled in arms, earnestly beseeching them, as is shown by his
 own letters, to give the recruits individual attention and personally direct their
 exercises. He doubled the pay of the legions for all time. Whenever grain was
 plentiful, he distributed it to them without stint or measure, and now and then gave
 each man a slave from among the captives.

Moreover, to retain his relationship and friendship with Pompey,
 Caesar offered him his sister’s granddaughter Octavia in marriage, although she was
 already the wife of Gaius Marcellus, and asked for the hand of Pompey’s daughter, who
 was promised to Faustus Sulla. When he had put all Pompey’s friends under obligation,
 as well as the great part of the senate, through loans made without interest or at a
 low rate, he lavished gifts on men of all other classes, both those whom he invited to
 accept his bounty and those who applied to him unasked, including even freedmen and
 slaves who were special favourites of their masters or patrons.

In short, he was the sole and ever ready help of all who were in legal difficulties
 or in debt and of young spendthrifts, excepting only those whose burden of guilt or of
 poverty was so heavy, or who were so given up to riotous living, that even he could
 not save them; and to these he declared in the plainest terms that what they needed
 was a civil war.

He took no less pains to win the devotion of
 princes and provinces all over the world, offering prisoners to some by the thousand
 as a gift, and sending auxiliary troops to the aid of others whenever they wished, and
 as often as they wished, without the sanction of the senate or people, besides
 adorning the principal cities of Asia and Greece with magnificent public works, as
 well as those of Italy and the provinces of Gaul and Spain.

At last, when all were thunder-struck at his actions and wondered what their purpose
 could be, the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus, after first making proclamation that
 he purposed to bring before the senate a matter of the highest public moment, proposed
 that a successor to Caesar be appointed before the end of his term, on the ground that
 the war was ended, peace was established, and the victorious army ought to be
 disbanded; also that no account be taken of Caesar at the elections, unless he were
 present, since Pompey’s subsequent action had not annulled the decree of the people.

And it was true that when Pompey proposed a bill touching the privileges of
 officials, in the clause where he debarred absentees from candidacy for office he
 forgot to make a special exception in Caesar’s case, and did not correct the oversight
 until the law had been inscribed on a tablet of bronze and deposited in the treasury.
 Not content with depriving Caesar of his provinces and his privilege, Marcellus also
 moved that the colonists whom Caesar had settled in Novum Comum by the bill of
 Vatinius should lose their citizenship, on the ground that it had been given from
 political motives and was not authorized by the law.

Greatly troubled by these measures, and thinking,
 as they say he was often heard to remark, that now that he was the leading man of the
 state, it was harder to push him down from the first place to the second than it would
 be from the second to the lowest, Caesar stoutly resisted Marcellus, partly through
 vetoes of the tribunes and partly through the other consul, Servius Sulpicius. When
 next year Gaius Marcellus, who had succeeded his cousin Marcus as consul, tried the
 same thing, Caesar by a heavy bribe secured the support of the other consul, Aemilius
 Paulus, and of Gaius Curio, the most reckless of the tribunes.

But seeing that everything was being pushed most persistently, and that even the
 consuls elect were among the opposition, he sent a written appeal to the senate, not
 to take from him the privilege which the people had granted, or else to compel the
 others in command of armies to resign also; feeling sure, it was thought, that he
 could more readily muster his veterans as soon as he wished, than Pompey his newly
 levied troops. He further proposed a compromise to his opponents, that after giving up
 eight legions and Transalpine Gaul, he be allowed to keep two legions and Cisalpine
 Gaul, or at least one legion and Illyricum, until he was elected consul.

But when the senate declined to interfere, and his opponents
 declared that they would accept no compromise in a matter affecting the public
 welfare, he crossed to Hither Gaul, and after holding all the assizes, halted at
 Ravenna, intending to resort to war if the senate took any drastic action against the
 tribunes of the commons who interposed vetoes in his behalf.

Now this was his excuse for the civil war, but it is believed that he
 had other motives.Gnaeus Pompeius used to declare that since Caesar’s own means were
 not sufficient to complete the works which he had planned, nor to do all that he had
 led the people to expect on his return, he desired a state of general unrest and
 turmoil.

Others say that he dreaded the necessity of rendering an account for what he had done
 in his first consulship contrary to the auspices and the laws, and regardless of
 vetoes; for Marcus Cato often declared, and took oath too, that he would impeach
 Caesar the moment he had disbanded his army. It was openly said too that if he was out
 of office on his return, he would be obliged, like Milo, to make his defence in a
 court hedged about by armed men.

The latter opinion is the more credible one in view of the assertion of Asinius
 Pollio, that when Caesar at the battle of Pharsalus saw his enemies slain or in
 flight, he said, word for word: They would have it so. Even I, Gaius
 Caesar, after so many great deeds, should have been found guilty, if I had not
 turned to my army for help.

Some think that habit had given him a love of power, and that weighing the strength
 of his adversaries against his own, he grasped the opportunity of usurping the
 despotism which had been his heart’s desire from early youth. Cicero too was seemingly
 of this opinion, when he wrote in the third book of his De Officiis that Caesar ever had upon his lips these lines of
 Euripides, of which Cicero himself adds a version: If wrong may e’er be right, for a throne’s
 sake Were wrong most right: — be God in all else feared.

Accordingly, when word came that the veto of the
 tribunes had been set aside and they themselves had left the city, he at once sent on
 a few cohorts with all secrecy, and then, to disarm suspicion, concealed his purpose
 by appearing at a public show, inspecting the plans of a gladiatorial school which he
 intended building, and joining as usual in a banquet with a large company.

It was not until after sunset that he set out very privily with a small company,
 taking the mules from a bakeshop hard by and harnessing them to a carriage; and when
 his lights went out and he lost his way, he was astray for some time, but at last
 found a guide at dawn and got back to the road on foot by narrow by-paths. Then,
 overtaking his cohorts at the river Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province,
 he paused for a while, and realising what a step he was taking, he turned to those
 about him and said: Even yet we may turn back; but once cross yon
 little bridge, and the whole issue is with the sword.

As he stood in doubt, this sign was given him. On a sudden there
 appeared hard by a being of wondrous stature and beauty, who sat and played upon a
 reed; and when not only the shepherds flocked to hear him, but many of the soldiers
 left their posts, and among them some of the trumpeters, the apparition snatched a
 trumpet from one of them, rushed to the river, and sounding the war-note with mighty
 blast, strode to the opposite bank. Then Caesar cried: Take we the
 course which the signs of the gods and the false dealing of our foes point out. The
 die is cast, said he.

Accordingly, crossing with his army, and welcoming the tribunes
 of the commons, who had come to him after being driven from Rome, he
 harangued the soldiers with tears, and rending his robe from his breast besought their
 faithful service. It is even thought that he promised every man a knight’s estate, but
 that came of a misunderstanding; for since he often pointed to the finger of his left
 hand as he addressed them and urged them on, declaring that to satisfy all those who
 helped him to defend his honour he would gladly tear his very ring from his hand,
 those on the edge of the assembly, who could see him better than they could hear his
 words, assumed that he said what his gesture seemed to mean; and so the report went
 about that he had promised them the right of the ring and four hundred thousand
 sesterces as well.

The sum total of his movements after that is, in their order, as
 follows: He overran Umbria, Picenum, and Etruria, took prisoner Lucius Domitius, who
 had been irregularly named his successor, and was
 holding Corfinium with a garrison, let him go free, and then proceeded along the
 Adriatic to Brundisium, where Pompey and the consuls had taken refuge, intending to
 cross the sea as soon as might be.

After vainly trying by every kind of hindrance to prevent their sailing, he marched
 off to Rome, and after calling the senate together to discuss public business, went to
 attack Pompey’s strongest forces, which were in Spain under command of three of his
 lieutenants-Marcus Petreius, Lucius Afranius, and Marcus Varro-saying to his friends
 before he left: I go to meet an army without a leader, and I shall
 return to meet a leader without an army. And in fact, though his advance was
 delayed by the siege of Massilia, which had shut its gates against him,
 and by extreme scarcity of supplies, he nevertheless quickly gained a complete
 victory.

Returning thence to Rome, he crossed into Macedonia, and after
 blockading Pompey for almost four months behind mighty ramparts, finally routed him in
 the battle at Pharsalus, followed him in his flight to Alexandria, and when he learned
 that his rival had been slain, made war on King Ptolemy, whom he perceived to be
 plotting against his own safety as well; a war in truth of great difficulty,
 convenient neither in time nor place, but carried on during the winter season, within
 the walls of a well-provisioned and crafty foeman, while Caesar himself was without
 supplies of any kind and ill-prepared. Victor in spite of all, he turned over the rule
 of Egypt to Cleopatra and her younger brother, fearning that if he made a province of
 it, it might one day under a headstrong governor be a source of revolution.

From Alexandria he crossed to Syria, and from there went to Pontus, spurred on by the
 news that Pharnaces, son of Mithridates the Great, had taken advantage of the
 situation to make war, and was already flushed with numerous successes; but Caesar
 vanquished him in a single battle within five days after his arrival and four hours
 after getting sight of him, often remarking on Pompey’s good luck in gaining his
 principal fame as a general by victories over such feeble foemen. Then he overcame
 Scipio and Juba, who were patching up the remnants of their party in Africa, and the
 sons of Pompey in Spain.

In all the civil wars he suffered not a single disaster except
 through his lieutenants, of whom Gaius Curio perished in Africa, Gaius
 Antonius fell into the hands of the enemy in Illyricum, Publius Dolabella lost a fleet
 also off Illyricum, and Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus an army in Pontus. Personally he
 always fought with the utmost success, and the issue was never even in doubt save
 twice: once at Dyrrachium, where he was put to flight, and said of Pompey, who failed
 to follow up his success, that he did not know how to use a victory; again in Spain,
 in the final struggle, when, believing the battle lost, he actually thought of
 suicide.

Having ended the wars, he celebrated five triumphs, four in a
 single month, but at intervals of a few days, after vanquishing Scipio; and another on
 defeating Pompey’s sons. The first and most splendid was the Gallic triumph, the next
 the Alexandrian, then the Pontic, after that the African, and finally the Spanish,
 each differing from the rest in its equipment and display of spoils.

As he rode through the Velabrum on the day of his Gallic triumph, the axle of his
 chariot broke, and he was all but thrown out; and he mounted the Capitol by
 torchlight, with forty elephants bearing lamps on his right and his left. In his
 Pontic triumph he displayed among the show-pieces of the procession an inscription of
 but three words, I came, I saw, I conquered, not indicating the
 events of the war, as the others did, but the speed with which it was finished.

To each and every foot-soldier of his veteran legions he gave
 twenty-four thousand sesterces by way of booty, over and above the two thousand apiece
 which he had paid them at the beginning of the civil strife. He also assigned them
 lands, but not side by side, to avoid dispossessing any of the former
 owners. To every man of the people, besides ten pecks of grain and the same number of
 pounds of oil, he distributed the three hundred sesterces which he had promised at
 first, and one hundred apiece to boot because of the delay.

He also remitted a year’s rent in Rome to tenants who paid two thousand sesterces or
 less, and in Italy up to five hundred sesterces. He added a banquet and a dole of
 meat, and after his Spanish victory two dinners; for deeming that the former of these had not
 been served with a liberality creditable to his generosity, he gave another five days
 later on a most lavish scale.

He gave entertainments of divers kinds: a combat of gladiators
 and also stage-plays in every ward all over the city, performed too by actors of all
 languages, as well as races in the circus, athletic contests, and a sham sea-fight. In
 the gladiatorial contest in the Forum Furius Leptinus, a man of praetorian stock, and
 Quintus Calpenus, a former senator and pleader at the bar, fought to a finish. A
 Pyrrhic dance was performed by the sons of the princes of Asia and Bithynia.

During the plays Decimus Laberius, a Roman knight, acted a farce of his own
 composition, and having been presented with five hundred thousand sesterces and a gold
 ring, passed from the stage
 through the orchestra and took his place in the fourteen rows. For the races the circus was
 lengthened at either end and a broad canal was dug all about it; then young men of the
 highest rank drove four-horse and two-horse chariots and rode pairs of horses,
 vaulting from one to the other. The game called Troy was performed by two troops, of
 younger and of older boys.

Combats with wild beasts were presented on five successive days, and last of all
 there was a battle between two opposing armies, in which five hundred foot-soldiers,
 twenty elephants, and thirty horsemen engaged on each side. To make room for this, the
 goals were taken down and in their place two camps were pitched over against each
 other. The athletic competitions lasted for five days in a temporary stadium built for
 the purpose in the region of the Campus Martius.

For the naval battle a pool was dug in the lesser Codeta and there was a contest of
 ships of two, three, and four banks of oars, belonging to the Tyrian and Egyptian
 fleets, manned by a large force of fighting men. Such a throng flocked to all these
 shows from every quarter, that many strangers had to lodge in tents pitched in the
 streets or along the roads, and the press was often such that many were crushed to
 death, including two senators.

Then turning his attention to the reorganisation of the state,
 he reformed the calendar, which the negligence of the pontiffs had long since so
 disordered, through their privilege of adding months or days at pleasure, that the
 harvest festivals did not come in summer nor those of the vintage in the autumn; and
 he adjusted the year to the sun’s course by making it consist of three hundred and
 sixty-five days, abolishing the intercalary month, and adding one day every fourth year.

Furthermore, that the correct reckoning of time might begin with the next Kalends of
 January, he inserted two other months between those of November and December; hence
 the year in which these arrangements were made was one of fifteen months, including the intercalary month, which belonged to that year according to the former
 custom.

He filled the vacancies in the senate, enrolled additional
 patricians, and increased the number of praetors, aediles, and quaestors, as well as
 of the minor officials; he reinstated those who had been degraded by official action
 of the censors or found guilty of bribery by verdict of the jurors.

He shared the elections with the people on this basis: that except in the case of the
 consulship, half of the magistrates should be appointed by the people’s choice, while
 the rest should be those whom he had personally nominated. And these he announced in
 brief notes like the following, circulated in each tribe: Caesar the
 Dictator to this or that tribe. I commend to you so and so, to hold their positions
 by your votes. He admitted to office even the sons of those who had been
 proscribed. He limited the right of serving as jurors to two classes, the equestrian
 and senatorial orders, disqualifying the third class, the tribunes of the
 treasury.

He made the enumeration of the people neither in the
 usual manner nor place, but from street to street aided by the owners of blocks of
 houses, and reduced the number of those who received grain at public expense from
 three hundred and twenty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand. And to prevent
 the calling of additional meetings at any future time for purposes of enrolment, he
 provided that the places of such as died should be filled each year by the praetors
 from those who were not on the list.

Moreover, to keep up the population of the city, depleted as it
 was by the assignment of eighty thousand citizens to colonies across the
 sea, he made a law that no citizen older than twenty or younger than forty, who was
 not detained by service in the army, should be absent from Italy for more than three
 successive years; that no senator’s son should go abroad except as the companion of a
 magistrate or on his staff; and that those who made a business of grazing should have
 among their herdsmen at least one-third who were men of free birth. He conferred
 citizenship on all who practised medicine at Rome, and on all teachers of the liberal
 arts, to make them more desirous of living in the city and to induce others to resort
 to it.

As to debts, he disappointed those who looked for their
 cancellation, which was often agitated, but finally decreed that the debtors should
 satisfy their creditors according to a valuation of their possessions at the price
 which they had paid for them before the civil war, deducting from the principal
 whatever interest had been paid in cash or pledged through bankers; an arrangement
 which wiped out about a fourth part of their indebtedness.

He dissolved all guilds, except those of ancient foundation. He increased the
 penalties for crimes; and inasmuch as the rich involved themselves in guilt with less
 hesitation because they merely suffered exile, without any loss of property, he
 punished murderers of freemen by the confiscation of all their goods, as Cicero
 writes, and others by the loss of one-half.

He administered justice with the utmost conscientiousness and
 strictness. Those convicted of extortion he even dismissed from the senatorial order.
 He annulled the marriage of an ex-praetor, who had married a woman the very day after
 her divorce, although there was no suspicion of adultery. He imposed
 duties on foreign wares. He denied the use of litters and the wearing of scarlet robes
 or pearls to all except to those of a designated position and age, and on set days.

In particular he enforced the law against extravagance, setting watchmen in various
 parts of the market, to seize and bring to him dainties which were exposed for sale in
 violation of the law; and sometimes he sent his lictors and soldiers to take from a
 dining-room any articles which had escaped the vigilance of his watchmen, even after
 they had been served.

In particular, for the adornment and convenience of the city,
 also for the protection and extension of the Empire, he formed more projects and more
 extensive ones every day: first of all, to rear a temple to Mars, greater than any in
 existence, filling up and levelling the pool in which he had exhibited the sea-fight,
 and to build a theatre of vast size, sloping down from the Tarpeian rock;

to reduce the civil code to fixed limits, and of the vast and prolix mass of statutes
 to include only the best and most essential in a limited number of volumes; to open to
 the public the greatest possible libraries of Greek and Latin books, assigning to
 Marcus Varro the charge of procuring and classifying them;

to drain the Pomptine marshes; to let out the water from Lake Fucinus; to make a
 highway from the Adriatic across the summit of the Apennines as far as the Tiber; to
 cut a canal through the Isthmus; to check the Dacians, who had poured into Pontus and
 Thrace; then to make war on the Parthians by way of Lesser Armenia, but not to risk a
 battle with them until he had first tested their mettle.

All these enterprises and plans were cut short by
 his death. But before I speak of that, it will not be amiss to describe briefly his
 personal appearance, his dress, his mode of life, and his character, as well as his
 conduct in civil and military life.

He is said to have been tall of stature, with a fair complexion,
 shapely limbs, a somewhat full face, and keen black eyes; sound of health, except that
 towards the end he was subject to sudden fainting fits and to nightmare as well. He
 was twice attacked by the falling sickness 
 during his campaigns.

He was somewhat overnice in the care of his person, being not only carefully trimmed
 and shaved, but even having superfluous hair plucked out, as some have charged; while
 his baldness was a disfigurement which troubled him greatly, since he found that it
 was often the subject of the gibes of his detractors. Because of it he used to comb
 forward his scanty locks from the crown of his head, and of all the honours voted him
 by the senate and people there was none which he received or made use of more gladly
 than the privilege of wearing a laurel wreath at all times.

They say, too, that he was fantastic in his dress; that he wore a senator’s
 tunic with fringed sleeves
 reaching to the wrist, and always had a girdle over it, though rather a loose one;and this, they say, was the
 occasion of Sulla’s mot ,
 when he often warned the nobles to keep an eye on the ill-girt boy.

He lived at first in the Subura in a modest house,
 but after he became pontifex maximus, in the official residence on the Sacred Way.
 Many have written that he was very fond of elegance and luxury; that having laid the
 foundations of a country-house on his estate at Nemi and finished it at great cost, he
 tore it all down because it did not suit him in every particular, although at the time
 he was still poor and heavily in debt; and that he carried tesselated and mosaic
 floors about with him on his campaigns.

They say that he was led to invade Britain by the hope of
 getting pearls, and that in comparing their size he sometimes weighed them with his
 own hand; that he was always a most enthusiastic collector of gems, carvings, statues,
 and pictures by early artists; also of slaves of exceptional figure and training at
 enormous prices, of which he himself was so ashamed that he forbade their entry in his
 accounts.

It is further reported that in the provinces he gave banquets
 constantly in two dining-halls, in one of which his officers or Greek companions, in
 the other Roman civilians and the more distinguished of the provincials reclined at
 table. He was so punctilious and strict in the management of his household, in small
 matters as well as in those of greater importance, that he put his baker in irons for
 serving him with one kind of bread and his guests with another; and he inflicted
 capital punishment on a favourite freedman for adultery with the wife of a Roman
 knight, although no complaint was made against him.

There was no stain on his reputation for chastity
 except his intimacy with King Nicomedes, but that was a deep and lasting reproach,
 which laid him open to insults from every quarter. I say nothing of the notorious
 lines of Licinius Calvus: Whate’er Bithynia had,
 and Caesar’s paramour. I pass over, too, the invectives of Dolabella
 and the elder Curio, in which Dolabella calls him the queen’s rival,
 the inner partner of the royal couch, and Curio, the brothel of
 Nicomedes and the stew of Bithynia.

I take no account of the edicts of Bibulus, in which he posted his colleague as the queen of Bithynia, saying that of yore he was
 enamoured of a king, but now of a king’s estate. At this same time, so Marcus
 Brutus declares, one Octavius, a man whose disordered mind made him somewhat free with
 his tongue, after saluting Pompey as king in a crowded assembly,
 greeted Caesar as queen But Gaius Memmius makes the direct charge
 that he acted as cup-bearer to Nicomedes with the rest of his wantons at a large
 dinner-party, and that among the guests were some merchants from Rome, whose names
 Memmius gives.

Cicero, indeed, is not content with having written in sundry letters that Caesar was
 led by the king’s attendants to the royal apartments, that he lay on a golden couch
 arrayed in purple, and that the virginity of this son of Venus was lost in Bithynia;
 but when Caesar was once addressing the senate in defence of Nysa, daughter of
 Nicomedes, and was enumerating his obligations to the king, Cicero cried: No more of that, pray, for it is well known what he gave you, and what
 you gave him in turn.

Finally, in his Gallic triumph his soldiers, among the bantering songs
 which are usually sung by those who follow the chariot, shouted these lines, which
 became a by-word: 
 All the Gauls did Caesar vanquish, Nicomedes vanquished him Lo! now Caesar
 rides in triumph, victor over all the Gauls, 
 Nicomedes does not triumph, who subdued the conqueror.

That he was unbridled and extravagant in his intrigues is the
 general opinion, and that he seduced many illustrious women, among them Postumia, wife
 of Servius Sulpicius, Lollia, wife of Aulus Gabinius, Tertulla, wife of Marcus
 Crassus, and even Gnaeus Pompey’s wife Mucia. At all events there is no doubt that
 Pompey was taken to task by the elder and the younger Curio, as well as by many
 others, because through a desire for power he had afterwards married the daughter of a
 man on whose account he divorced a wife who had borne him three children, and whom he
 had often referred to with a groan as an Aegisthus.

But beyond all others Caesar loved Servilia, the mother of Marcus Brutus, for whom in
 his first consulship he bought a pearl costing six million sesterces. During the civil
 war, too, besides other presents, he knocked down some fine estates to her in a public
 auction at a nominal price, and when some expressed their surprise at the low figure,
 Cicero wittily remarked: It’s a better bargain than you think, for
 there is a third off. And in fact it was thought
 that Servilia was prostituting her own daughter Tertia to Caesar.

That he did not refrain from intrigues in the
 provinces is shown in particular by this couplet, which was also shouted by the
 soldiers in his Gallic triumph Men of Rome, keep
 close your consorts, here’s a bald adulterer Gold in Gaul you spent in
 dalliance, which you borrowed here in Rome.

He had love affairs with queens too, including Eunoe the Moor,
 wife of Bogudes, on whom, as well as on her husband, he bestowed many splendid
 presents, as Naso writes; but above all with Cleopatra, with whom he often feasted until
 daybreak, and he would have gone through Egypt with her in her state-barge almost to
 Aethiopia, had not his soldiers refused to follow him. Finally he called her to Rome
 and did not let her leave until he had ladened her with high honours and rich gifts,
 and he allowed her to give his name to the child which she bore.

In fact, according to certain Greek writers, this child was very like Caesar in looks
 and carriage. Mark Antony declared to the senate that Caesar had really acknowledged
 the boy, and that Gaius Matius, Gaius Oppius, and other friends of Caesar knew this.
 Of these Gaius Oppius, as if admitting that the situation required apology and
 defence, published a book, to prove that the child whom Cleopatra fathered on Caesar
 was not his.

Helvius Cinna, tribune of the commons, admitted to several that he had a bill drawn
 up in due form, which Caesar had ordered him to propose to the people in his absence,
 making it lawful for Caesar to marry what wives he wished, and as many as he wished,
 for the purpose of begetting children. But to remove all doubt that he
 had an evil reputation both for shameless vice and for adultery, I have only to add
 that the elder Curio in one of his speeches calls him every woman’s
 man and every man’s woman.

That he drank very little wine not even his enemies denied.
 There is a saying of Marcus Cato that Caesar was the only man who undertook to
 overthrow the state when sober. Even in the matter of food Gaius Oppius tells us that
 he was so indifferent, that once when his host served stale oil instead of fresh, and
 the other guests would have none of it, Caesar partook even more plentifully than
 usual, not to seem to charge his host with carelessness or lack of manners.

Neither when in command of armies nor as a magistrate at Rome
 did he show a scrupulous integrity; for as certain men have declared in their memoirs,
 when he was proconsul in Spain , he not
 only begged money from the allies, to help pay his debts, but also attacked and sacked
 some towns of the Lusitanians although they did not refuse his terms and opened their
 gates to him on his arrival.

In Gaul he pillaged shrines and temples of the gods filled with offerings, and
 oftener sacked towns for the sake of plunder than for any fault. In consequence he had
 more gold than he knew what to do with, and offered it for sale throughout Italy and
 the provinces at the rate of three thousand sesterces the pound.

In his first consulship he stole three thousand pounds of gold from the Capitol,
 replacing it with the same weight of gilded bronze. He made alliances and thrones a
 matter of barter, for he extorted from Ptolemy alone in his own name and
 that of Pompey nearly six thousand talents, while later on he met the heavy expenses
 of the civil wars and of his triumphs and entertainments by the most bare-faced
 pillage and sacrilege.

In eloquence and in the art of war he either equalled or
 surpassed the fame of their most eminent representatives. After his accusation of
 Dolabella, he was without question numbered with the leading advocates. At all events
 when Cicero reviews the orators in his Brutus , he says that he does not see to
 whom Caesar ought to yield the palm, declaring that his style is elegant as well as
 brilliant, even grand and in a sense noble. Again in a letter to Cornelius Nepos he
 writes thus of Caesar:

Come now, what orator would you rank above him of those who have
 devoted themselves to nothing else? Who has cleverer or more frequent epigrams? Who
 is either more picturesque or more choice in diction? He appears, at least in
 his youth, to have imitated the manner of Caesar Strabo, from whose speech entitled For the Sardinians he actually transferred some passages word for
 word to a trial address of his own. He is
 said to have delivered himself in a high-pitched voice with impassioned action and
 gestures, which were not without grace.

He left several speeches, including some which are attributed to him on insufficient
 evidence. Augustus had good reason to think that the speech For
 Quintus Metellus was rather taken down by shorthand writers who could not keep
 pace with his delivery, than published by Caesar himself; for in some copies I find
 that even the title is not For Metellus, but, Which he wrote for Metellus although the discourse purports to be from Caesar’s
 lips, defending Metellus and himself against the charges of their common
 detractors.

Augustus also questions the authenticity of the address To his
 Soldiers in Spain, although there are two versions of it: one purporting to have
 been spoken at the first battle, the other at the second, when Asinius Pollio writes
 that because of the sudden onslaught of the enemy he actually did not have time to
 make an harangue.

He left memoirs too of his deeds in the Gallic war and in the
 civil strife with Pompey; for the author of the Alexandrian, African, and Spanish Wars
 is unknown; some think it was Oppius, others Hirtius, who also supplied the final book
 of the Gallic War, which Caesar left unwritten. With regard to Caesar’s memoirs
 Cicero, also in the Brutus speaks in the following terms:

He wrote memoirs which deserve the highest praise; they are naked in
 their simplicity, straightforward yet graceful, stripped of all rhetorical
 adornment, as of a garment; but while his purpose was to supply material to others,
 on which those who wished to write history might draw, he haply gratified silly
 folk, who will try to use the curling-irons on his narrative, but he has kept men of
 any sense from touching the subject.

Of these same memoirs Hirtius uses this emphatic language : They are so highly rated in
 the judgment of all men, that he seems to have deprived writers of an opportunity,
 rather than given them one; yet our admiration for this feat is greater than that of
 others; for they know how well and faultlessly he wrote, while we know besides how
 easily and rapidly he finished his task.

Asinius Pollio thinks that they were put together somewhat carelessly and without
 strict regard for truth; since in many cases Caesar was too ready to
 believe the accounts which others gave of their actions, and gave a perverted account
 of his own, either designedly or perhaps from forgetfulness; and he thinks that he
 intended to rewrite and revise them.

He left besides a work in two volumes On Analogy, the same
 number of Speeches in reply to Cato, in addition to a poem,
 entitled The Journey. He wrote the first of these works while
 crossing the Alps and returning to his army from Hither Spain, where he had held the
 assizes; the second about the time of the battle of Munda, and the third in the course
 of a twenty-four days’ journey from Rome to Farther Spain.

Some letters of his to the senate are also preserved, and he seems to have been the
 first to reduce such documents to pages and the form of a memorial volume, whereas previously consuls and
 generals sent their reports written right across the sheet. There are also letters of
 his to Cicero, as well as to his intimates on private affairs, and in the latter, if
 he had anything confidential to say, he wrote it in cipher, that is, by so changing
 the order of the letters of the alphabet, that not a word could be made out. If anyone
 wishes to decipher these, and get at their meaning, he must substitute the fourth
 letter of the alphabet, namely D, for A, and so with the others.

We also have mention of certain writings of his boyhood and early youth, such as the
 Praises of Hercules, a tragedy Oedipus, 
 and a Collection of Apophthegms but Augustus forbade the
 publication of all these minor works in a very brief and frank letter sent to Pompeius
 Macer, whom he had selected to set his libraries in order.

He was highly skilled in arms and horsemanship,
 and of incredible powers of endurance. On the march he headed his army, sometimes on
 horseback, but oftener on foot, bareheaded both in the heat of the sun and in rain. He
 covered great distances with incredible speed, making a hundred miles a day in a hired
 carriage and with little baggage, swimming the rivers which barred his path or
 crossing them on inflated skins, and very often arriving before the messengers sent to
 announce his coming.

In the conduct of his campaigns it is a question whether he was
 more cautious or more daring, for he never led his army where ambuscades were possible
 without carefully reconnoitring the country, and he did not cross to Britain without
 making personal inquiries about the harbours, the course, and
 the approach to the island. But on the other hand, when news came that his camp in
 Germany was beleaguered, he made his way to his men through the enemies’ pickets,
 disguised as a Gaul.

He crossed from Brundisium to Dyrrachium in winter time, running the blockade of the
 enemy’s fleets; and when the troops which he had ordered to follow him delayed to do
 so, and he had sent to fetch them many times in vain, at last in secret and alone he
 boarded a small boat at night with his head muffled up; and he did not reveal who he
 was, or suffer the helmsman to give way to the gale blowing in their teeth, until he
 was all but overwhelmed by the waves.

No regard for religion ever turned him from any undertaking, or
 even delayed him. Though the victim escaped as he was offering sacrifice, he did not
 put off his expedition against Scipio and Juba. Even when he had a fall
 as he disembarked, he gave the omen a favourable turn by crying: I hold thee fast,
 Africa. Furthermore, to make the prophecies ridiculous which declared that the
 stock of the Scipios was fated to be fortunate and invincible in that province, he
 kept with him in camp a contemptible fellow belonging to the Cornelian family, to whom
 the nickname Salvito had been given as a reproach for his manner of life.

He joined battle, not only after planning his movements in
 advance but on a sudden opportunity, often immediately at the end of a march, and
 sometimes in the foulest weather, when one would least expect him to make a move. It
 was not until his later years that he became slower to engage, through a conviction
 that the oftener he had been victor, the less he ought to tempt fate, and that he
 could not possibly gain as much by success as he might lose by a defeat. He never put
 his enemy to flight without also driving him from his camp, thus giving him no respite
 in his panic. When the issue was doubtful, he used to send away the horses, and his
 own among the first, to impose upon his troops the greater necessity of standing their
 ground by taking away that aid to flight.

He rode a remarkable horse, too, with feet that were almost human; for its hoofs were
 cloven in such a way as to look like toes. This horse was foaled on his own place, and
 since the soothsayers had declared that it foretold the rule of the world for its
 master, he reared it with the greatest care, and was the first to mount it, for it
 would endure no other rider. Afterwards, too, he dedicated a statue of it before the
 temple of Venus Genetrix.

When his army gave way, he often rallied it
 single-handed, planting himself in the way of the fleeing men, laying hold of them one
 by one, and even catching them by the throat and forcing them to face the enemy; that,
 too, when they were in such a panic that an eagle-bearer made a pass at him with the
 point as he tried to stop him, while
 another left the standard in Caesar’s hand when he would hold him back.

His presence of mind was no less renowned, and the instances of
 it will appear even more striking. After the battle of Pharsalus, when he had sent on
 his troops and was crossing the strait of the Hellespont in a small passenger boat,
 being met by Lucius Cassius, of the hostile party, with ten armoured ships, he
 made no attempt to escape, but went to meet Cassius and actually urged him to
 surrender; and Cassius sued for mercy and was taken on board.

At Alexandria, while assaulting a bridge, he was forced by a
 sudden sally of the enemy to take to a small skiff; when many others threw themselves
 into the same boat, he plunged into the sea, and after swimming for two hundred paces,
 got away to the nearest ship, holding up his left hand all the way, so as not to wet
 some papers which he was carrying, and dragging his cloak after him with his teeth, to
 keep the enemy from getting it as a trophy.

He valued his soldiers neither for their personal character nor
 their fortune, but solely for their prowess, and he treated them with equal strictness
 and indulgence; for he did not curb them everywhere and at all times, but only in the
 presence of the enemy. Then he required the strictest discipline, not
 announcing the time of a march or a battle, but keeping them ready and alert to be led
 on a sudden at any moment wheresoever he might wish. He often called them out even
 when there was no occasion for it, especially on rainy days and holidays. And warning
 them every now and then that they must keep close watch on him, he would steal away
 suddenly by day or night and make a longer march than usual, to tire out those who
 were tardy in following.

When they were in a panic through reports about the enemy’s
 numbers, he used to rouse their courage not by denying or discounting the rumours, but
 by falsely exaggerating the true danger. For instance, when the anticipation of Juba’s
 coming filled them with terror, he called the soldiers together and said: Let me tell you that within the next few days the king will be here
 with ten legions, thirty thousand horsemen, a hundred thousand light-armed troops,
 and three hundred elephants. Therefore some of you may as well cease to ask further
 questions or make surmises and may rather believe me, since I know all about it.
 Otherwise, I shall surely have them shipped on some worn out craft and carried off
 to whatever lands the wind may blow them.

He did not take notice of all their offences or punish them by
 rule, but he kept a sharp look out for deserters and mutineers, and chastised them
 most severely, shutting his eyes to other faults. Sometimes, too, after a great
 victory he relieved them of all duties and gave them full licence to revel, being in
 the habit of boasting that his soldiers could fight well even when reeking of perfumes.

In the assembly he addressed them not as soldiers, but by the more flattering term comrades, and
 he kept them in fine trim, furnishing them with arms inlaid with silver and gold, both
 for show and to make them hold the faster to them in battle, through fear of the
 greatness of the loss. Such was his love for them that when he heard of the disaster
 to Titurius, he let his hair and beard grow long, and would not cut them until he had
 taken vengeance.

In this way he made them most devoted to his interests as well
 as most valiant. When he began the civil war, every centurion of each legion proposed
 to supply a horseman from his own allowance, and the soldiers one and all offered
 their service without pay and without rations, the richer assuming the care of the
 poorer. Throughout the long struggle not one deserted and many of them, on being taken
 prisoner, refused to accept their lives, when offered them on the condition of
 consenting to serve against Caesar.

They bore hunger and other hardships, both when in a state of siege and when
 besieging others, with such fortitude, that when Pompey saw in the works at Dyrrachium
 a kind of bread made of herbs, on which they were living, he said that he was fighting
 wild beasts; and he gave orders that it be put out of sight quickly and shown to none
 of his men, for fear that the endurance and resolution of the foe would break their
 spirit.

How valiantly they fought is shown by the fact that when they
 suffered their sole defeat before Dyrrachium, they insisted on being punished, and
 their commander felt called upon rather to console than to chastise them. In the other
 battles they overcame with ease countless forces of the enemy, though
 decidedly fewer in number themselves. Indeed one cohort of the sixth legion, when set
 to defend a redoubt, kept four legions of Pompey at bay for several hours, though
 almost all were wounded by the enemy’s showers of arrows, of which a hundred and
 thirty thousand were picked up within the ramparts.

And no wonder, when one thinks of the deeds of individual soldiers, either of Cassius
 Scaeva the centurion, or of Gaius Acilius of the rank and file, not to mention others.
 Scaeva, with one eye gone, his thigh and shoulder wounded, and his shield bored
 through in a hundred and twenty places, continued to guard the gate of a fortress put
 in his charge. Acilius in the sea-fight at Massilia grasped the stern of one of the
 enemy’s ships, and when his right hand was lopped off, rivalling the famous exploit of
 the Greek hero Cynegirus, boarded the ship and drove the enemy before him with the
 boss of his shield.

They did not mutiny once during the ten years of the Gallic war;
 in the civil wars they did so now and then, but quickly resumed their duty, not so
 much owing to any indulgence of their general as to his authority. For he never gave
 way to them when they were insubordinate, but always boldly faced them, discharging
 the entire ninth legion in disgrace before Placentia, though Pompey was still in the
 field, reinstating them unwillingly and only after many abject entreaties, and
 insisting on punishing the ringleaders.

Again at Rome, when the men of the Tenth clamoured for their
 discharge and rewards with terrible threats and no little peril to the city, though
 the war in Africa was then raging, he did not hesitate to appear before
 them, against the advice of his friends, and to disband them. But with a single word,
 calling them citizens, instead of soldiers, 
 he easily brought them round and bent them to his will; for they at once replied that
 they were his soldiers and insisted on following him to Africa,
 although he refused their service. Even then he punished the most insubordinate by the
 loss of a third part of the booty and of the land intended for them.

Even when a young man he showed no lack of devotion and fidelity
 to his dependents. He defended Masintha, a youth of high birth, against king Hiempsal
 with such spirit, that in the dispute he caught the king’s son Juba by the beard. On
 Masintha’s being declared tributary to the king, he at once rescued him from those who
 would carry him off and kept him hidden for some time in his own house; and when
 presently he left for Spain after his praetorship, he carried the young man off in his
 own litter, unnoticed amid the crowd that came to see him off and the lictors with
 their fasces.

His friends he treated with invariable kindness and
 consideration. When Gaius Oppius was his companion on a journey through a wild, woody
 country and was suddenly taken ill, Caesar gave up to him the only shelter there
 was, while he himself slept on the ground out-of-doors. Moreover, when he came to
 power, he advanced some of his friends to the highest positions, even though they were
 of the humblest origin, and when taken to task for it, flatly declared that if he had
 been helped in defending his honour by brigands and cut-throats, he would have
 requited even such men in the same way.

On the other hand he never formed such bitter
 enmities that he was not glad to lay them aside when opportunity offered. Although
 Gaius Memmius had made highly caustic speeches against him, to which he had replied
 with equal bitterness, he went so far as to support Memmius afterwards in his suit for
 the consulship. When Gaius Calvus, after some scurrilous epigrams, took steps through
 his friends towards a reconciliation, Caesar wrote to him first and of his own free
 will. Valerius Catullus, as Caesar himself did not hesitate to say, inflicted a
 lasting stain on his name by the verses about Mamurra; yet when he apologised, Caesar invited the
 poet to dinner that very same day, and continued his usual friendly relations with
 Catullus’s father.

Even in avenging wrongs he was by nature most merciful, and when
 he got hold of the pirates who had captured him, he had them crucified, since he had
 sworn beforehand that he would do so, but ordered that their throats be cut first. He
 could never make up his mind to harm Cornelius Phagites, although when he was sick and
 in hiding, the man had waylaid him night
 after night, and even a bribe had barely saved him from being handed over to Sulla.
 The slave Philemon, his amanuensis, who had promised Caesar’s enemies that he would
 poison him, he merely punished by death, without torture.

When summoned as a witness against Publius Clodius, the paramour
 of his wife Pompeia, charged on the same count with sacrilege, Caesar declared that he
 had no evidence, although both his mother Aurelia and his sister Julia had given the
 same jurors a faithful account of the whole affair; and on being asked why it was then
 that he had put away his wife, he replied; Because I
 maintain that the members of my family should be free from suspicion, as well as
 from guilt.

He certainly showed admirable self-restraint and mercy, both in
 his conduct of the civil war and in the hour of victory. While Pompey threatened to
 treat as enemies those who did not take up arms for the government, Caesar gave out
 that those who were neutral and of neither party should be numbered with his friends.
 He freely allowed all those whom he had made centurions on Pompey’s recommendation to
 go over to his rival.

When conditions of surrender were under discussion at Ilerda, and friendly
 intercourse between the two parties was constant, Afranius and Petreius, with a sudden
 change of purpose, put to death all of Caesar’s soldiers whom they found in their
 camp; but Caesar could not bring himself to retaliate in kind. At the battle of
 Pharsalus he cried out, Spare your fellow citizens, and
 afterwards allowed each of his men to save any one man he pleased of the opposite
 party.

And it will be found that no Pompeian lost his life except in battle, save only
 Afranius and Faustus, and the young Lucius Caesar; and it is believed that not even
 these men were slain by his wish, even though the two former had taken up arms again
 after being pardoned, while Caesar had not only cruelly put to death the dictator’s
 slaves and freedmen with fire and sword, but had even butchered the wild beasts which
 he had procured for the entertainment of the people.

At last, in his later years, he went so far as to allow all those whom he had not yet
 pardoned to return to Italy, and to hold magistracies and the command of armies: and he actually set up the statues of Lucius Sulla and Pompey, which had
 been broken to pieces by the populace. After this, if any dangerous plots were formed
 against him, or slanders uttered, he preferred to quash rather than to punish
 them.

Accordingly, he took no further notice of the conspiracies which were detected, and
 of meetings by night, than to make known by proclamation that he was aware of them;
 and he thought it enough to give public warning to those who spoke ill of him, not to
 persist in their conduct, bearing with good nature the attacks on his reputation made
 by the scurrilous volume of Aulus Caecina and the abusive lampoons of Pitholaus.

Yet after all, his other actions and words so turn the scale,
 that it is thought that he abused his power and was justly slain. For not only did he
 accept excessive honours, such as an uninterrupted consulship, the dictatorship for
 life, and the censorship of public morals, as well as the forename Imperator, the
 surname of Father of his Country, a statue among those of the kings, and a raised
 couch in the orchestra ; but he also allowed
 honours to be bestowed on him which were too great for mortal man: a golden throne in
 the House and on the judgment seat; a chariot and litter in the procession at the circus;
 temples, altars, and statues beside those of the gods; a special priest, an additional
 college of the Luperci, and the calling of one of the months by his name. In fact,
 there were no honours which he did not receive or confer at pleasure.

He held his third and fourth consulships in name only, content
 with the power of the dictatorship conferred on him at the same time as
 the consulships. Moreover, in both years he substituted two consuls for himself for
 the last three months, in the meantime holding no elections except for tribunes and
 plebeian aediles, and appointing praefects instead of the praetors, to manage the
 affairs of the city during his absence. When one of the consuls suddenly died the day
 before the Kalends of January, he gave the vacant office for a few hours to a man who
 asked for it.

With the same disregard of law and precedent he named magistrates for several years
 to come, bestowed the emblems of consular rank on ten ex praetors, and admitted to the
 House men who had been given citizenship, and in some cases half-civilised Gauls. He
 assigned the charge of the mint and of the public revenues to his own slaves, and gave
 the oversight and command of the three legions which he had left at Alexandria to a
 favourite of his called Rufio, son of one of his freedmen.

No less arrogant were his public utterances, which Titus Ampius
 records: that the state was nothing, a mere name without body or form; that Sulla did
 not know his A. B. C. when he laid down his dictatorship; that men ought now to be
 more circumspect in addressing him, and to regard his word as law. So far did he go in
 his presumption, that when a soothsayer once reported direful inwards without a heart,
 he said: They will be more favourable when I wish it; it should not
 be regarded as a portent, if a beast has no heart.

But it was the following action in particular that roused deadly
 hatred against him. When the Senate approached him in a body with many highly honorary
 decrees, he received them before the temple of Venus Genetrix without
 rising. Some think that when he attempted to get up, he was held back by Cornelius
 Balbus; others, that he made no such move at all, but on the contrary frowned angrily
 on Gaius Trebatius when he suggested that he should rise.

And this action of his seemed the more intolerable, because when he himself in one of
 his triumphal processions rode past the benches of the tribunes, he was so incensed
 because a member of the college, Pontius Aquila by name, did not rise, that he cried:
 Come then, Aquila, take back the republic from me, 
 you mighty tribune ; and for several days he would not make a promise to any one
 without adding, That is, if Pontius Aquila will allow me.

To an insult which so plainly showed his contempt for the Senate
 he added an act of even greater insolence; for at the Latin Festival, as he was
 returning to the city, amid the extravagant and unprecedented demonstrations of the
 populace, someone in the press placed on his statue a laurel wreath with a white
 fillet tied to it; and when Epidius Marullus and Caesetius Flavus, tribunes of the
 commons, gave orders that the ribbon be removed from the crown and the man taken off
 to prison, Caesar sharply rebuked and deposed them, either offended that the hint at
 regal power had been received with so little favour, or, as he asserted, that he had
 been robbed of the glory of refusing it.

But from that time on he could not rid himself of the odium of having aspired to the
 title of monarch, although he replied to the commons, when they hailed him as king, I am Caesar and no king, and at the Lupercalia,
 when the consul Antony several times attempted to place a crown upon
 his head as he spoke from the rostra, he put it aside and at last sent it to the
 Capitol, to be offered to Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

Nay, more, the report had spread in various quarters that he intended to move to
 Ilium or Alexandria, taking with him the resources of the state, draining Italy by
 levies, and leaving it and the charge of the city to his friends; also that at the
 next meeting of the Senate Lucius Cotta would announce as the decision of the
 Fifteen, that inasmuch as it was written in the books
 of fate that the Parthians could be conquered only by a king, Caesar should be given
 that title.

It was this that led the conspirators to hasten in carrying out their designs, in
 order to avoid giving their assent to this proposal. 
 Therefore the plots which had previously been formed separately,
 often by groups of two or three, were united in a general conspiracy, since even the
 populace no longer were pleased with present conditions, but both secretly and openly
 rebelled at his tyranny and cried out for defenders of their liberty.

On the admission of foreigners to the Senate, a placard was
 posted: God bless the Commonwealth! let no one consent to point out the House to a newly made
 senator. The following verses too were sung everwhere:— Caesar led the Gauls in triumph, led them to the senate
 house; 
 Then the Gauls put off their breeches, and put on the laticlave.

When Quintus Maximus, whom he had appointed consul in his place
 for three months, was entering the theatre, and his lictor called
 attention to his arrival in the usual manner, a general shout was raised: He’s no consul! At the first election after the deposing of
 Caesetius and Marullus, the tribunes, several votes were found for their appointment
 as consuls. Some wrote on the base of Lucius Brutus’ statue, Oh, that
 you were still alive ; and on that of Caesar himself: First of all was Brutus consul, since he drove the kings
 from Rome; Since this man drove out the consuls, he at last is made our
 king.

More than sixty joined the conspiracy against him, led by Gaius
 Cassius and Marcus and Decimus Brutus. At first they hesitated whether to form two
 divisions at the elections in the Campus Martius, so that while some hurled him from
 the bridge as he summoned the tribes to vote, the
 rest might wait below and slay him; or to set upon him in the Sacred Way or at the
 entrance to the theatre. When, however, a meeting of the Senate was called for the
 Ides of March in the Hall of Pompey, they readily gave that time and place the
 preference.

Now Caesar’s approaching murder was foretold to him by
 unmistakable signs. A few months before, when the settlers assigned to the colony at
 Capua by the Julian Law were demolishing some tombs of great antiquity, to build
 country houses, and plied their work with the greater vigour because as they rummaged
 about they found a quantity of vases of ancient workmanship, there was discovered in a
 tomb, which was said to be that of Capys, the founder of Capua, a bronze tablet, inscribed with Greek words and characters to this purport: Whenever the bones of Capys shall be moved, it will come to pass that
 a descendant of his shall be slain at the hands of his kindred, and presently
 avenged at heavy cost to Italy.

And let no one think this tale a myth or a lie, for it is vouched for by Cornelius
 Balbus, an intimate friend of Caesar. Shortly before his death, as he was told, the
 herds of horses which he had dedicated to the river Rubicon when he crossed it, and
 had let loose without a keeper, stubbornly refused to graze and wept copiously. Again,
 when he was offering sacrifice, the soothsayer Spurinna warned him to beware of
 danger, which would come not later than the Ides of March;

and on the day before the Ides of that month a little bird called the king-bird flew
 into the Hall of Pompey with a sprig of laurel, pursued by others of various kinds
 from the grove hard by, which tore it to pieces in the hall. In fact the very night
 before his murder he dreamt now that he was flying above the clouds, and now that he
 was clasping the hand of Jupiter; and his wife Calpurnia thought that the
 pediment of their house fell, and that her husband was stabbed
 in her arms; and on a sudden the door of the room flew open of its own accord.

Both for these reasons and because of poor health he hesitated
 for a long time whether to stay at home and put off what he had planned to do in the
 senate; but at last, urged by Decimus Brutus not to disappoint the full meeting which
 had for some time been waiting for him, he went forth almost at the end of the fifth
 hour; and when a note revealing the plot was handed him by someone on the way, he put it with others which he held in his left hand, intending to read them
 presently. Then, after several victims had been slain, and he could not get favourable
 omens, he entered the House in defiance of portents, laughing at Spurinna and calling
 him a false prophet, because the Ides of March were come without bringing him harm;
 though Spurinna replied that they had of a truth come, but they had not gone.

As he took his seat, the conspirators gathered about him as if
 to pay their respects, and straightway Tillius Cimber, who had assumed the lead, came
 nearer as though to ask something; and when Caesar with a gesture put him off to
 another time, Cimber caught his toga by both shoulders; then as Caesar cried, Why, this is violence! one of the Cascas stabbed him from one side
 just below the throat.

Caesar caught Casca’s arm and ran it through with his stylus, but as he
 tried to leap to his feet, he was stopped by another wound. When he saw that he was
 beset on every side by drawn daggers, he muffled his head in his robe, and at the same
 time drew down its lap to his feet with his left hand, in order to fall more decently,
 with the lower part of his body also covered. And in this wise he was stabbed with
 three and twenty wounds, uttering not a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke,
 though some have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he said in Greek, You too, my child?

All the conspirators made off, and he lay there lifeless for
 some time, until finally three common slaves put him on a litter and carried him home,
 with one arm hanging down. And of so many wounds none turned out to be mortal, in the
 opinion of the physician Antistius, except the second one in the
 breast.

The conspirators had intended after slaying him to drag his body
 to the Tiber, confiscate his property, and revoke his decrees; but they forebore
 through fear of Marcus Antonius the consul, and Lepidus, the master of horse.

Then at the request of his father-in-law, Lucius Piso, the will
 was unsealed and read in Antony’s house, which Caesar had made on the preceding Ides
 of September at his place near Lavicum, and put in the care of the chief of the
 Vestals. Quintus Tubero states that from his first consulship until the beginning of
 the civil war it was his wont to write down Gnaeus Pompeius as his heir, and to read
 this to the assembled soldiers.

In his last will, however, he named three heirs, his sisters’ grandsons, Gaius
 Octavius, to three-fourths of his estate, and Lucius Pinarius and Quintus Pedius to
 share the remainder. At the end of the will, too, he adopted Gaius Octavius into his
 family and gave him his name. He named several of his assassins among the guardians of
 his son, in case one should be born to him, and Decimus Brutus even among his heirs in
 the second degree. To the people he left his
 gardens near the Tiber for their common use and three hundred sesterces to each man.

When the funeral was announced, a pyre was erected in the Campus
 Martius near the tomb of Julia, and on the rostra a gilded shrine was placed, made
 after the model of the temple of Venus Genetrix; within was a couch of ivory with
 coverlets of purple and gold, and at its head a pillar hung with the robe in which he
 was slain. Since it was clear that the day would not be long enough for
 those who offered gifts, they were directed to bring them to the Campus by whatsoever
 streets of the city they wished, regardless of any order of precedence.

At the funeral games, to rouse pity and indignation at his death, these words from
 the Contest for the Arms of Pacuvius were sung :- Saved I these men that they might murder me? 
 and words of a like purport from the Electra of Atilius. Instead
 of a eulogy the consul Antonius caused a herald to recite the decree of the Senate in
 which it had voted Caesar all divine and human honours at once, and likewise the oath
 with which they had all pledged themselves to watch over his personal safety; to which
 he added a very few words of his own.

The bier on the rostra was carried to the Forum by magistrates and ex-magistrates;
 and while some were urging that it be burned in the temple of Jupiter of the Capitol,
 and others in the Hall of Pompey, on a sudden two beings with swords by their sides and
 brandishing a pair of darts set fire to it with blazing torches, and at once the
 throng of bystanders heaped upon it dry branches, the judgment seats with the benches,
 and whatever else could serve as an offering.

Then the musicians and actors tore off their robes, which they had taken from the
 equipment of his triumphs and put on for the occasion, rent them to bits and threw
 them into the flames, and the veterans of the legions the arms with which they had
 adorned themselves for the funeral; many of the women too, offered up the jewels which
 they wore and the amulets and robes of their children.

At the height of the public grief a throng of
 foreigners went about lamenting each after the fashion of his country, above all the
 Jews, who even flocked to the place for several successive
 nights.

Immediately after the funeral the commons ran to the houses of
 Brutus and Cassius with firebrands, and after being repelled with difficulty, they
 slew Helvius Cinna when they met him, through a mistake in the name, supposing that he
 was Cornelius Cinna, who had the day before made a bitter indictment of Caesar and for
 whom they were looking; and they set his head upon a spear and paraded it about the
 streets. Afterwards they set up in the Forum a solid column of Numidian marble almost
 twenty feet high, and inscribed upon it, To the Father of his
 Country. At the foot of this they continued for a long time to sacrifice, make
 vows, and settle some of their disputes by an oath in the name of Caesar.

Caesar left in the minds of some of his friends the suspicion
 that he did not wish to live longer and had taken no precautions, because of his
 failing health; and that therefore he neglected the warnings which came to him from
 portents and from the reports of his friends. Some think that it was because he had
 full trust in that last decree of the senators and their oath that he dismissed even
 the armed bodyguard of Spanish soldiers that formerly attended him.

Others, on the contrary, believe that he elected to expose himself once for all to
 the plots that threatened him on every hand, rather than to be always anxious and on
 his guard. Some, too, say that he was wont to declare that it was not so much to his
 own interest as to that of his country that he remain alive; he had
 long since had his fill of power and glory; but if aught befell him, the commonwealth
 would have no peace, but would be plunged in civil strife under much worse conditions.

About one thing almost all are fully agreed, that he all but
 desired such a death as he met; for once when he read in Xenophon how Cyrus in his
 last illness gave directions for his funeral, he expressed his horror of such a
 lingering kind of end and his wish for one which was swift and sudden. And the day
 before his murder, in a conversation which arose at a dinner at the house of Marcus
 Lepidus, as to what manner of death was most to be desired, he had given his
 preference to one which was sudden and unexpected.

He died in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was numbered
 among the gods, not only by a formal decree, but also in the conviction of the vulgar.
 For at the first of the games which his heir Augustus gave in honour of his
 apotheosis, a comet shone for seven successive nights, rising about the eleventh
 hour, and was believed to be
 the soul of Caesar, who had been taken to heaven; and this is why a star is set upon
 the crown of his head in his statue. It was voted that the hall in which he was slain
 be walled up, that the Ides of March be called the Day of Parricide, and that a
 meeting of the senate should never be called on that day.

Hardly any of his assassins survived him for more than three
 years, or died a natural death. They were all condemned, and they perished in various
 ways-some by shipwreck, some in battle; some took their own lives with the self-same
 dagger with which they had impiously slain Caesar.