THE TWELVE CAESARS - Suetonius E-Book

Suetonius

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 584

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Written by the great Roman historian Suetonius in the year 121, "The Twelve Caesars" is an extremely important historical document and one of the main sources of knowledge about Roman history. In this magnificent work, which covers the period from the rise to the fall of the Roman Empire, we get to know the intimacy of the life of each of the twelve Caesars: their ancestors, their military campaigns, the events that led them to power and death, as well as the character and personality of each of them. Beyond historical facts, Suetonius managed to portray the human character of the 12 Caesars in an environment characterized by unlimited power, violence, and the debauchery and luxury of the emperors in ancient Rome. It is an exceptional work that deserves to be read.        

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Suetonius

THE TWELVE CAESARS

First Edition

Contents

INTRODUCTION

THE TWELVE CAESARS

BOOK ONE

BOOK TWO

BOOK THREE

BOOK FOUR

BOOK FIVE

BOOK SIX

BOOK SEVEN

BOOK EIGHT

INTRODUCTION

Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, the son of Suetonius Laetus, was probably born in Hippo, Regius (Algeria) in about AD 69. Suetonius trained as a lawyer and, after a succession of jobs working for the Roman government.

He was a close friend of Pliny the Younger who described him as "quiet and studious, a man dedicated to writing." Pliny, who inherited a large sum of money from Pliny the Elder, helped him buy a small property in Italy. Suetonius served under Pliny the Younger in Bithynia Pontus (northern Asia Minor) between 110 and 112. Pliny introduced Suetonius to Emperor Trajan. Later, Suetonius served as secretary of studies and director of the government archives. Suetonius also served as chief secretary to Emperor Hadrian. These posts gave him access to documents that enabled him to write his most famous book, The Twelve Caesars (a collection of biographies of the twelve Roman Emperors who lived between 48 BC and AD 96).

Suetonius believed that historians should try to write unbiased books. He included information for and against the people he was writing about and tried to avoid making personal judgements about them. However, one of the themes of his biographies was that emperors started off with good intentions but ended up being corrupted by their tremendous power.

Suetonius' most famous work is his collection of biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 Roman emperors, known simply as The Twelve Caesars (Caesares or De vita Caesarum). The biographies are not wholly flattering nor are events told in chronological sequence, but they reveal some candid details of Rome's first citizens.

The general format for each subject is to discuss the person's ancestry and then early life with a view to describing episodes which reveal the character of the future emperor. Then various aspects of the person's public life are described such as wars waged, rivalries, public events they sponsored, and political reforms made with a few anecdotes of private habits thrown in. In this latter category, Suetonius is not averse to revealing the juicy and sometimes shocking details of what the emperors got up to when they were not busy ruling the empire. These gossip details, no doubt, were a major factor in Suetonius' popularity in his own lifetime. A physical description of the subject is usually left until the end.

THE TWELVE CAESARS

BOOK ONE

 I Early Life

When Julius Caesar was aged fifteen, his father died (85/84BC). During the next consulship, having previously been nominated to the priesthood of Jupiter (in 86BC, by Marius and Cinna the consuls) he broke off his engagement to Cossutia, a rich girl though of only equestrian rank, to whom he had been betrothed while still a boy and before he had assumed the purple-bordered toga praetexta, and married the daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna who had been four times consul (87-84BC). This Cornelia later bore him a daughter, Julia.

He resisted all attempts by Sulla, the dictator, to make him divorce her. So that, as well as losing the priesthood, his wife’s dowry, and his own inheritance, he was treated as a member of the opposition, and was forced into hiding. Though suffering from a virulent bout of quartan fever, he had to find a new hide-out almost every night, and he saved himself from Sulla’s spies by bribery. Finally, through the intercession of the Vestal Virgins, and his near relatives Mamercus Aemilius and Aurelius Cotta, he won pardon. It is known that after firmly resisting the pleas of Caesar’s most devoted and eminent friends, who were obstinate in his cause, Sulla finally gave way and, divinely inspired or with shrewd foresight, cried: ‘You win then, take him! But be clear, the man you’re so keen to save will prove the ruin, someday, of this party you and I support; there is many a Marius in this fellow, Caesar. ’

 II First Campaign

His first military campaign was in Asia (81BC), as an aide-de-camp to Marcus Minucius Thermus, the governor of the province. Sent to Bithynia by Thermus, to raise a fleet, he idled so long at the court of King Nicomedes it was rumored he had prostituted himself to the king. He exacerbated the rumor by travelling back to Bithynia, a few days after his return, ostensibly to collect a debt owed to a freedman, one of his followers. However, his reputation improved later in the campaign and, at the storming of Mytilene (80BC), Thermus awarded him a civic crown of oak leaves for saving a fellow-campaigner’s life.

 III Return to Rome

He also campaigned in Cilicia, under Servilius Isauricus. Not for long though, for hearing of Sulla’s death (78bc), and hoping to benefit from a revolt led by Marcus Lepidus, he hastened swiftly back to Rome. Though he was made highly attractive offers, he chose not to align himself with Lepidus, lacking confidence in the man’s abilities, and in the situation which now seemed less promising.

The civil unrest was quelled, and subsequently Caesar brought an extortion case (77BC) against Comelius Dolabella, an ex-consul who had once been afforded a triumph. On Dolabella’s acquittal, Caesar decided to withdraw to Rhodes both to escape the resultant ill-feeling and to rest and have leisure to study oratory under Apollonius Molon, the pre-eminent teacher of rhetoric at that time.

During the crossing to Rhodes, at the start of winter, he was captured by pirates (75bc) off the island of Pharmacussa and, to his intense aggravation, remained their prisoner for almost forty days, attended only by a physician and two manservants, since on being taken he had sent the rest of his friends and staff to raise money for a ransom. Set on shore, after fifty talents had been paid, he lost no time in raising a fleet, hunting the fleeing pirates down and, as soon as they were in his power, executing on them the punishment of crucifixion with which he had often smilingly threatened them.

He sailed on to Rhodes (74bc), but then, so as not to remain idle while allies appeared to be in danger, he crossed to Asia Minor where Mithridates was ravaging the neighboring region. He raised a band of auxiliaries there, and drove Mithridates’ deputy from the province, so maintaining the allegiance of its faltering and irresolute cities.

 V Military Tribune in Rome

Appointed to his first office as military tribune, by popular vote, after his return to Rome, Caesar gave strong support to the assembly leaders in restoring the tribunes’ powers, diminished by Sulla’s dictatorship (70BC). He also spoke in favor of the bill introduced by Plotius which brought about the recall from exile of his brother-in-law Lucius Comelius Cinna, and the other members of Lepidus’ civil insurgency, who had fled to Spain and joined Sertorius after Lepidus’ death in 77BC.

 VI Family Eulogies

As quaestor (69bc) Caesar gave the traditional funeral orations from the Rostra at the deaths of his aunt Julia, and his wife Cornelia. In the eulogy for his aunt he spoke the following words concerning her ancestry and that of the Caesars: ‘My paternal aunt Julia was descended on her mother’s side from royalty, since the Marcii Reges were founded by the Roman King Ancus Marcius; and on her father’s side from the immortal gods, since the Julians, of whom we Caesars are a branch, are descended from the goddess Venus herself. Our family therefore claims the sanctity of kings, who reign supreme among mortals, and the reverence owed the gods, in whose power are those kings themselves’.

Cornelia’s place was assumed by Pompeia, the daughter of Quintus Pompeius Rufus, and grand-daughter of Lucius Sulla, though Caesar later divorced her (62bc) on suspicion of her adultery with Publius Clodius Pulcher who, according to rumor, dressed as a woman and seduced her during a public ceremony, the Festival of Bona Dea, the Good Goddess. This rumor was so persistent that the Senate ordered a judicial inquiry into the alleged pollution of the sacred rites.

 VII His Destiny

As quaestor he was appointed to Further Spain where, while conducting a round of assizes at the instigation of the praetor, he reached Gades, and saw there the statue of Alexander the Great in the temple of Hercules. He sighed deeply, and as if frustrated by his own lack of achievement in failing to perform anything worthy of note, at an age when Alexander had already subjugated the world, he immediately sought his discharge, to seize the first opening for greater action in Rome. Moreover, on the following night, shocked by a dream of raping his mother, he was nevertheless encouraged by the soothsayers whose interpretation filled him with the highest of hopes, that the mother he had conquered was no other than Earth itself, who is deemed to be our universal parent.

 VIII The Italian Colonies

He left therefore, before the end of his term, for the Latin colonies beyond the River Po, which were in a state of unrest, and demanding the same citizenship rights as others, and might have roused them to some rash action if the consuls had not temporarily garrisoned the conscripted legions there that were destined for Cilicia.

 IX Conspiracy

However, he soon attempted something more ambitious in Rome itself. A few days before taking up his aedileship (65bc) he was suspected of conspiring with Marcus Licinius Crassus, the ex-consul, and with Publius Cornelius Sulla and Publius Autronius Paetus who after election to the consulship had been found guilty of corruption. They planned to attack the Senate in the New Year and kill as many senators as suited them. Crassus would then become Dictator, proclaiming Caesar his Master of Horse, and when the government was organized to their liking, Sulla and Autronius would be handed the consulship.

This conspiracy is mentioned by Tanusius Geminus in his History, by Marcus Bibulus Calpurnius in his Edicts and by Gaius Scribonius Curio the Elder in his Orations. And Cicero too seems to refer to it in a letter to Axius in which he says that Caesar ‘established during his consulship that dominion which he planned as an aedile’. Tanusius adds that Crassus, through ill-conscience or fear, failed to appear on the day set for the massacre, and Caesar therefore chose not to give the agreed signal, which, Curio claims, was to let the toga fall from his shoulder.

With Curio, Marcus Actorius Naso claims that Caesar also conspired with Gnaeus Piso, a young nobleman suspected of intrigue at Rome who had therefore been assigned to the governorship of Spain, in an exceptional and unsolicited appointment. They had agreed that Piso would raise a rebellion abroad while Caesar did so in Rome, at the same time as the Ambrani of Liguria and the peoples beyond the River Po revolted, but the death of Piso ended the conspiracy.

 X Wooing the Masses

As aedile, Caesar decorated the Comitium, the Forum with its adjacent basilicas, and even the Capitol itself, with a display of material for use in his public shows, building temporary colonnades for his selections from the vast mass available. He staged wild-beast combats and plays, independently and with his colleague, Marcus Bibulus, who openly complained that he had met Pollux’s fate: ‘As the Temple of the Twins in the Forum only bears Castor’s name, so our joint lavishness is always Caesar’s.’

Caesar also mounted gladiatorial contests but with fewer combatants than advertised, as the vast troop collected from all quarters terrified his political opponents to the point that a bill was passed limiting the number of gladiators anyone could maintain in Rome.

 XI Political In-fighting

Having won favor with the masses, Caesar tried, via their tribunes, to take control of Egypt by popular vote. The opportunity which he seized for so irregular an appointment arose from the general condemnation of the Alexandrians who had repudiated King Ptolemy XII, though the Senate had proclaimed him a friend and ally of Rome. Caesar failed because of opposition from the aristocratic party, and wanting to harm their prestige in any way he might, he replaced, as aedile, the monuments, destroyed by Sulla years previously, commemorating Gaius Marius’ victories over Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and the Teutones. Moreover, as Judge of the Court of Inquiry, he prosecuted as murderers those who had earned public bounties for the heads of Roman citizens outlawed by proscription, though they were exempted according to the Cornelian Laws.

 XII The Trial of Gaius Rabirius

Caesar also bribed a man (Titus Labienus) to bring a charge of high treason against Gaius Rabirius (63bc) who had rendered a notable service to the Senate by repressing the seditious activities of the tribune Lucius Appuleius Saturninus (in 100BC). Selected by lot to try the accused, Caesar passed sentence in such a zealous manner that when Rabirius subsequently appealed to the people, the most powerful argument in his favor was his judge’s acerbity.

 XIII Pontifex Maximus

Renouncing hopes of controlling Egypt, Caesar, by flagrant bribery, pursued the office of Pontifex Maximus (High Priest). It is said that, with the enormous debts he had incurred in mind, he told his mother as she kissed him goodbye on the morning of the poll that he would either return as Pontifex or not at all. In reality he defeated his two weighty rivals, superior to him in age and rank, so decisively that he won more votes from their tribes than they won in the entire poll.

 XIV The Catiline Conspiracy

When the Catiline conspiracy was exposed (in 63bc), the whole Senate except for Caesar, who was now praetor-elect, demanded the death-penalty for those implicated. He alone proposed their imprisonment, each in a different town, and the confiscation of their estates. Moreover, he created such anxiety in the minds of those who proposed a more severe punishment, by describing the enduring hatred the Commons would feel towards them, that Decimus Junius Silanus, consul elect, did not hesitate to give a milder interpretation to his proposal, which it would have been humiliating to change, as it might have been taken as more severe than was intended. Caesar would have prevailed, since a number of senators, including Quintus Tullius Cicero, the consul’s brother, had been won to his view, had not Marcus Portius Cato’s speech kept those who were wavering in line. Nevertheless, Caesar continued to delay proceedings, until the group of armed knights guarding the Senate threatened his life if he continued with such immoderate behavior. They even drew their swords and waved them at him so vigorously that friends beside him left their seats, while the remainder took pains to shield him with their bodies and the folds of their robes. Clearly deterred, he not only desisted, but kept away from the House for the rest of the year.

 XV Praetor

On the first day of his praetorship (62bc) he demanded that Quintus Lutatius Catulus publish an account to the people of the Capitol restorations, and proposed the commission be entrusted elsewhere (to Pompey). However he withdrew the measure, unequal to the combined opposition of the aristocrats, who were attending the inaugural sacrifice on the Capitol marking the new consuls’ commencement of office and, resolved on obstinate resistance, quickly altered their plans and descended en masse.

 XVI Support from the Commons

Then, when Caecilius Metellus, a tribune of the people, brought in some highly inflammatory bills, despite his colleagues’ veto, Caesar supported and championed his cause so pugnaciously that he and Metellus were suspended from office by senatorial decree. Nevertheless, Caesar was so audacious as to continue to hold court and give rulings. Learning that he was about to be prevented by force, he dismissed the lictors, doffed his formal robes, and quietly went home, deciding to remain in retirement due to circumstances.

In fact, when the populace flocked to his house, spontaneously, the following day, and in a riotous demonstration offered him their help in regaining office, he restrained them. His response being unanticipated, the Senate, which had hastily convened to address the situation, ended by thanking him publicly via a deputation of its leaders, summoning him to the House and, while showering praises on him, revoking their former decree, and re-confirming his praetorship.

 XVII Accusations of Complicity in the Catiline Conspiracy

He was once more in danger when named as one of the Catiline conspirators, by Lucius Vettius an informer, in front of the special commissioner, Novius Niger, and also in the Senate, by Quintus Curius, who had been voted a reward from public funds for first revealing the plot. Curius claimed his information came directly from Catiline himself, while, Vettius offered to produce a letter to Catiline in Caesar’s handwriting.

Caesar, deciding that such claims could in no way be tolerated and by appealing to Cicero’s own testimony that he had voluntarily reported certain details of the conspiracy to him, ensured Curius was denied his bounty. As for Vettius, whose surety was declared forfeit and possessions seized, he was nearly torn to pieces by a furious crowd before the Rostra. Caesar had him imprisoned along with Novius Niger, the commissioner, who had allowed a magistrate of higher rank to be indicted by his tribunal.

 XVIII Further Spain

After his praetorship, Caesar was appointed to the province of Further Spain (61bc). He relieved himself of his creditors, who had tried to detain him, by providing sureties for his debts, and was away, contrary to law and custom, even before the necessary funds had been decreed by the Senate. He may have feared impeachment while still a private citizen, or simply wished to respond more swiftly to the pleas for assistance from Rome’s Spanish allies. Having pacified the province, he departed with equal haste for Rome, without waiting for his successor to arrive, to request, in the same breath, a triumph and a consulship. Since the consular election date had already been announced; his candidacy was only acceptable if he entered Rome as a private citizen; and his attempts to gain exemption from the rules met with a general outcry; he was obliged to forgo the triumph to avoid losing the consulship.

 XIX Consulship: Strategic Alliances

Faced with two other candidates for the consulship (of 60bc), Lucius Lucceius and Marcus Bibulus, Caesar joined forces with the former, agreeing with him that since Lucceius had more money but less influence, he should issue bribes to the electors on behalf of both. Hearing of this, the aristocratic party, fearing there was nothing Caesar would not dare if he were consul with a compliant colleague alongside him, authorized Bibulus to match their bribes. Many aristocrats contributed to the fund, not even Cato rejecting bribery, in the circumstances, as a means of achieving public good.

So, Caesar and Bibulus were elected as consuls. For the reason given, the aristocrats took steps to ensure that the newly elected consuls would, at the end of their term of office, be granted governorships of the least important provinces, the role being simply to police the woods and passes. Incensed by the slight, Caesar paid every attention possible to win Gnaeus Pompey’s goodwill, Pompey being annoyed with the Senate for its slowness in ratifying his actions after his defeat of King Mithridates. Caesar also succeeded in reconciling Pompey and Marcus Crassus, enemies since their joint consulship, which had involved intense disagreement. He forged an alliance with both, whereby nothing should proceed politically that any of the three disliked.

 XX The ‘Consulship of Julius and Caesar’

Caesar’s first act as Consul was to institute the daily recording and publishing of proceedings in the Senate and the People’s Court. He also revived the ancient custom whereby an orderly should precede him, during the months when his colleague held the rods of office (the fasces), while the lictors followed. He also introduced a new agrarian law, and when Bibulus announced the omens were unfavorable so as to delay the bill, he drove him from the Forum by force of arms. When next day, in the Senate, Bibulus complained, and found that no one dared to move a motion of censure, or even to express an opinion about such a scandalous action, though decrees had often been passed regarding much less serious disorder, he was driven to such exasperation with Caesar’s conduct that he stayed at home from then until the end of his term of office, merely issuing further announcements of adverse omens.

From that moment on, Caesar administered all the affairs of State himself according to his own wishes. So that some people, by way of a joke, pretending to sign and seal a testamentary document, instead of writing: ‘Executed in the consulship of Bibulus and Caesar’, would write ‘in the consulship of Julius and Caesar.’ And this verse soon went the rounds:

‘Not in Bibulus’ year but Caesar’s, something, recently, got done:

Of Bibulus’ year, I can’t recall a single act, not one.’

The plain called Stellas in Northern Campania, which had of old been devoted to public use, and those Campanian lands farmed on behalf of the government purse, he divided, by a special commission and without casting lots, among the twenty thousand or so citizens who had fathered three or more children. When the tax-farmers asked for relief, he cancelled a third of their obligation, but openly warned them not to bid too recklessly for future contracts. He freely granted anything anyone asked, unopposed, or if there was an objection, by intimidation. Marcus Cato who attempted a filibuster was dragged from the House by a lictor, on Caesar’s orders, and thrown into prison. When Lucius Lucullus went too far in stating his opposition, Caesar so terrified him with threats of prosecution (for his conduct in the Mithridatic Wars) that Lucullus went down on his knees to beg for pardon. Hearing that Cicero had made a speech in court deploring the state of things, Caesar granted the orator’s enemy, Publius Clodius Pulcher, a transfer from the patricians to the plebeians (in 59BC), a move that Publius had long wished to achieve, and did so at the ninth hour of the day, three o’clock that is, after the close of session.

Ultimately, in an attack on the whole opposition party, he bribed an informer to appear on the Rostra, claim there that certain aristocrats had urged him to assassinate Pompey, and then in a pre-arranged manner list the guilty. He did indeed name one or two, but to no effect, so strong was the suspicion of underhand dealing, with the result, it is said, that Caesar, having abandoned his over-hasty attempt, had the man poisoned.

 XXI Alliance with Pompey

Around that time, he married Calpurnia, the daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso his successor in the consulship, and betrothed his own daughter Julia to Pompey, ending her previous engagement to Servilius Caepio, though Caepio had recently served him well in his efforts against Bibulus. Once the new alliance was forged, Caesar would call on Pompey to open debates in the Senate, where previously Crassus had taken priority, ignoring the tradition of maintaining the same order of speakers as that established on New Years Day (the Kalends of January).

 XXII Governor of Gaul

Now, with Piso as father-in-law, and Pompey as son-in-law, Caesar set his eye on Gaul as the province above all most likely to yield him wealth and opportunity for triumphs. He was, it is true, only appointed to Cisalpine Gaul with Illyricum, at first, following a proposal made by Publius Vatinius, but the Senate soon added Transalpine Gaul, fearing that if they refused the people would overrule them.

Elated by this success, he could not refrain from boasting, a few days later, to a crowded House, that having gained his dearest wish to the sorrow and chagrin of his enemies, he would henceforth give their heads a good bruising, every one of them; and when someone sneered that such would be no easy task for any woman, he replied, as if in jest: that in Syria too Semiramis had reigned, and a large part of Asia had once been ruled by the Amazons.

 XXIII Threat of Impeachment

When, at the end of his consulship, Gaius Memmius and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus demanded an official inquiry into his conduct during the preceding year, Caesar referred the matter to the Senate, and when they failed to proceed after three days of useless argument, he left for his province. His quaestor was immediately arraigned on various charges, prior to his own impeachment. And Caesar himself was presently indicted by Lucius Antistius, a tribune of the people, such that it was only by an appeal to the whole college of tribunes that he avoided trial, pleading his absence on public service.

So to render himself secure in future, he took great pains to ensure the magistrates for the year were beholden to him, refusing to support and preventing the election of any candidates unless they promised to defend his cause when absent from Rome. He had no hesitation in demanding, in some cases, that they swear an oath to fulfil this pledge and, in others, a written contract.

 XXIV Power Base in Gaul

Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, when a candidate for the consulship (of 55BC), openly threatened that if elected he would do what he could not achieve as praetor and deprive Caesar of military power. Caesar demanded that Crassus and Pompey meet him (in the spring of 56bc) at Lucca, just within the boundary of Cisalpine Gaul, where he persuaded them to stand as consuls for a second time (they had been consuls together in 70BC) in order to defeat Domitius. Through their influence he succeeded in extending his governorship of Gaul for a further five years.

Encouraged by his success, Caesar raised legions at his own expense to add to those sanctioned by the state: one actually recruited in Transalpine Gaul, and called the Alauda, Gallic for ‘the Crested Lark’, which he equipped with standard weapons and trained in Roman tactics. Later he made every such legionary a Roman citizen.

He lost no opportunity for waging war, from that time onwards, regardless of how unjust or risk-prone it might be, fomenting disputes with allied tribes as well as hostile and barbarous ones. At one point, the Senate order a commission of inquiry into the condition of the Gallic provinces, and some speakers went so far as to suggest Caesar be handed over to the enemy. But the more his campaigns bore fruit, the more frequently public thanksgivings were approved in his honor, of longer duration than those of any previous general.

 XXV Campaigns in Britain and Beyond the Rhine

This, in brief, is what he achieved in his nine years (58-49BC) of governorship. He reduced to a province the whole of Gaul bounded by the Pyrenees, Cévennes, and Alps, and by the rivers Rhine and Rhone, a border of over 3100 miles, comprising an area of over 250,000 square miles, excluding a few allied states which had rendered him useful aid, and he exacted from it an annual tribute of 400,000 gold pieces (aurei).

He was the first Roman to bridge the Rhine and he inflicted heavy losses on the Germans beyond. He also conquered the Britons, a previously unknown people, and exacted wealth and hostages from them. He suffered misfortune on only three occasions, while achieving his success: in invading Britain, where his fleet was all but destroyed by a storm (55BC); on the German frontier, where his generals Titurius Sabinus and Aurunculeius Cotta were killed in ambush (54bc); and in Gaul when one of his legions was routed at Gergovia (52bc);

In one year (54BC) during that period, Caesar had lost, in tum, his mother, daughter, and infant grandchild. Meanwhile (in 52BC), the assassination of Publius Clodius Pulcher caused such widespread consternation that the Senate voted to appoint only a single Consul and named Pompey as their choice. When the Tribunes wanted Caesar to stand as Pompey’s colleague, he urged them to persuade the people to approve his standing for consul a second time, without travelling to Rome, when his governorship ended, to avoid quitting his province prematurely with its conquest incomplete.

The granting of this concession so fired his ambition, and inspired his hopes, that he spared no expense or show of favor, either in a public or private capacity. He began building a new Forum with his spoils from Gaul, the land alone costing more than a million gold pieces. Then he announced an unprecedented event, a gladiatorial show and a public feast in memory of his daughter Julia. In order to create as much excited anticipation as possible, the banquet was catered for partly by his household, but partly also by the market contractors.

He also issued orders that any famous gladiator who failed to win the approval of the crowd should be forcibly saved from execution and reserved for his employ. Novices were trained, not by professionals in the gladiatorial schools, but in the private houses of Roman knights and even Senators skilled in arms. His surviving letters reveal his earnest requests to them to pay their recruits individual attention and direct the training personally.

He also doubled the soldiers’ pay, in perpetuity, and whenever there was ample grain, shared it among them lavishly and without restraint, and on occasions granted each man a Gallic slave from among the captives.

 XXVII Buying Favour

Moreover, in order to try and retain Pompey’s friendship, and renew the tie broken by Julia’s death, Caesar unsuccessfully offered him the hand of Octavia, his sister’s granddaughter, though she was already married to Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor, asking in return the hand of Pompey’s daughter, Pompeia Magna, who was betrothed to Faustus Cornelius Sulla.

Having placed all Pompey’s friends, and a majority of the Senate, under obligation to him, by means of low-rate or interest-free loans, he then lavished gifts on men of less distinction, whether they sought them or not, including slaves and freedmen who were their master’s or patron’s favorite. In brief, he became the sole reliable source of aid to those in legal difficulties, short of funds, or living over-extravagantly, denying help only to those whose crimes were so great, or debts so heavy, or way of life so lavish, that even he could not rescue them, telling them frankly that their only hope was civil war.

 XXVIII Opposition from Marcus Claudius Marcellus

He took equal pains to win the support of kings and provincial authorities everywhere, offering some captives by the thousand, and sending auxiliaries to others whenever they asked, without permission from the Senate or Tribunes. He adorned the main cities of Greece and Asia with fine public works, as well as those of Italy, Gaul and Spain. All were still dazed by his actions and puzzled as to their purpose, when the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus (51BC) announced that he intended to bring a matter of vital public interest before the Senate, and subsequently proposed that, since the Gallic war had ended, and peace was now established, Caesar be relieved of his governorship before the end of his term, a successor appointed, and the army of conquest disbanded. Further he proposed that Caesar be prohibited from standing for the consulship, unless he appeared at Rome in person, since Pompey’s actions had not annulled the previous statute. Here he referred to Pompey’s bill regulating official privileges, which debarred absentee candidates from office. Pompey had neglected to exclude Caesar’s name from his bill and had not corrected the oversight before the bill was passed and the law, engraved on its bronze tablet, deposited at the Treasury.

Not content with trying to deprive Caesar of his command and the privilege previously voted him, Marcellus also proposed that the colonists Caesar had settled at Novum Comum (Como) under the Vatinian Act should lose their citizenship, on the basis that it had been done to further Caesar’s ambitions and was unauthorized in law.

 XXIX An Appeal to the Senate

Provoked by these measures, Caesar, who had often been heard to remark that, now he was the leading man in Rome, it would be harder to push him down to second place than from second to lowest of all, resisted stubbornly. He persuaded the tribunes of the people to use their vetoes, and also enlisted the aid of Servius Sulpicius Rufus, Marcellus’ co-consul.

In the following year (50BC), when Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor succeeded Marcus Claudius Marcellus his cousin as consul, and attempted the same measures, Caesar heavily bribed the other consul, Aemilius Paullus, and Gaius Curio, the most impetuous of the tribunes, to secure their support.

Realizing the relentless nature of the opposition, which even included the new consuls-elect, he made a written appeal to the Senate asking to retain the privilege granted him by the commons, or else for all the other commanders to be required to resign as well. He was confident, it was thought, of mobilizing his veterans whenever he wished, more swiftly than Pompey his new levies. He finally proposed a compromise, offering to relinquish eight legions and quit Transalpine Gaul, but retain two legions and Cisalpine Gaul, or at a minimum one legion and Illyricum, until he was elected as consul.

 XXX The Eve of Civil War

But after the Senate’s refusal to intervene on his behalf, and his opponents’ declaration that compromise was unacceptable in a matter of such national importance, Caesar crossed into Cisalpine Gaul. He held his regular assizes there and halted at Ravenna (49bc) determined on war if the Senate took drastic action against the tribunes of the people who had used their vetoes on his behalf.

And this indeed became the pretext for civil war, though other motives are suspected. Pompey used to say that Caesar desired general turmoil and confusion because he lacked the means to complete the schemes he had planned or give the people what they expected on his return. Others say that he feared the necessity of accounting for his actions, in which he had disregarded the laws, the auspices, and all vetoes, during his first consulship. Certainly, Marcus Portius Cato had often pledged to impeach him, the moment his army was disbanded. And it was repeated, openly, that if he was out of office on his return, he would be tried in a court ringed with armed men, as Milo had been (52bc).

Asinius Pollio’s comment in his History renders this more plausible, where he says that Caesar, at Pharsalus, watching his enemies fly or be killed, said in these exact words: ‘They chose this; they would have condemned me, Gaius Caesar, despite my victories, if I had not sought the army’s help.’

Some claim that the constant exercise of power made him enamored of it; and that, having weighed his enemies’ strength against his own, he grasped this chance of seizing dictatorship, and fulfilling the dreams of his youth. Cicero, it seems, held that opinion, writing in the third book of his De officiis (On Duty), that Caesar was forever quoting Euripides’ lines in his Phoenissae (The Phoenician Women), which Cicero translates as:

‘If force is ever justified, to gain supremacy By force is right: in all things else, cherish piety.’

 XXXI Advance to the Rubicon

Thus, when word came to him that the tribunes’ veto had been disregarded, and that they had fled the city (49bc), he sent a few cohorts on ahead in secret and disarmed suspicion, while concealing his intentions, by appearing at a public show; inspecting the plans for a gladiatorial school he wished to build; and dining as usual surrounded by a crowd of guests. Then, at dusk, he commandeered some mules from a local bakery, harnessed them to a carriage, and set off quietly with a few of his staff. Though the carriage-lights guttered, and he lost his way for a time, he found a guide at dawn, and returned to the road on foot through narrow back-lanes.

He then overtook his advanced guard at the River Rubicon, which formed the boundary between Gaul and Italy. There he paused for a while and, realizing the magnitude of the step he was taking, turned to his staff, to remark: ‘We could turn back, even now; but once over that little bridge, and it will all come down to a fight.’

As he stood there, undecided, he received a sign. A being of marvelous stature and beauty appeared suddenly, seated nearby, and playing on a reed pipe. A knot of shepherds gathered to listen, but when a crowd of his soldiers, including some of the trumpeters, broke ranks to join them, the apparition snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river, and sounding the call to arms blew a thunderous blast, and crossed to the far side. At this, Caesar exclaimed: ‘Let us follow the summons, of the gods’ sign and our enemy’s injustice. The die is cast.’

 XXXIII Exhorting the Troops

And crossing with the army, he welcomed the tribunes of the people, who had fled to him from Rome. Then, in tears, he addressed the troops and, ripping open the breast of his tunic, asked for their loyalty. It is even said that he promised every man there promotion to the Equestrian Order, and the 4000 gold pieces that went with it, but that is a simple misunderstanding. Because, during his speech of exhortation, he kept pointing to his left hand and crying out that he would gladly reward those who helped champion his honor with the very ring from his finger, the soldiers at the fringe of the crowd, who could see more clearly than they could hear, misinterpreted his gesture. So the word went round that he had promised them the right to wear a knight’s gold ring, and the estate to support it.

 XXXIV Victory in Spain

An ordered account of his subsequent movements is as follows. He overran Picenum, Umbria and Etruria; captured Lucius Domitius who had been illegally named his successor in Gaul and was holding Corfinium (Corfinio) for the Senate and released him; and then marched along the Adriatic coast to Brundisium (Brindisi), where Pompey and the consuls had taken refuge, as they fled from Rome to Epirus.

When his strenuous efforts to prevent them crossing the straits proved vain, he marched on Rome, where he summoned the Senate to debate the situation. From Rome he set off to confront Pompey’s most substantial forces, commanded in Spain by Pompey’s three generals, Marcus Petreius, Lucius Afranius, and Marcus Varro, saying to his friends as he left: ‘I go to encounter an army without a leader, I shall return to encounter a leader without an army.’ And though his advance was slowed by the siege of Massilia (Marseilles), which had barred its gates against him, and by a failure of his supply-lines, he still gained a swift and total victory.

 XXXV In Pursuit of Pompey

Returning by way of Rome, Caesar crossed the Adriatic, and after blockading Pompey for four months behind immense containing works (at Dyrrhacium in Epirus, from which he was forced to retreat) he finally routed him at the Battle of Pharsalus (in Thessaly, 48bc). He followed Pompey’s flight to Alexandria, and on learning that Ptolemy XIII had murdered his rival, and suspecting that there was a plot against his own life as well, declared war.

It proved a difficult campaign, as regards time and place, fought in winter, and inside the city walls of a well-supplied and devious enemy, while he himself was ill-equipped and lacking supply lines. Nevertheless, he conquered, and handed rule in Egypt to Cleopatra VII and her younger brother Ptolemy XIV (in 47bc), fearing lest, as a Roman province, it might prove a source of rebellion under some headstrong governor.

From Alexandria, he advanced to Syria and from there to Pontus, driven by the news that Pharnaces II, the son of Mithridates the Great, had taken advantage of the situation to achieve numerous military successes. But within five days of arriving, and four hours after sighting Pharnaces’ army, Caesar crushed him in battle (at Zela in 47bc) afterwards frequently remarking that Pompey had been fortunate in achieving fame by victory over such poor opponents.

Finally, he overpowered Scipio and Juba I in North Africa (at Thapsus in 46bc) where the remnants of Pompey’s followers were gathering, followed by victory over Pompey’s two sons in Spain (at Munda in 45bc).

 XXXVI Victory despite Setbacks

Caesar never actually suffered a defeat throughout the Civil War, but among his generals Gaius Curio was killed fighting in Africa; Gaius Antonius was captured by the enemy off Illyricum while Publius Cornelius Dolabella lost a fleet there; and Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus lost his army, in Pontus. He himself was invariably successful, and only on two occasions was the issue ever in doubt: at Dyrrachium where Pompey forced him to retreat, such that he said of Pompey’s failure to press home his advantage that ‘he did not know how to conquer’; and again in Spain, in the final battle (at Munda), when all seemed lost, and he even contemplated suicide.

 XXXVII His Triumphs

After defeating Scipio (at Thapsus in 46bc), Caesar celebrated four triumphs in a single month, at intervals of a few days, and a fifth after defeating Pompey’s sons (at Munda in 45bc). The first, the most magnificent, was the Gallic, followed by the Alexandrian, the Pontic, the African, and finally the Spanish, each differing from the next in the display of arms and spoils.

Riding through the Velabrum, on the day of his Gallic triumph, he was nearly thrown from his ceremonial chariot which broke its axle, but he later ascended the Capitol between two lines of elephants to right and left, acting as torchbearers. At his Pontic triumph, among the processional wagons, he displayed one with a simple three-word inscription, VENI:VIDI:VICI, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’, thereby celebrating not scenes from the campaign as the other wagons did, but the speed with which it was executed.

Caesar gave every infantry soldier of his veteran legions 240 gold pieces as bounty, over and above the 20 paid to them at the start of hostilities. He also granted them land, though to avoid evicting existing owners these farms were scattered about the country.

Every member of the commons received not only ten pecks of grain and a ten-pound jar of oil, but also the three gold pieces he had promised at first, as well as another gold piece because of the delay in payment. He also remitted a year’s rent to tenants in Rome paying 20 gold pieces rent or less, and to those in the rest of Italy paying up to 5 gold pieces.

He added to all this a public banquet, and a distribution of meat, as well as two mass luncheons to celebrate his Spanish victory: two, because he judged that the liberality of the first failed to do his generosity credit, and so it was followed five days later by another more lavish one.

 XXXIX His Public Entertainments

He mounted a whole series of diverse public shows, including a gladiatorial contest, stage-plays in every ward in Rome performed in several languages, races in the Circus, athletic competitions, and even a mock naval battle.

At the gladiatorial event in the Forum, a praetorian, Furius Leptinus, fought it out with Quintus Calpenus, a barrister and former senator. The sons of Asian and Bithynian leaders danced a Pyrrhic sword dance.

One of the plays was a farce written and acted by a Roman knight, Decimus Laberius. After his performance on stage he received five thousand gold pieces then his Equestrian’s gold ring was returned to him (as he had forfeited his rank by appearing on stage) so that he could walk from stage to orchestra and take his place among the fourteen rows above reserved for the Order.

The Circus Maximus was extended at either end for the races, and a wide ditch dug all round. Young noblemen raced two and four-horse chariots, or pairs of horses, leaping from back-to-back. The Troy-game, a mock battle supposedly introduced by Aeneas, was performed by two troops, one of younger, one of older boys. And wild-beast combats were presented five days running, ending in a battle between two armies, each with five hundred infantry, thirty cavalry, and twenty elephants. The barrier and end-posts were removed to allow for this, so that the two camps could be pitched facing each other.

There were three days of athletics, held in a temporary purpose-built stadium on the Campus Martius.

To mount the naval battle, a lake was dug in the Lesser Codeta. It was fought between vessels with two, three, and four-banks of oars, allocated from the Tyrian and Egyptian fleets, and heavily manned with warriors.

The throng of spectators, drawn from every quarter of the city, was so vast that many visitors had to sleep in tents pitched in the streets and thoroughfares, while the crush of people was such that many died, including two senators.

 XL His Reform of the Calendar

Turning next to public affairs and the ordering of the state, Caesar reformed the calendar, which the College of Priests had allowed through their negligence to fall into disorder, adding days or months as it suited them, such that the festivals for the corn harvest and the grape vintage no longer fell in summer and autumn respectively.

He regulated the calendar year by the sun’s course, increasing it from 355 to 365 days and abolishing thereafter the intercalary month that followed February, while adding a leap day every fourth year. Then, to align the next New Year’s Day to the seasons correctly, he inserted two months between November and December, for that year (of 46BC) only, so that including the intercalary month, in the old style, it comprised fifteen months.

 XLI His Reform of the Administration and Electoral System

To fill the Senate vacancies he enrolled new patricians, and increased the quota of praetors, aediles quaestors, and minor officials, reinstating those downgraded by the censors or convicted of corruption by a jury. He arranged the elections with the commons on the following basis: that apart from the consuls, half the magistrates should be chosen by the people, while the other half were his personal nominees. He announced his choices in memos to the tribes of voters, in the following manner: ‘Caesar the Dictator, to such and such a tribe. I recommend so and so to you, to receive your vote.’ And he even admitted to office the sons of men who had been proscribed.

He also restricted jury-service to two orders, the equestrian and the senatorial, disqualifying the treasury tribunes from serving.

Caesar altered the method and location of registering the grain entitlement. Assisted by the city landlords the list was completed street by street, and the number of those entitled to a free allocation of grain was reduced from 320,000 to 150,000. To obviate the need for this exercise in future he allowed the praetors to update their register when anyone died with the name of someone not yet on the list.

 XLII Other Reforms

Since the city population had been depleted by the allocation of 80,000 citizens to overseas colonies, no citizen between the ages of twenty and forty, unless he was restricted by army service, could now absent himself from Italy, legally, for more than three successive years. And no Senator’s son could travel abroad except as a member of a magistrate’s household or staff. And at least a third of the cattlemen employed by graziers must be free born. Caesar also conferred citizenship on all medical practitioners and teachers of liberal arts in Rome, as an inducement to them to continue in residence there, and to others to do the same.

He disappointed those agitators who sought the cancellation of outstanding debts, but did decree that creditors had to accept a valuation of their debtors’ assets at pre-war prices, while deducting from the principal any interest already paid in cash or committed by way of bank guarantees, which had the effect of reducing the debt by about a quarter.

Caesar dissolved all the guilds except the ancient ones. He increased the penalties for crime, and since the rich committed offences with less compunction because they suffered exile but no loss of property, he punished the murderers of freemen by seizing the whole of their property, as Cicero records, and others by a loss of half their property.

 XLIII His Administration of Justice

He administered justice extremely strictly and conscientiously, dismissing senators convicted of extortion from the order. He even annulled the marriage of an ex-praetor whose wife wed him the day after her previous divorce, despite there being no suspicion of adultery.

He imposed import duties on foreign wares. He forbade the use of litters, and the wearing of scarlet robes and pearls except on set days by those of a suitable age and status. And he specifically enforced the law against luxury, by posting inspectors in various parts of the market, to seize and impound delicacies on sale in violation of the law, occasionally sending guards and lictors into dining-areas to remove any dishes served which had escaped their net.

 XLIV His Civil Projects

For the embellishment and efficiency of the city and the defense and extension of the Empire, Caesar daily increased the size and number of his projects; most importantly, erecting a Temple of Mars, larger than any previous one, while filling in and levelling the lake where the mock naval battle took place, and building a vast theatre, sloping down from the Tarpeian Rock; confining the Civil Code to defined limits, extracting the most essential and effective statutes from the vast and wordy tangle, and reducing them to the least number of volumes; providing public access to the finest libraries of Greek and Latin works, and assigning Marcus Varro the task of collecting and classifying them; draining the Pontine marshes and releasing the waters of Lake Fucinus; laying a highway from the Adriatic over the heights of the Apennines to the Tiber; cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth; pushing back the Dacian advances into Pontus and Thrace; and attacking the Parthians via Lesser Armenia, but without risking battle until he had gauged their qualities.

Death cut short all such plans and enterprises. But before I speak of that, it would not go amiss if I described briefly his appearance, dress, habits and character, as well as his conduct in peace and war.

Caesar is said to have been tall, with a fair complexion, well-formed limbs, dark eyes and a broad face. His health was sound, apart from the sudden losses of consciousness and nightmares that affected him in his latter days. Twice on campaign he was subject to an epileptic seizure. He was meticulous over the care of his person, always neatly trimmed and shaved, and even some say having other superfluous hair removed from his body. His baldness was an embarrassment that annoyed him greatly, offering a perfect subject for his enemies’ gibes. As a result he used to comb the sparse hair forward from the crown of his head, and of all the honors voted him by Senate and People, the one that pleased him most, and the one of which he took most advantage, was the privilege of wearing a laurel wreath at all times.

He was also noted they say, for his manner of dress; his senatorial tunic, with its broad purple stripes, owning fringed sleeves to the wrist. And he wore it too with a loose belt, which prompted Sulla’s warning to the aristocrats, to watch out for the ill-constrained boy.

 XLVI His Residences

He occupied at first a modest house in the Subura quarter, but later as High Priest took over the official residence on the Sacred Way. Many writers say he enjoyed luxury and elegance; that having spent a fortune building a country mansion at Nemi, from the foundations up, he had it razed to the ground because it was lacking in various ways, though he was poor at the time and deep in debt; and that on campaign he took with him tessellated and mosaic flooring.

 XLVII His Acquisitiveness

They say also that the hope of acquiring pearls led to his invasion of Britain, and that he would weigh them in his palm to value them; that he was an avid collector of gems, carvings, statues and old frescoes; and that he paid such high prices for exceptionally presentable and able slaves that he was ashamed to allow the amounts to be entered in the accounts.

 XLVIII His Household Management

Also, I find that, when based in the provinces he used to have dinner served in separate rooms, one for his Greek and Roman officers, the other for the use of Roman citizens and the more important provincial notables. He was so severe and punctilious in his household management, in small matters as well as great, that he clapped his baker in irons on one occasion for serving himself and his guests with bread of differing quality; and he had a favorite freedman executed for committing adultery with the wife of a Roman knight, even though no complaint had been made against the man.

His reputation was only tarnished by accusations of homosexuality in the case of his intimacy with King Nicomedes, though that was a grave and perennial source of reproach, and exposed him to widespread invective, not least Licinius Calvus’ notorious lines:

‘Whatever Bithynia And Caesar’s sodomite possessed.’

Then too there are Dolabella’s and Curio the Elder’s indictments of him, Dolabella calling him ‘the queen’s rival, and intimate partner of the royal couch’, while Curio speaks of ‘Nicomedes’ brothel and Bithynia’s bordello.’ There is Bibulus, too, Caesar’s colleague in the consulship, who described him in an edict as ‘the Queen of Bithynia... who having loved a king would now be one.’ Marcus Brutus claimed that around the same time, in a crowded assembly, Octavius, a mentally-disturbed individual with too free a tongue, greeted Pompey as ‘king’ and Caesar as ‘queen’, while Gaius Memmius charged Caesar directly with acting as Nicomedes’ cup-bearer at a banquet with his wanton friends, adding that Roman merchants whom he names were among the guests.

Cicero was not content merely with writing, in several letters, that Caesar was led by the king’s attendants to the royal suite, where, dressed in purple, he lay down on a gilded couch, and that this scion of Venus lost his virginity in Bithynia; but also in the Senate called out, during a speech of Caesar’s in defense of Nicomedes’ daughter Nysa in which Caesar was listing his obligations to the king: ‘No more of that, if you please! Everyone knows what he gave you, and you in turn gave him! ’

And lastly, his own soldiers, singing the usual ribald songs as they followed his chariot at his Gallic triumph, shouted out these notorious lines:

‘By Caesar, Gaul was conquered, Caesar by Nicomedes:

See our Caesar triumph now, that brought Gaul to its knees,

Though he conquered Caesar, no triumph for Nicomedes.’

 L His Affairs with Roman Women

The general opinion is that he was prone to extravagant affairs, and that he seduced many illustrious women, including Servius Sulpicius’ wife Postumia, Aulus Gabinius’ wife Lollia, Marcus Crassus’ wife Tertulla, and even Pompey’s wife, Mucia. Certainly, Pompey was reproached by, among others, Curio the Elder and Curio the Younger, for betraying his lust for power, by divorcing Mucia, mother of his three children, to marry the daughter of a man whom he had often despairingly called an ‘Aegisthus’.

It was Marcus Brutus’ mother Servilia whom Caesar loved most deeply. In his first consulship he bought her a pearl worth sixty thousand gold pieces, and during the Civil War as well as making her other gifts, he publicly auctioned off great estates to her at knock-down prices. When surprise was expressed at the low values, Cicero showed a neat turn of wit, since it was thought that Servilia was prostituting her daughter Tertia to Caesar: ‘Ah,’ he said,’ it’s a better deal than you think, a third (tertia) has already been handed over.’

 LI His Reputation Elsewhere

The evidence that he indulged in affairs in the provinces too, is another ribald verse sung by the soldiers at his Gallic triumph:

‘Romans, lock your wives away: the bald seducers in the rear,

You’ve squandered on his Gallic vice the gold you lent him here.’

 LII His Royal Love Affairs

He had several royal mistresses, including Eunoe the Moorish wife of Bogudes: he showered splendid gifts on both her and her husband, according to Marcus Actorius Naso.

But the greatest of these was Cleopatra, with whom he often feasted till dawn. They would have sailed through Egypt in her state barge almost to the borders of Ethiopia if his soldiers had not balked at the prospect. He eventually summoned her to Rome and allowed her to leave only after bestowing high honors and rich presents on her. He also permitted her to name the son she had borne him Caesarion, after himself, a child whom the Greek writers say was very like him in bearing and appearance. Mark Antony told the Senate that Caesar had acknowledged his paternity and that Caesar’s friends, including Gaius Matius and Gaius Oppius, knew of this. Gaius Oppius however, seemingly admitting that the assertion needed to be challenged and Caesar’s reputation defended, published a book to prove that the child Cleopatra claimed as Caesar’s was in fact not his at all.

Helvius Cinna, tribune of the people, said he had drawn up a bill for the commons to pass while Caesar was absent from Rome, that legitimized Caesar marrying whichever woman he wished and as many as he wished ‘for the purpose of producing legal heirs.’ And to eliminate all doubt as to his vile reputation for unashamed vice and adultery, I may simply add that Curio the Elder referred to him in a speech as: ‘Every man’s woman and every woman’s man.’

 LIII His Food And Drink

Not even his enemies denied that he drank little wine. Marcus Cato’s comment survives: ‘Caesar was the only sober man who ever set out to overturn the state.’ Gauius Oppius says that he was so indifferent to food, that when as a guest rancid oil was served instead of fresh, and the other guests refused it, Caesar helped himself more freely than usual, so as not to imply his host had been careless or lacking in manners.

 LIV His Cupidity

His integrity in financial matters was less than scrupulous, both in the Provinces and at Rome. Various memoirs record that as Governor of Spain he not only begged money from his allies to help pay off his debts, but also that he invested and sacked several Lusitanian towns, even though the citizens had accepted his terms and opened the gates to receive him.

He robbed temples and shrines in Gaul of their votive offerings, and sacked towns more for their wealth than any offence they might have caused. As a result, he collected a pile of gold, and sold it in Italy and the provinces, at a cut-price rate of three thousand sestertii a pound.

During his first consulship, he stole three thousand pounds of gold from the Capitol and replaced it with an equal weight of gilded bronze. And he bartered treaties and thrones, extracting one and a half million gold pieces from Ptolemy XII for himself and Pompey, while later meeting the heavy costs of the Civil wars, his triumphs, and entertainments, by blatant sacrilege and plunder.

 LV His Oratory

As an orator and general he equaled or surpassed the greatest known. His prosecution of Dolabella set him in the first rank of advocates. Indeed Cicero, discussing oratory in Brutus, says that he knows none to whom Caesar should give place, describing his style as brilliant, elegant, great and noble even. And in a letter to Cornelius Nepos he writes: ‘Well, what specialist in the art of oratory would you rank higher? Who is wittier or displays with more often? Who is more varied or more tasteful in his choice of words?’

In his youth, Caesar seems to have imitated Caesar Strabo’s style, actually lifting some passages from his On Behalf of the Sardinians, to use in a speech of his own, when competing with other advocates for the right to plead a cause. He is said to have delivered his oratory in a high-pitched voice, with impassioned movements and gestures not lacking in grace.

Several of his speeches survive, with others which are claimed as his but on inadequate evidence. Augustus had reason for thinking that the speech On Behalf Of Quintus Metellus was not published by Caesar, but in transcripts made by shorthand writers who could not keep pace with his delivery. I find that the title in some copies is Composed On Behalf Of Metellus, though it purports to be the speech given by Caesar, in defending Metellus and himself against charges raised by their joint accusers.