Divus Julius

Suetonius

De Vita Caesarum

Divus Iulius

The Lives of the Caesars The Deified Iulius

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I. IN the course of his sixteenth year [c. 85/84 B.C.] he lost
his father. In the next consulate, having previously been nominated priest of Jupiter
[by Marius and Cinna, Cos. 86], 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 afterwards 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, Mamercus Aemilius 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.’

II. He served his first campaign in Asia on the personal staff
of Marcus Thermus, governor of the province [81 BC]. Being sent by Thermus to Bithynia,
to fetch a fleet, he dawdled so long at the court of Nicomedes that he was suspected
of improper relations with the king; and he lent color 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 [80 BC] Thermus awarded
him the civic crown [a chaplet of oak leaves, given for saving the life of a fellow-citizen,
the highest military award of the Roman state].

III. 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 [78 BC]. But he did not make common cause with Lepidus, although
he was offered highly favorable terms, through lack of confidence both in that leader’s
capacity and in the outlook, which he found less promising than he had expected.

IV. Then, after the civil disturbance had been quieted, he brought
a charge of extortion against Cornelius Dolabella, an ex-consul who had been honored
with a triumph [77 BC]. 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 [74 BC], 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 neighboring 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.

V. 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 [70 B.C.], 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 favor of the
measure.

VI. When quaestor [67 B.C.], 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 [62 B.C.], 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.

VII. As quaestor it fell to his lot to serve in Hispania Ulterior.
When he was there, while making the circuit of the 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.

VIII. 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
[those towns beyond the Po River, such as Verona, Comum, and Cremona, wished to
obtain the rights of citizenship, which had been given to many of the Italian towns
at the close of the Social War of 90-88 B.C.] 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.

IX. 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 [65 B.C.]. 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 Hispania 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.

X. When aedile [65 B.C.], 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 stageplays 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.

XI. 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 Optimates [a political
faction among the Roman nobiles]; 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 Teutoni, 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.

XII. 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 favor as the
bitter hostility of his judge.

XIII. 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.

XIV. When the conspiracy of Catiline was detected [63 B.C.], and
all the rest of the senate favored 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 favored 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.

XV. On the first day of his praetorship [62 B.C.] he called upon
Quintus Catulus to render an account to the people touching the restoration of the
CapitoI, proposing a bill for turning over the commission to another [namely, Gnaeus
Pompeius]. But he withdrew the measure, since he could not cope with the united
opposition of the optimates, seeing that they had at once dropped their attendance
on the newly elected consuls and hastily gathered in throngs, resolved on an obstinate
resistance.

XVI. 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.

XVII. He again fell into danger by being named among the accomplices
of Catiline, both before the commissioner [quaesitor] 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 hand
writing. 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.

XVIII. Being allotted the province of Hispania Ulterior [61 B.C.]
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 [i.e., without waiting for the decrees of
the senate which formally confirmed the appointments of the new governors, and provided
them with funds and equipment]; possibly through fear of a private impeachment or
perhaps to respond more promptly to the entreaties of our 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 could 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.

XIX. [60 B.C.] 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 optimates authorized Bibulus to promise the same amount, being
seized with fear that Caesar would stick at nothing when he became ohief 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 optimates took care that provinces of the smallest importance
should be assigned to the newly elected consuls; that is, mere woods and pastures
[It seems to designate provinces where the duties of the governor would be confined
to guarding the mountain-pastures and keeping the woods free from bandits. The senate
would not run the risk of letting Caesar secure a province involving the command
of an army]. 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
[in the Third Mithridatic War]. 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 [60 B.C.] he so 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.

XX. 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 [Business could be interrupted or postponed at Rome by the announcement
of an augur or a magistrate that he had seen a flash of lightning or some other
adverse sign; sometimes an opponent merely announced that he would ‘watch the skies’
for such 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
public uses 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 [through a special commission of twenty men] 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 tried to object. Marcus Cato, who tried to delay proceedings [by making
a speech of several hours’ duration; Gell. 4.10.8. The senate arose in a body and
escorted Cato to prison, and Caesar was forced to release him], 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 [for his conduct during the Third Mithridatic War] 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 [59 B.C.], a thing for which
Clodius had for a long time been vainly striving; and that too at the ninth hour
[That is, after the close of the business day, an indication of the haste with which
the adoption was rushed through]. 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 Gnaeus Pompeius, and to come out upon the rostra and name the guilty
parties according to a pre-arranged 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.

XXI. 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 Pompeius
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.

XXII. Backed therefore by his father-in-law and son-in-law, out
of all the numerous provinces he made Gallia 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 Gallia Cisalpina 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 [used in a double sense, one sexual]; 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.

XXIII. 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.

XXIV. [55 B.C.] 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 Gallia 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 Gallia Transalpina and bearing a Gallic name too
(for it was called Alauda [A Celtic word meaning a crested lark (Plin.
N.H. 11.37) which was the device on the helmets of the legion]), 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 honor oftener and for longer periods than for anyone before
his time.

XXV. [58-49 B.C.] During the nine years of his command this is
in substance what he did. All that part of Gallia which is bounded by the Pyrenees,
the Alps and the Cennes, and by the Rhine and Rhone rivers, a circuit of some
3,200 miles [Roman measure, about 3,106 English 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; and he inflicted 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 Britannia, where his fleet narrowly escaped destruction
in a violent storm; in Gallia, when one of his legions was routed at Gergovia; and
on the borders of Germania, when his lieutenants Titurius and Aurunculeius were
ambushed and slain.

XXVI. Within this same space of time he lost first his mother,
then his daughter, and soon afterwards his grandchild. 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 Pompeius’ 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 favors 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 favor of the
people [when ordinarily they would be put to death], 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.

XXVII. Moreover, to retain his relationship and friendship with
Pompeius, 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 Pompeius’
daughter, who was promised to Faustus Sulla. When he had put all Pompeius’ 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 favorites 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.

XXVIII. 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 Graecia with magnificent public works, as well as those
of Italia and the provinces of Gallia and Hispania. At last [51 B.C.], 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 Pompeius’ subsequent action [i.e., in correcting the bill after it
had been passed and filed, as explained in the following sentence] had not annulled
the decree of the people. And it was true that when Pompeius 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.

XXIX. 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 Pompeius his newly levied
troops. He further proposed a compromise to his opponents, that after giving up
eight legions and Gallia Transalpina, he be allowed to keep two legions and Gallia
Cisalpina, or at least one legion and Illyricum, until he was elected consul.

XXX. 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 Gallia Citerior, and after hearing all the legal cases, 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 [who had been accused and tried for
the murder of Publius Clodius], 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
[3.82; cf. 1.26] that Caesar ever had upon his lips these lines of Euripides
[Phoenissae, 524ff.], 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.’

XXXI. [49 B.C.] 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 bypaths. Then,
overtaking his cohorts at the river Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province,
he paused for a while, and realizing what a step he was taking, he turned to those
about him and said: ‘Even yet we may draw back; but once cross yon little bridge,
and the whole issue is with the sword.”

XXXII. 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 [ AIacta alea est,’ inquit’].

XXXIII. Accordingly, crossing with his army, and welcoming the
tribunes of the plebeians, 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 the estate
of an eques, 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 honor 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 equites as well as
senators had the privilege of wearing a gold ring, and must possess an estate of
400,000 sesterces].

XXXIV. 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 Pompeius 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 Pompeius’ strongest forces, which were in Hispania 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.

XXXV. [48 B.C.] Returning thence to Rome, he crossed into Macedonia,
and after blockading Pompeius 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 [47 B.C.], fearing 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 Pompeius’ good luck in
gaining his principal fame as a general by victories over such feeble foemen. Then
he overcame Scipio and Juba [46 B.C.], who were patching up the remnants of their
party in Africa, and the sons of Pompeius in Spain [45 B C.].

XXXVI. 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 Pompeius, 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.

XXXVII. 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 Pompeius’ sons. The first and most splendid was the Gallic
triumph, the next the Alexandrian, then the Pontic, after that the African, and
finally the Hispanic, 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,” [ ‘Veni, vidi, vici’] not indicating
the events of the war, as the others did, but the speed with which it was finished.

XXXVIII. To each and every foot-soldier of his veteran legions
he gave twenty-four thousand sesterces by way of plunder, 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 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 Hispanic 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.

XXXIX. 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 eques, acted a farce of his own composition,
and having been presented with five hundred thousand sesterces and a gold ring [in
token of his restoration to the rank of eques, which he forfeited by appearing
on the stage], passed from the stage through the orchestra and took his place in
the fourteen rows [the first fourteen rows above the orchestra, reserved for the
equites by the law of L. Roscius Otho, tribune of the plebeians, in 67 B.C.].
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 three 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.

XL. 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 [the year had previously consisted of 355 days, and the deficiency of
about eleven days was made up by inserting an intercalary month of twenty-two or
twenty-three days after February]. Furthermore, that the correct reckoning of seasons
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.

XLI. 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.

XLII. 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 Italia 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 practiced 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 collegii [associations],
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.

XLIII. 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.

XLIV. 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 theater of vast size, sloping down from the Tarpeian
Rock; to reduce the civil code to fixed limites, 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.

XLV. 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 [morbus comitialis, so-called
because an attack was considered sufficient cause for the postponement of elections,
or other public business. This is thought to have been epilepsy.] 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 honors
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 remarkable in his dress; that he wore a senator’s tunic [Latus
clavus, the broad purple stripe, is also applied to a tunic with the broad stripe.
All senators had the right to wear this; the peculiarity in Caesar’s case consisted
in the long fringed sleeve.] with fringed sleeves reaching to the wrist, and always
had a girdle [While a girdle was commonly worn with the ordinary tunic, it was not
usual to wear one with the latus clavus.] 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.

XLVI. 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 countryhouse 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.

XLVII. They say that he was led to invade Britannia 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.

XLVIII. 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 favorite freedman for adultery with the wife of
a Roman eques, although no complaint was made against him.

XLIX. 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 old he was enamored 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 Gnaeus
Pompeius as Rex [or ‘king’] in a crowded assembly, greeted Caesar as Regina
[“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.”

L. 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 Pompeius’ wife Mucia. At all events there is no doubt that
Pompeius 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 [The word play is on tertia (pars)— ‘third part’—and Tertia,
daughter of Servilia, in a rather low and vulgar sexual jest].

LI. 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 Gallia you spent in dalliance, which you borrowed here in Rome.”

LII. He had love affairs with queens too, including Eunoe the
Mauretanian, 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 [i.e., Kush], 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 honors 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. Marcus Antonius 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 plebeians,
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’
[the words liberorum quaerendorum causa are a legal formula indicating that
the purpose of marriage is to beget legal heirs]. 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.”

LIII. 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.

LIV. 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 Hispania, 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 Gallia 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
Italia 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 Pompeius
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.

LV. 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 transparent, 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 Pro Sardis 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 Pro 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 Pro Metellus, but, Quam scripsit Metello [“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 Apud milites quoque in Hispania, although
there are two sections 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.

LVI. He left memoirs too of his deeds in the Gallic war and in
the civil strife with Pompeius; for the author of the Alexandrian, African, and
Hispanic 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 De Analogia, the same number of Anti-Catones [‘Against
Cato’], in addition to a poem, entitled Iter [‘The Journey’]. He wrote the
first of these works while crossing the Alps and returning to his army from Gallia
Citerior, where he heard lawsuits; 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 Hispania
Ulterior. 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 note-book
[i.e., to book form], whereas previously consuls and generals sent their
reports written right across the sheet [i.e., without columns or margins,
but across the sheet without rhyme or reason]. 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
Laudes Herculis [“Praises of Hercules”], a tragedy Oedipus, and a
Dicta Collectanea [“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.

LVII. 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.

LVIII. 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 reconnoitering the country, and he did not cross
to Britannia without making personal inquiries about the harbors, the course, and
the approach to the island. But on the other hand, when news came that his camp
in Germania 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.

LIX. 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 favorable turn by crying: “I hold you 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.

LX. 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.

LXI. 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.

LXII. 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 [the standard of the legion was a silver eagle with outstretched wings, mounted
on a pole which had a sharp point at the other end, so that it could be set firmly
in the ground] as he tried to stop him, while another left the standard in Caesar’s
hand when he would hold him back.

LXIII. 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, he met Lucius Cassius, of the hostile party, with ten armored ships, and 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.

LXIV. 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.

LXV. 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.

LXVI. 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.”

LXVII. 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 fiattering
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.

LXVIII. 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 savings, 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
Pompeius 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 Pompeius 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.

LXIX. 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.

LXX. Again at Rome, when the men of the Tenth Legion clamored
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 plunder
and of the land intended for them.

LXXI. 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 [of Numidia] 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 Hispania 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.

LXXII. 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 honor by brigands and cut-throats, he would have requited
even such men in the same way.

LXXIII. 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.

LXXIV. 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 accusation.”

LXXV. He certainly showed admirable self-restraint and mercy,
both in his conduct of the civil war and in the hour of victory. While Pompeius
announced that he would 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 Pompeius’ 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.

LXXVI. 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 honors, such as an uninterrupted consulship, the dictatorship
for life, and the censorship of public morals, as well as the forename Imperator,
the surname of Pater Patriae [‘Father of his Country’], a statue among those
of the kings, and a raised couch in the orchestra [at the theater]; but he also
allowed honors to be bestowed on him which were too great for mortal man: a golden
throne in the Senate and on the judgment seat; a chariot and litter [for carrying
his statues among those of the gods] 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 honors 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 Senate men who had been
given citizenship, and in some cases half-civilized 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 favorite of
his called Rufo, son of one of his freedmen.

LXXVII. 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 ABC’s 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 of a sacrifice
direful innards without a heart, he said: “They will be more favorable when I wish
it; it should not be regarded as a portent, if a beast has no heart” [playing on
the double meaning of cor (‘heart’)–which was also regarded as the seat
of intelligence].

LXXVIII. 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 tribune”; and for several days he would not
make a promise to any one without adding, “That is, if Pontius Aquila will allow
me.”

LXXIX. 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 [an emblem of royalty]; and when Epidius Marullus and
Caesetius Flavus, tribunes of the plebeians, gave orders that the ribbon be removed
from the wreath 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
favor, 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 plebeians, when they hailed him
as king, “I am Caesar and no king” [with a pun on rex (‘king’) as a Roman
name], and at the Lupercalia, when the consul Marcus Antonius 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 Italia by levies, and leaving
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 [the quindecimviri
sacris faciundis (‘college of fifteen priests’) in charge of the Sybilline books],
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.

LXXX. 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 Republic! let no one consent to
point out the Senate 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 latus clavus.”

When Quintus Maximus, whom he had appointed consul in his place
for three months, was entering the theater, 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 [the pons suffragiorum, a temporary bridge of planks over
which the voters passed one by one, to cast their ballots] as he summoned the tribes
to vote, the rest might wait below and slay him; or to set upon him in the Via
Sacra or at the entrance to the theater. When, however, a meeting of the Senate
was called for the Ides of March in the curia adjoining the Theater of Gnaeus
Pompeius, they readily gave that time and place the preference.

LXXXI. 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 vigor 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 son of llium shall be slain at
the hands of his kindred, and presently avenged at heavy cost to Italia.” 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 Curia
of Pompeius 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 favorable omens, he entered the Senate 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.

LXXXII. [44 B.C.] 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.

LXXXIII. Then at the request of his father-in-law, Lucius Piso,
the will was unsealed and read in Antonius’ house, which Caesar had made on the
preceding Ides of September at his place near Lavicum [September 18, 45 B.C.], 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.

LXXXIV. 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 Armorum 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 honors 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 down into 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 Curia of Pompeius, on a sudden two beings [cf. the apparition
at the Rubicon] 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.

LXXXV. Immediately after the funeral the people 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.

LXXXVI. 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 Hispanic 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 Republic would have no peace, but
would be plunged in civil strife under much worse conditions.

LXXXVII. 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 [Cyropedeia,
8.7] 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.

LXXXVIII. [44 B.C.] 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 common people. For at the first of the games which his heir Augustus gave
in honor of his apotheosis, a comet shone for seven successive days, rising about
the eleventh hour [about an hour before sunset] 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 curia 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.

LXXXIX. 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.

---

Source:

From: Suetonius, 2 vols., trans. J. C. Rolfe, (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: William Henemann, 1920), Vol. I, pp.
3-119

Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton.
Prof. Arkenberg has modernized the text.