LIFE OF CAESAR.

·CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR, the author of the Commentaries, was born at Rome, on the 12th of July, 100 B. C. He belonged to the illustrious Julian family, whose ancient lineage tradition traced to the early kings of Rome and the immortal heroes of the Iliad. At the time of his birth, his uncle, Gaius Marius, the intrepid champion of the popular party, had just won immortal honors by his victories over the Cimbri and the Teutones, while Lucius Cornelius Sulla, destined to be the bitter opponent of Marius, and the most formidable obstacle to the career of Caesar, was rapidly rising to power and influence.

In youth, Caesar not unfrequently yielded to the fascinations of luxury and pleasure. He lived in a degenerate age, when the sterner virtues of the old Roman character were rapidly disappearing from the fashionable life of the day. By the death of his father, he was left an orphan at the age of sixteen; but his mother, Aurelia, a woman of rare gifts and of superior wisdom, superintended his education with the greatest care, and exerted a powerful influence in moulding his character, and in preparing him for the brilliant career of greatness and glory upon which he was so soon to enter. By his marriage with Cornelia, the daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, a prominent leader of the popular party, he early incurred the deadly hatred of Sulla, who had just been raised to the dictatorship, and was already entering upon his terrible career of proscription and bloodshed. The relentless

dictator, by an act of tyranny in keeping with his general character, issued an order that all persons who had allied themselves by marriage with the party of Marius, should at once sever that alliance by divorce. Pompey and others, dreading the terrible vengeance of the despot, hastened to comply; but the youthful Caesar, taking counsel of his own dauntless spirit, and asserting his rights as a Roman citizen and a man, defied, with sovereign contempt, the mad edict of the tyrant. But he did it at his peril. He was at once deposed from the priestly office, to which he had been recently appointed, was deprived of his wife's dowry, and declared incapable of holding his own ancestral estates. Finding the hand of persecution heavy upon him, he left the city, and remained in concealment until the earnest solicitations of influential parties finally extorted from Sulla a reluctant pardon, accompanied by those memorable words, almost prophetic, "Be assured, friends, that he for whom you plead will one day ruin the cause for which we have fought; for in Caesar is many a Marius."

At the early age of twenty, Caesar distinguished himself, at the siege of Mitylenae, by gallant conduct in saving the life of a Roman soldier, and was rewarded by the praetor with the high honor of a civic crown.

On the death of Sulla, two years later, Caesar returned to Rome, and at once instituted prosecutions against Dolabella, and other influential partisan leaders, for crimes and misdemeanors committed under the administration of the dictator. His fearless defence of law, and his persuasive eloquence, attracted the attention of the people, who hailed the youthful orator as the champion of their imperilled rights. Encouraged by this success, Caesar determined to prepare himself, by a judicious course of study, for the attractive profession which seemed already to be opening before him a brilliant career of honor and influence. Accordingly, repairing to Rhodes, then the home of the most illustrious rhetoricians and philosophers, he placed himself under the instruction of that accomplished professor of eloquence, Apollonius Molo, the distinguished teacher of Cicero.

At the age of twenty-seven, Caesar was elected pontiff and military tribune; at thirty-two, quaestor; at thirty-five, aedile; at thirty-seven, grand pontiff; .at thirty-eight, praetor, and at forty, consul.

In the capacity of curule aedile, one of the three highest civil officers known to the republic, Caesar, in accordance with Roman custom, entertained the people with public festivities and amusements. Under his administration, the Forum and the Capitol were magnificently decorated; the gladiatorial exhibitions displayed unwonted pomp, and the Roman games. were celebrated with a splendor never before witnessed. At that moment, when all eyes were turned to him as the idol of the people, when the unprecedented splendor of his aedileship had won for him an unbounded personal influence, he resolved upon a bold stroke, both for himself and for his country. The popular cause had been for years without a leader. The terrible proscriptions of Sulla had silenced the friends of progress, and removed from the public gaze all memorials of their past successes and victories. Even the statues and trophies commemorative of the illustrious deeds of their favorite champion, Marius, had disappeared from the Capitol. But one morning the Romans awoke to find all these trophies restored to their former places. The unexpected sight filled the nobles with rage and terror, but awa kened in the people glad memories of glory and liberty. The friends of progress gazed with joy upon these cherished memorials of their great champion, and hailed Caesar as his worthy successor. From that moment the aedile was their acknowledged head and leader.

The military career of Caesar dates from his appointment as propraetor of Spain. Though thirty-nine years of age, he was then, for the first time in his life, at the head of an army. He at once displayed the high qualities of a great commander, and won for himself an enviable military fame. The senate, though politically opposed to him, was compelled to acknowledge the greatness of his services, and in recognition of his brilliant achievements awarded him, by special decree, the honor of a triumph.

At the age of forty, Caesar, on his return from Spain, came forward as a candidate for the consulship, the highest civil office in the state. His towering ambition, his fearless independence, and his attachment to the popular cause, made him the recognized champion of the people; but he desired to win to his standard some of the illustrious men whose fame had given such prestige to the senatorial party. His efforts were not without success. Soon the three leading spirits of the age, Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, made common cause, and, wielding a united influence, which was absolutely irresistible, assumed the control of the destinies of the republic.

Caesar was unanimously elected consul, and at once brought forward radical propositions for reform, which his colleague, Marcus Bibulus, opposed with great bitterness and vigor. But the contest was of short duration. Bibulus, finding himself no match for the determined reformer, after the most humiliating defeats, withdrew from all participation in the government, leaving Caesar the undisputed master of the situation. This fact gave rise to the playful remark that the two consuls for the year were Julius and Caesar.

Thus relieved from the factious opposition of his colleague, Caesar at once signalized his consulship by several bold and remarkable measures. He made himself the idol of the people by procuring the enactment of an agrarian law, by which twenty thousand families received allotments of public lands; he won the favor of the equestrian order by relieving it from an oppressive contract, and bound Pompey still more closely to his person and his destinies by giving him in marriage his accomplished daughter Julia, and by procuring for him the ratification of all his acts in Asia. At the close of his term of office, Caesar was made procon、 sul of Gaul for a period of five years, which was afterwards extended to ten. His province, including Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul, with Illyricum, opened to him a new career directly in the line of his aspiring ambition, his cherished hopes, and his lofty military genius; but that career was beset

with the most appalling difficulties and dangers. The Gauls were an energetic and warlike people. While Rome was yet in its infancy, they had scaled the Alps, taken possession of the fertile valley of the Po, and converted Northern Italy into a Gallic province. In the fourth century B. C., they suddenly passed the Apennines, descended upon Latium, won the victory of the Allia, and entering Rome in triumph, burned the greater portion of the city. Three centuries later the hordes of the Cimbri and Teutones, descending in their desolating march upon Southern Europe, threatened, the very existence of the Roman republic. But at length the brilliant victories of Marius and other Roman generals checked the encroachments of these hardy nations of the north, and even made conquests on either side of the Alps.

When Caesar received his commission, Cisalpine Gaul had already, for a century and a half, been a Roman province; and even beyond the Alps, the colony of Narbo and the conquest of the Allobroges had led to the organization of a small Roman province.

"

Caesar arrived early in the spring of 58 B. C. in the province of Narbo. The warlike Helvetii, three hundred and fifty thousand in number, had burned their own towns and villages, and were already commencing their hostile movements; one hundred and fifty thousand Germans had crossed the Rhine, and established themselves in Gaul, and one hundred thousand more were preparing to follow their example. The countless hordes of the north were again in motion. Caesar saw the magnitude of the danger; he well knew that a reverse to his arms would be a crushing calamity to the republic and to all Italy. With a lively appreciation of the great trusts committed to his hands, he entered boldly upon a career of Transalpine conquest as complete as it was glorious. His genius speedily converted Gaul into one vast battle-field of victory and glory. His very first campaign was crowned with signal success. It not only annihilated the power of the Helvetii, and established the prestige of the Roman arms, but also humbled the haughty Ariovistus, and extended the Roman province to the banks