eral information as will enable the learner to understand and appreciate the stirring events recorded in the Commentaries, and such special aid as will enable him to surmount real and untried difficulties of construction and idiom. They will thus, it is hoped, render an acceptable service both to the instructor and the learner, by lightening the burden of the one, and by promoting the progress of the other.

The text is the result of a careful collation of the several editions most approved by European scholars. It is based, however, chiefly upon the critical labors of Schneider, Kraner, and Nipperdey, with constant reference to the authority of the best manuscripts, as presented in the works of those distinguished editors.

I

In the preparation of every part of the work, it has been my aim to make the interests of the student paramount to all other considerations. While, therefore, I have resorted freely to the rich stores which European learning has collected for the critical study of our author, I have endeavored to admit into my pages only such information as may be made directly serviceable in the actual work of the class-room. have, however, in the execution of my plan, derived important aid from the excellent editions of Schneider, Kraner, Herzog, Long, Seyffert, and Hinzpeter. The History of Julius Caesar, by Napoleon III., has also been frequently consulted with advantage. The Map of Gaul has been copied, with a few changes, from that work. It is adapted, it will be observed, to the time of Caesar, and accordingly gives the Garumna as the northern boundary of Aquitania. In the preparation

of the Dictionary, invaluable aid has been derived from the special works of Crusius and Eichert.

The outline of the Life of Caesar, prefixed to this edition, will furnish the student, it is hoped, much interesting information in regard to his author.

In conclusion, I am happy to express my obligations to my esteemed friend, Mr. A. M. Gay, the accomplished Master of the Boston Latin School. He has generously given me the benefit of his accurate scholarship, by placing at my disposal a large amount of valua ble materials which were the direct fruit of his own careful study and large professional experience. The Dictionary has been prepared mainly by him, and bears the marks of his critical learning and sound practical judgment. As a special dictionary of the Commentaries on the Gallic War, it will, I am confident, be found to possess superior merit.

BROWN UNIVERSITY, February, 1870.

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, Caius 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 Sylla, 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 Sylla, 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 Sylla 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 Sylla, 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.