75 AD
CAESAR
100-44 B.C.
by Plutarch
translated by John Dryden
CAESAR
AFTER Sylla became master of Rome, he wished to make
Caesar put away
his wife Cornelia, daughter of Cinna, the late sole ruler of the
commonwealth, but was unable to effect it either by promises or
intimidation, and so contented himself with confiscating her dowry.
The ground of Sylla's hostility to Caesar was the
relationship between
him and Marius; for Marius, the elder, married Julia, the sister of
Caesar's father, and had by her the younger Marius, who consequently
was Caesar's first cousin. And though at the beginning, while so
many were to be put to death, and there was so much to do, Caesar
was overlooked by Sylla, yet he would not keep quiet, but presented
himself to the people as a candidate for the priesthood,
though he was
yet a mere boy. Sylla, without any open opposition, took measures to
have him rejected, and in consultation whether he should be put to
death, when it was urged by some that it was not worth his while to
contrive the death of a boy, he answered, that they knew little who
did not see more than one Marius in that boy. Caesar, on being
informed of this saying, concealed himself, and for a considerable
time kept out of the way in the country of the Sabines,
often changing
his quarters, till one night, as he was removing from one house to
another on account of his health, he fell into the hands of Sylla's
soldiers, who were searching those parts in order to
apprehend any who
had absconded. Caesar, by a bribe of two talents, prevailed with
Cornelius, their captain, to let him go, and was no sooner dismissed
but he put to sea and made for Bithynia. After a short stay
there with
Nicomedes, the king, in his passage back he was taken near the
island of Pharmacusa by some of the pirates, who, at that time, with
large fleets of ships and innumerable smaller vessels, infested the
seas everywhere.
When these men at first demanded of him twenty talents for his
ransom, he laughed at them for not understanding the value of their
prisoner, and voluntarily engaged to give them fifty. He presently
despatched those about him to several places to raise the money,
till at last he was left among a set of the most bloodthirsty people
in the world, the Cilicians, only with one friend and two
attendants. Yet he made so little of them, that when he had a mind
to sleep, he would send to them, and order them to make no noise.
For thirty-eight days, with all the freedom in the world, he amused
himself with joining in their exercises and games, as if they had
not been his keepers, but his guards. He wrote verses and speeches,
and made them his auditors, and those who did not admire them, he
called to their faces illiterate and barbarous, and would often, in
raillery, threaten to hang them. They were greatly taken with this,
and attributed his free talking to a kind of simplicity and boyish
playfulness. As soon as his ransom was come from Miletus, he paid
it, and was discharged, and proceeded at once to man some
ships at the
port of Miletus, and went in pursuit of the pirates, whom he
surprised
with their ships still stationed at the island, and took
most of them.
Their money he made his prize, and the men he secured in prison at
Pergamus, and he made application to Junius, who was then governor
of Asia, to whose office it belonged, as praetor, to determine their
punishment. Junius, having his eye upon the money, for the sum was
considerable, said he would think at his leisure what to do with the
prisoners, upon which Caesar took his leave of him, and went off to
Pergamus, where he ordered the pirates to be brought forth and
crucified; the punishment he had often threatened them with whilst
he was in their hands, and they little dreamt he was in earnest.
In the meantime Sylla's power being now on the decline, Caesar's
friends advised him to return to Rome, but he went to Rhodes, and
entered himself in the school of Apollonius, Molon's son, a famous
rhetorician, one who had the reputation of a worthy man, and had
Cicero for one of his scholars. Caesar is said to have been
admirably fitted by nature to make a great statesman and orator, and
to have taken such pains to improve his genius this way that without
dispute he might challenge the second place. More he did not aim at,
as choosing to be first rather amongst men of arms and power, and,
therefore, never rose to that height of eloquence to which nature
would have carried him, his attention being diverted to those
expeditions and designs which at length gained him the empire. And
he himself, in his answer to Cicero's panegyric on Cato, desires his
reader not to compare the plain discourse of a soldier with the
harangues of an orator who had not only fine parts, but had employed
his life in this study.
When he was returned to Rome, he accused Dolabella of
mal-administration, and many cities of Greece came in to attest it.
Dolabella was acquitted, and Caesar, in return for the support he
had received from the Greeks, assisted them in their prosecution of
Publius Antonius for corrupt practices, before Marcus Lucullus,
praetor of Macedonia. In this course he so far succeeded, that
Antonius was forced to appeal to the tribunes at Rome, alleging that
in Greece he could not have fair play against Grecians. In his
pleadings at Rome, his eloquence soon obtained him great credit and
favour, and he won no less upon the affections of the people by
affability of his manners and address, in which he showed a tact and
consideration beyond what could have been expected at his
age; and the
open house he kept, the entertainments he gave, and the general
splendour of his manner of life contributed little by little
to create
and increase his political influence. His enemies slighted the
growth of it at first, presuming it would soon fail when his
money was
gone; whilst in the meantime it was growing up and flourishing among
the common people. When his power at last was established and not to
be overthrown, and now openly tended to the altering of the whole
constitution, they were aware too late that there is no beginning so
mean, which continued application will not make
considerable, and that
despising a danger at first will make it at last irresistible.
Cicero was the first who had any suspicions of his designs upon the
government, and as a good pilot is apprehensive of a storm when the
sea is most smiling, saw the designing temper of the man through
this disguise of good humour and affability, and said that, in
general, in all he did and undertook, he detected the ambition for
absolute power, "but when I see his hair so carefully arranged, and
observe him adjusting it with one finger, I cannot imagine it should
enter into such a man's thoughts to subvert the Roman state." But of
this more hereafter.
The first proof he had of the people's good-will to him was when
he received by their suffrages a tribuneship in the army,
and came out
on the list with a higher place than Caius Popilius. A second and
clearer instance of their favour appeared upon his making a
magnificent oration in praise of his aunt Julia, wife to Marius,
publicly in the forum, at whose funeral he was so bold as to bring
forth the images of Marius, which nobody had dared to produce since
the government came into Sylla's hands, Marius's party having from
that time been declared enemies of the state. When some who were
present had begun to raise a cry against Caesar, the people answered
with loud shouts and clapping in his favour, expressing their joyful
surprise and satisfaction at his having, as it were, brought up
again from the grave those honours of Marius, which for so
long a time
had been lost to the city. It had always been the custom at Rome to
make funeral orations in praise of elderly matrons, but there was no
precedent of any upon young women till Caesar first made one upon
the death of his own wife. This also procured him favour, and by
this show of affection he won upon the feelings of the people, who
looked upon him as a man of great tenderness and kindness of heart.
After he had buried his wife, he went as quaestor into Spain
under one
of the praetors, named Vetus, whom he honoured ever after, and made
his son his own quaestor, when he himself came to be praetor. After
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