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History of Julius Caesar by Jacob Abbott CHAPTER II.
CAESAR'S EARLY YEARS.
Caesar does not seem to have been much disheartened and depressed by his
misfortunes.
He possessed in his early life more than the usual share of buoyancy and light-
heartedness of youth, and he went away from Rome to enter, perhaps, upon years of exile
and wandering, with a determination to face
boldly and to brave the evils and dangers which surrounded him, and not to succumb to
them.
Sometimes they who become great in their maturer years are thoughtful, grave, and
sedate when young. It was not so, however, with Caesar.
He was of a very gay and lively disposition.
He was tall and handsome in his person, fascinating in his manners, and fond of
society, as people always are who know or who suppose that they shine in it.
He had seemed, in a word, during his residence at Rome, wholly intent upon the
pleasures of a gay and joyous life, and upon the personal observation which his
rank, his wealth, his agreeable manners and his position in society secured for him.
In fact, they who observed and studied his character in these early years, thought
that, although his situation was very favorable for acquiring power and renown,
he would never feel any strong degree of
ambition to avail himself of its advantages.
He was too much interested, they thought, in personal pleasures ever to become great,
either as a military commander or a statesman.
Sylla, however, thought differently.
He had penetration enough to perceive, beneath all the gayety and love of pleasure
which characterized Caesar's youthful life, the germs of a sterner and more aspiring
spirit, which, he was very sorry to see,
was likely to expend its future energies in hostility to him.
By refusing to submit to Sylla's commands, Caesar had, in effect, thrown himself
entirely upon the other party, and would be, of course, in future identified with
them.
Sylla consequently looked upon him now as a confirmed and settled enemy.
Some friends of Caesar among the patrician families interceded in his behalf with
Sylla again, after he had fled from Rome.
They wished Sylla to pardon him, saying that he was a mere boy and could do him no
harm.
Sylla shook his head, saying that, young as he was, he saw in him indications of a
future power which he thought was more to be dreaded than that of many Mariuses.
One reason which led Sylla to form this opinion of Caesar was, that the young
nobleman, with all his love of gayety and pleasure, had not neglected his studies,
but had taken great pains to perfect
himself in such intellectual pursuits as ambitious men who looked forward to
political influence and ascendency were accustomed to prosecute in those days He
had studied the Greek language, and read
the works of Greek historians; and he attended lectures on philosophy and
rhetoric, and was obviously interested deeply in acquiring power as a public
speaker.
To write and speak well gave a public man great influence in those days.
Many of the measures of the government were determined by the action of great
assemblies of the free citizens, which action was itself, in a great measure,
controlled by the harangues of orators who
had such powers of voice and such qualities of mind as enabled them to gain the
attention and sway the opinions of large bodies of men.
It most not be supposed, however, that this popular power was shared by all the
inhabitants of the city.
At one time, when the population of the city was about three millions the number of
free citizens was only three hundred thousand.
The rest were laborers, artisans, and slaves, who had no voice in public affairs.
The free citizens held very frequent public assemblies.
There were various squares and open spaces in the city where such assemblies were
convened, and where courts of justice were held.
The Roman name for such a square was forum.
There was one which was distinguished above all the rest, and was called emphatically
The Forum.
It was a magnificent square, surrounded by splendid edifices, and ornamented by
sculptures and statues without number.
There were ranges of porticoes along the sides, where the people were sheltered from
the weather when necessary, though it is seldom that there is any necessity for
shelter under an Italian sky.
In this area and under these porticoes the people held their assemblies, and here
courts of justice were accustomed to sit.
The Forum was ornamented continually with new monuments, temples, statues, and
columns by successful generals returning in triumph from foreign campaigns, and by
proconsuls and praetors coming back
enriched from their provinces, until it was fairly choked up with its architectural
magnificence, and it had at last to be partially cleared again, as one would thin
out too dense a forest, in order to make
room for the assemblies which it was its main function to contain.
The people of Rome had, of course, no printed books, and yet they were mentally
cultivated and refined, and were qualified for a very high appreciation of
intellectual pursuits and pleasures.
In the absence, therefore, of all facilities for private reading, the Forum
became the great central point of attraction.
The same kind of interest which, in our day, finds its gratification in reading
volumes of printed history quietly at home, or in silently perusing the columns of
newspapers and magazines in libraries and
reading-rooms, where a whisper is seldom heard, in Caesar's day brought every body
to the Forum, to listen to historical harangues, or political discussions, or
forensic arguments in the midst of noisy crowds.
Here all tidings centered; here all questions were discussed and all great
elections held.
Here were waged those ceaseless conflicts of ambition and struggles of power on which
the fate of nations, and sometimes the welfare of almost half mankind depended.
Of course, every ambitious man who aspired to an ascendency over his fellow-men,
wished to make his voice heard in the Forum.
To calm the boisterous tumult there, and to hold, as some of the Roman orators could
do, the vast assemblies in silent and breathless attention, was a power as
delightful in its exercise as it was glorious in its fame.
Caesar had felt this ambition, and had devoted himself very earnestly to the study
of oratory.
His teacher was Apollonius, a philosopher and rhetorician from Rhodes.
Rhodes is a Grecian island, near the southwestern coast of Asia Minor Apollonius
was a teacher of great celebrity, and Caesar became a very able writer and
speaker under his instructions.
His time and attention were, in fact, strangely divided between the highest and
noblest intellectual avocations, and the lowest sensual pleasures of a gay and
dissipated life.
The coming of Sylla had, however, interrupted all; and, after receiving the
dictator's command to give up his wife and abandon the Marian faction, and determining
to disobey it, he fled suddenly from Rome,
as was stated at the close of the last chapter, at midnight, and in disguise.
He was sick, too, at the time, with an intermittent fever.
The paroxysm returned once in three or four days, leaving him in tolerable health
during the interval.
He went first into the country of the Sabines, northeast of Rome, where he
wandered up and down, exposed continually to great dangers from those who knew that
he was an object of the great dictator's
displeasure, and who were sure of favor and of a reward if they could carry his head to
Sylla He had to change his quarters every day, and to resort to every possible mode
of concealment.
He was, however, at last discovered, and seized by a centurion.
A centurion was a commander of a hundred men; his rank and his position therefore,
corresponded somewhat with those of a captain in a modern army.
Caesar was not much disturbed at this accident.
He offered the centurion a bribe sufficient to induce him to give up his prisoner, and
so escaped.
The two ancient historians, whose records contain nearly all the particulars of the
early life of Caesar which are now known, give somewhat contradictory accounts of the
adventures which befell him during his subsequent wanderings.
They relate, in general, the same incidents, but in such different
connections, that the precise chronological order of the events which occurred can not
now be ascertained.
At all events, Caesar, finding that he was no longer safe in the vicinity of Rome,
moved gradually to the eastward, attended by a few followers, until he reached the
sea, and there he embarked on board a ship to leave his native land altogether.
After various adventures and wanderings, he found himself at length in Asia Minor, and
he made his way at last to the kingdom of Bithynia, on the northern shore.
The name of the king of Bithynia was Nicomedes.
Caesar joined himself to Nicomedes's court, and entered into his service.
In the mean time, Sylla had ceased to pursue him, and ultimately granted him a
pardon, but whether before or after this time is not now to be ascertained.
At all events, Caesar became interested in the scenes and enjoyments of Nicomedes's
court, and allowed the time to pass away without forming any plans for returning to
Rome.
On the opposite side of Asia Minor, that is, on the southern shore, there was a wild
and mountainous region called Cilicia.
The great chain of mountains called Taurus approaches here very near to the sea, and
the steep conformations of the land, which, in the interior, produce lofty ranges and
summits, and dark valleys and ravines,
form, along the line of the shore, capes and promontories, bounded by precipitous
sides, and with deep bays and harbors between them.
The people of Cilicia were accordingly half sailors, half mountaineers.
They built swift galleys, and made excursions in great force over the
Mediterranean Sea for conquest and plunder.
They would capture single ships, and sometimes even whole fleets of merchantmen.
They were even strong enough on many occasions to land and take possession of a
harbor and a town, and hold it, often, for a considerable time, against all the
efforts of the neighboring powers to dislodge them.
In case, however, their enemies became at any time too strong for them, they would
retreat to their harbors, which were so defended by the fortresses which guarded
them, and by the desperate bravery of the
garrisons, that the pursuers generally did not dare to attempt to force their way in;
and if, in any case, a town or a port was taken, the indomitable savages would
continue their retreat to the fastnesses of
the mountains, where it was utterly useless to attempt to follow them.
But with all their prowess and skill as naval combatants, and their hardihood as
mountaineers, the Cilicians lacked one thing which is very essential in every
nation to an honorable military fame.
They had no poets or historians of their own, so that the story of their deeds had
to be told to posterity by their enemies.
If they had been able to narrate their own exploits, they would have figured, perhaps,
upon the page of history as a small but brave and efficient maritime power,
pursuing for many years a glorious career
of conquest, and acquiring imperishable renown by their enterprise and success.
As it was, the Romans, their enemies, described their deeds and gave them their
designation.
They called them robbers and pirates; and robbers and pirates they must forever
remain.
And it is, in fact, very likely true that the Cilician commanders did not pursue
their conquests and commit their depredations on the rights and the property
of others in quite so systematic and
methodical a manner as some other conquering states have done.
They probably seized private property a little more unceremoniously than is
customary; though all belligerent nations, even in these Christian ages of the world,
feel at liberty to seize and confiscate
private property when they find it afloat at sea, while, by a strange inconsistency,
they respect it on the land.
The Cilician pirates considered themselves at war with all mankind, and, whatever
merchandise they found passing from port to port along the shores of the Mediterranean,
they considered lawful spoil.
They intercepted the corn which was going from Sicily to Rome, and filled their own
granaries with it.
They got rich merchandise from the ships of Alexandria, which brought, sometimes, gold,
and gems, and costly fabrics from the East; and they obtained, often, large sums of
money by seizing men of distinction and
wealth, who were continually passing to and fro between Italy and Greece, and holding
them for a ransom.
They were particularly pleased to get possession in this way of Roman generals
and officers of state, who were going out to take the command of armies, or who were
returning from their provinces with the wealth which they had accumulated there.
Many expeditions were fitted out and many naval commanders were commissioned to sup
press and subdue these common enemies of mankind, as the Romans called them.
At one time, while a distinguished general, named Antonius, was in pursuit of them at
the head of a fleet, a party of the pirates made a descent upon the Italian coast,
south of Rome, at Nicenum, where the
ancient patrimonial mansion of this very Antonius was situated, and took away
several members of his family as captives, and so compelled him to ransom them by
paying a very large sum of money.
The pirates grew bolder and bolder in proportion to their success.
They finally almost stopped all intercourse between Italy and Greece, neither the
merchants daring to expose their merchandise, nor the passengers their
persons to such dangers.
They then approached nearer and nearer to Rome, and at last actually entered the
Tiber, and surprised and carried off a Roman fleet which was anchored there.
Caesar himself fell into the hands of these pirates at some time during the period of
his wanderings.
The pirates captured the ship in which he was sailing near Pharmacusa, a small island
in the northeastern part of the Aegean Sea.
He was not at this time in the destitute condition in which he had found himself on
leaving Rome, but was traveling with attendants suitable to his rank, and in
such a style and manner as at once made it
evident to the pirates that he was a man of distinction.
They accordingly held him for ransom, and, in the mean time, until he could take
measures for raising the money, they kept him a prisoner on board the vessel which
had captured him.
In this situation, Caesar, though entirely in the power and at the mercy of his
lawless captors, assumed such an air of superiority and command in all his
intercourse with them as at first awakened
their astonishment, then excited their admiration, and ended in almost subjecting
them to his will. He asked them what they demanded for his
ransom.
They said twenty talents, which was quite a large amount, a talent itself being a
considerable sum of money.
Caesar laughed at this demand, and told them it was plain that they did not know
who he was, He would give them fifty talents.
He then sent away his attendants to the shore, with orders to proceed to certain
cities where he was known, in order to procure the money, retaining only a
physician and two servants for himself.
While his messengers were gone, he remained on board the ship of his captors, assuming
in every respect the air and manner of their master.
When he wished to sleep, if they made a noise which disturbed him, he sent them
orders to be still.
He joined them in their sports and diversions on the deck, surpassing them in
their feats, and taking the direction of every thing as if he were their
acknowledged leader.
He wrote orations and verses which he read to them, and if his wild auditors did not
appear to appreciate the literary excellence of his compositions, he told
them that they were stupid fools without
any taste, adding, by way of apology, that nothing better could be expected of such
barbarians.
The pirates asked him one day what he should do to them if he should ever, at any
future time, take them prisoners. Caesar said that he would crucify every one
of them.
The ransom money at length arrived. Caesar paid it to the pirates, and they,
faithful to their covenant, sent him in a boat to the land.
He was put ashore on the coast of Asia Minor.
He proceeded immediately to Miletus, the nearest port, equipped a small fleet there,
and put to sea.
He sailed at once to the roadstead where the pirates had been lying, and found them
still at anchor there, in perfect security.[1] He attacked them, seized their
ships, recovered his ransom money, and took the men all prisoners.
He conveyed his captives to the land, and there fulfilled his threat that he would
crucify them by cutting their throats and nailing their dead bodies to crosses which
his men erected for the purpose along the shore.
During his absence from Rome Caesar went to Rhodes, where his former preceptor resided,
and he continued to pursue there for some time his former studies.
He looked forward still to appearing one day in the Roman Forum.
In fact, he began to receive messages from his friends at home that they thought it
would be safe for him to return.
Sylla had gradually withdrawn from power, and finally had died.
The aristocratical party were indeed still in the ascendency, but the party of Marius
had begun to recover a little from the total overthrow with which Sylla's return,
and his terrible military vengeance, had overwhelmed them.
Caesar himself, therefore, they thought, might, with prudent management, be safe in
returning to Rome.
He returned, but not to be prudent or cautious; there was no element of prudence
or caution in his character. As soon as he arrived, he openly espoused
the popular party.
His first public act was to arraign the governor of the great province of
Macedonia, through which he had passed on his way to Bithynia.
It was a consul whom he thus impeached, and a strong partisan of Sylla's.
His name was Dolabella.
The people were astonished at his daring in thus raising the standard of resistance to
Sylla's power, indirectly, it is true, but none the less really on that account.
When the trial came on, and Caesar appeared at the Forum, he gained great applause by
the vigor and force of his oratory.
There was, of course, a very strong and general interest felt in the case; the
people all seeming to understand that, in this attack on Dolabella, Caesar was
appearing as their champion, and their
hopes were revived at having at last found a leader capable of succeeding Marius, and
building up their cause again.
Dolabella was ably defended by orators on the other side, and was, of course,
acquitted, for the power of Sylla's party was still supreme.
All Rome, however, was aroused and excited by the boldness of Caesar's attack, and by
the extraordinary ability which he evinced in his mode of conducting it.
He became, in fact, at once one of the most conspicuous and prominent men in the city.
Encouraged by his success, and the applauses which he received, and feeling
every day a greater and greater consciousness of power, he began to assume
more and more openly the character of the leader of the popular party.
He devoted himself to public speaking in the Forum, both before popular assemblies
and in the courts of justice, where he was employed a great deal as an advocate to
defend those who were accused of political crimes.
The people, considering him as their rising champion, were predisposed to regard every
thing that he did with favor, and there was really a great intellectual power displayed
in his orations and harangues.
He acquired, in a word, great celebrity by his boldness and energy, and his boldness
and energy were themselves increased in their turn as he felt the strength of his
position increase with his growing celebrity.
At length the wife of Marius, who was Caesar's aunt, died.
She had lived in obscurity since her husband's proscription and death, his party
having been put down so effectually that it was dangerous to appear to be her friend.
Caesar, however, made preparations for a magnificent funeral for her.
There was a place in the Forum, a sort of pulpit, where public orators were
accustomed to stand in addressing the assembly on great occasions.
This pulpit was adorned with the brazen beaks of ships which had been taken by the
Romans in former wars The name of such a beak was rostrum; in the plural, rostra.
The pulpit was itself, therefore, called the Rostra, that is, The Beaks; and the
people were addressed from it on great public occasions.[2] Caesar pronounced a
splendid panegyric upon the wife of Marius,
at this her funeral, from the Rostra, in the presence of a vast concourse of
spectators, and he had the boldness to bring out and display to the people certain
household images of Marius, which had been concealed from view ever since his death.
Producing them again on such an occasion was annulling, so far as a public orator
could do it, the sentence of condemnation which Sylla and the patrician party had
pronounced against him, and bringing him
forward again as entitled to public admiration and applause.
The patrician partisans who were present attempted to rebuke this bold maneuver with
expressions of disapprobation, but these expressions were drowned in the loud and
long-continued bursts of applause with
which the great mass of the assembled multitude hailed and sanctioned it.
The experiment was very bold and very hazardous, but it was triumphantly
successful.
A short time after this Caesar had another opportunity for delivering a funeral
oration; it was in the case of his own wife, the daughter of Cinna, who had been
the colleague and coadjutor of Marius during the days of his power.
It was not usual to pronounce such panegyrics upon Roman ladies unless they
had attained to an advanced age.
Caesar, however, was disposed to make the case of his own wife an exception to the
ordinary rule.
He saw in the occasion an opportunity to give a new impulse to the popular cause,
and to make further progress in gaining the popular favor.
The experiment was successful in this instance too.
The people were pleased at the apparent affection which his action evinced; and as
Cornelia was the daughter of Cinna, he had opportunity, under pretext of praising the
birth and parentage of the deceased, to
laud the men whom Sylla's party had outlawed and destroyed.
In a word, the patrician party saw with anxiety and dread that Caesar was rapidly
consolidating and organizing, and bringing back to its pristine strength and vigor, a
party whose restoration to power would of
course involve their own political, and perhaps personal ruin.
Caesar began soon to receive appointments to public office, and thus rapidly
increased his influence and power.
Public officers and candidates for office were accustomed in those days to expend
great sums of money in shows and spectacles to amuse the people.
Caesar went beyond all limits in these expenditures.
He brought gladiators from distant provinces, and trained them at great
expense, to fight in the enormous amphitheaters of the city, in the midst of
vast assemblies of men.
Wild beasts were procured also from the forests of Africa, and brought over in
great numbers, under his direction, that the people might be entertained by their
combats with captives taken in war, who were reserved for this dreadful fate.
Caesar gave, also, splendid entertainments, of the most luxurious and costly character,
and he mingled with his guests at these entertainments, and with the people at
large on other occasions, in so complaisant
and courteous a manner as to gain universal favor.
He soon, by these means, not only exhausted all his own pecuniary resources, but
plunged himself enormously into debt.
It was not difficult for such a man in those days to procure an almost unlimited
credit for such purposes as these, for every one knew that, if he finally
succeeded in placing himself, by means of
the popularity thus acquired, in stations of power, he could soon indemnify himself
and all others who had aided him.
The peaceful merchants, and artisans, and husbandmen of the distant provinces over
which he expected to rule, would yield the revenues necessary to fill the treasuries
thus exhausted.
Still, Caesar's expenditures were so lavish, and the debts he incurred were so
enormous, that those who had not the most unbounded confidence in his capacity and
his powers believed him irretrievably ruined.
The particulars, however, of these difficulties, and the manner in which
Caesar contrived to extricate himself from them, will be more fully detailed in the
next chapter.