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$Title{Julius Caesar
Chapter II: Caesar's Early Years}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Abbott, Jacob}
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$Subject{caesar
power
himself
rome
time
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public
every
forum
pirates
see
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}
$Date{1900}
$Log{See Bust Of Julius Caesar*0001701.scf
See General View Of The Forum*0001702.scf
}
Title:       Julius Caesar
Author:      Abbott, Jacob
Date:        1900

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.

[See Bust Of Julius Caesar: He was tall and handsome in his person,
fascinating in his manners, and fond of society.]

     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 must 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.

[See General View Of The Forum: It was a magnificent square, surrounded by
splendid edifices.]

     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 suppress 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.  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. ^*
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.

[Footnote *: In modern books this pulpit is sometimes called the Rostrum,
using the word in the singular.]

     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 co-adjutor of Marius during the days of his
power.  It was not usual to pronounce such panegyries 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.