Julius Caesar | Page 3

the view not only of avoiding
the public odium (4) which he had incurred, but of prosecuting his
studies with leisure and tranquillity, under Apollonius, the son of
Molon, at that time the most celebrated master of rhetoric. While on his
voyage thither, in the winter season, he was taken by pirates near the
island of Pharmacusa [14], and detained by them, burning with
indignation, for nearly forty days; his only attendants being a physician
and two chamberlains. For he had instantly dispatched his other
servants and the friends who accompanied him, to raise money for his
ransom [15]. Fifty talents having been paid down, he was landed on the
coast, when, having collected some ships [16], he lost no time in
putting to sea in pursuit of the pirates, and having captured them,
inflicted upon them the punishment with which he had often threatened
them in jest. At that time Mithridates was ravaging the neighbouring
districts, and on Caesar's arrival at Rhodes, that he might not appear to
lie idle while danger threatened the allies of Rome, he passed over into
Asia, and having collected some auxiliary forces, and driven the king's
governor out of the province, retained in their allegiance the cities
which were wavering, and ready to revolt.

V. Having been elected military tribune, the first honour he received
from the suffrages of the people after his return to Rome, he zealously
assisted those who took measures for restoring the tribunitian authority,
which had been greatly diminished during the usurpation of Sylla. He
likewise, by an act, which Plotius at his suggestion propounded to the
people, obtained the recall of Lucius Cinna, his wife's brother, and
others with him, who having been the adherents of Lepidus in the civil
disturbances, had after that consul's death fled to Sertorius [17]; which
law he supported by a speech.
VI. During his quaestorship he pronounced funeral orations from the
rostra, according to custom, in praise of his aunt (5) Julia, and his wife
Cornelia. In the panegyric on his aunt, he gives the following account
of her own and his father's genealogy, on both sides: "My aunt Julia
derived her descent, by the mother, from a race of kings, and by her
father, from the Immortal Gods. For the Marcii Reges [18], her
mother's family, deduce their pedigree from Ancus Marcius, and the
Julii, her father's, from Venus; of which stock we are a branch. We
therefore unite in our descent the sacred majesty of kings, the chiefest
among men, and the divine majesty of Gods, to whom kings
themselves are subject." To supply the place of Cornelia, he married
Pompeia, the daughter of Quintus Pompeius, and grand-daughter of
Lucius Sylla; but he afterwards divorced her, upon suspicion of her
having been debauched by Publius Clodius. For so current was the
report, that Clodius had found access to her disguised as a woman,
during the celebration of a religious solemnity [19], that the senate
instituted an enquiry respecting the profanation of the sacred rites.
VII. Farther-Spain [20] fell to his lot as quaestor; when there, as he was
going the circuit of the province, by commission from the praetor, for
the administration of justice, and had reached Gades, seeing a statue of
Alexander the Great in the temple of Hercules, he sighed deeply, as if
weary of his sluggish life, for having performed no memorable actions
at an age [21] at which Alexander had already conquered the world. He,
therefore, immediately sued for his discharge, with the view of
embracing the first opportunity, which might present itself in The City,
of entering upon a more exalted career. In the stillness of the night

following, he dreamt that he lay with his own mother; but his confusion
was relieved, and his hopes were raised to the highest pitch, by the
interpreters of his dream, who expounded it as an omen that he should
possess universal empire; for (6) that the mother who in his sleep he
had found submissive to his embraces, was no other than the earth, the
common parent of all mankind.
VIII. Quitting therefore the province before the expiration of the usual
term, he betook himself to the Latin colonies, which were then eagerly
agitating the design of obtaining the freedom of Rome; and he would
have stirred them up to some bold attempt, had not the consuls, to
prevent any commotion, detained for some time the legions which had
been raised for service in Cilicia. But this did not deter him from
making, soon afterwards, a still greater effort within the precincts of the
city itself.
IX. For, only a few days before he entered upon the aedileship, he
incurred a suspicion of having engaged in a conspiracy with Marcus
Crassus, a man of consular rank; to whom were