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XLI. He filled the vacancies in the senate, enrolled additional patricians, and
increased the number of praetors, aediles, and quaestors, as well as of the minor
officials; he reinstated those who had been degraded by official action of the censors or
found guilty of bribery by verdict of the jurors. He shared the elections with the people
on this basis: that except in the case of the consulship, half of the magistrates should
be appointed by the people's choice, while the rest should be those whom he had personally
nominated. And these he announced in brief notes like the following, circulated in each
tribe: 'Caesar the Dictator to this or that tribe. I commend to you so and so, to hold
their positions by your votes." He admitted to office even the sons of those who had
been proscribed. He limited the right of serving as jurors to two classes, the equestrian
and senatorial orders, disqualifying the third class, the tribunes of the treasury. He
made the enumeration of the people neither in the usual manner nor place, but from street
to street aided by the owners of blocks of houses, and reduced the number of those who
received grain at public expense from three hundred and twenty thousand to one hundred and
fifty thousand. And to prevent the calling of additional meetings at any future time for
purposes of enrolment, he provided that the places of such as died should be filled each
year by the praetors from those who were not on the list.
XLII. Moreover, to keep up the population of the city, depleted as it was by the
assignment of eighty thousand citizens to colonies across the sea, he made a law that no
citizen older than twenty or younger than forty, who was not detained by service in the
army, should be absent from Italia for more than three successive years; that no senator's
son should go abroad except as the companion of a magistrate or on his staff; and that
those who made a business of grazing should have among their herdsmen at least one-third
who were men of free birth. He conferred citizenship on all who practiced medicine at
Rome, and on all teachers of the liberal arts, to make them more desirous of living in the
city and to induce others to resort to it. As to debts, he disappointed those who looked
for their cancellation, which was often agitated, but finally decreed that the debtors
should satisfy their creditors according to a valuation of their possessions at the price
which they had paid for them before the civil war, deducting from the principal whatever
interest had been paid in cash or pledged through bankers; an arrangement which wiped out
about a fourth part of their indebtedness. He dissolved all collegii
[associations], except those of ancient foundation. He increased the penalties for crimes;
and inasmuch as the rich involved themselves in guilt with less hesitation because they
merely suffered exile, without any loss of property, he punished murderers of freemen by
the confiscation of all their goods, as Cicero writes, and others by the loss of one-half.
XLIII. He administered justice with the utmost conscientiousness and strictness. Those
convicted of extortion he even dismissed from the senatorial order. He annulled the
marriage of an ex-praetor, who had married a woman the very day after her divorce,
although there was no suspicion of adultery. He imposed duties on foreign wares. He denied
the use of litters and the wearing of scarlet robes or pearls to all except to those of a
designated position and age, and on set days. In particular, he enforced the law against
extravagance, setting watchmen in various parts of the market, to seize and bring to him
dainties which were exposed for sale in violation of the law; and sometimes he sent his
lictors and soldiers to take from a dining-room any articles which had escaped the
vigilance of his watchmen, even after they had been served.
XLIV. In particular, for the adornment and convenience of the city, also for the
protection and extension of the Empire, he formed more projects and more extensive ones
every day; first of all, to rear a temple to Mars, greater than any in existence, filling
up and levelling the pool in which he had exhibited the sea-fight, and to build a theater
of vast size, sloping down from the Tarpeian Rock; to reduce the civil code to fixed
limites, and of the vast and prolix mass of statutes to include only the best and most
essential in a limited number of volumes; to open to the public the greatest possible
libraries of Greek and Latin books, assigning to Marcus Varro the charge of procuring and
classifying them; to drain the Pomptine marshes; to let out the water from Lake Fucinus;
to make a highway from the Adriatic across the summit of the Apennines as far as the
Tiber; to cut a canal through the Isthmus; to check the Dacians, who had poured into
Pontus and Thrace; then to make war on the Parthians by way of Lesser Armenia, but not to
risk a battle with them until he had first tested their mettle. All these enterprises and
plans were cut short by his death. But before I speak of that, it will not be amiss to
describe briefly his personal appearance, his dress, his mode of life, and his character,
as well as his conduct in civil and military life.
XLV. He is said to have been tall of stature, with a fair complexion, shapely limbs, a
somewhat full face, and keen black eyes; sound of health, except that towards the end he
was subject to sudden fainting fits and to nightmare as well. He was twice attacked by the
falling sickness [morbus comitialis, so-called because an attack was considered
sufficient cause for the postponement of elections, or other public business. This is
thought to have been epilepsy.] during his campaigns. He was somewhat overnice in the care
of his person, being not only carefully trimmed and shaved, but even having superfluous
hair plucked out, as some have charged; while his baldness was a disfigurement which
troubled him greatly, since he found that it was often the subject of the gibes of his
detractors. Because of it he used to comb forward his scanty locks from the crown of his
head, and of all the honors voted him by the senate and people there was none which he
received or made use of more gladly than the privilege of wearing a laurel wreath at all
times. They say, too, that he was remarkable in his dress; that he wore a senator's tunic
[Latus clavus, the broad purple stripe, is also applied to a tunic with the broad
stripe. All senators had the right to wear this; the peculiarity in Caesar's case
consisted in the long fringed sleeve.] with fringed sleeves reaching to the wrist, and
always had a girdle [While a girdle was commonly worn with the ordinary tunic, it was not
usual to wear one with the latus clavus.] over it, though rather a loose one; and
this, they say, was the occasion of Sulla's mot, when he often warned the nobles to
keep an eye on the ill-girt boy.
XLVI. He lived at first in the Subura in a modest house, but after he became pontifex
maximus, in the official residence on the Sacred Way. Many have written that he was very
fond of elegance and luxury; that having laid the foundations of a countryhouse on his
estate at Nemi and finished it at great cost, he tore it all down because it did not suit
him in every particular, although at the time he was still poor and heavily in debt; and
that he carried tesselated and mosaic floors about with him on his campaigns.
XLVII. They say that he was led to invade Britannia by the hope of getting pearls, and
that in comparing their size he sometimes weighed them with his own hand; that he was
always a most enthusiastic collector of gems, carvings, statues, and pictures by early
artists; also of slaves of exceptional figure and training at enormous prices, of which he
himself was so ashamed that he forbade their entry in his accounts.
XLVIII. It is further reported that in the provinces he gave banquets constantly in two
dining halls, in one of which his officers or Greek companions, in the other Roman
civilians and the more distinguished of the provincials reclined at table. He was so
punctilious and strict in the management of his household, in small matters as well as in
those of greater importance, that he put his baker in irons for serving him with one kind
of bread and his guests with another; and he inflicted capital punishment on a favorite
freedman for adultery with the wife of a Roman eques, although no complaint was
made against him.
XLIX. There was no stain on his reputation for chastity except his intimacy with King
Nicomedes, but that was a deep and lasting reproach, which laid him open to insults from
every quarter. I say nothing of the notorious lines of Licinius Calvus:
Whate'er Bithynia had, and Caesar's paramour.
I pass over, too, the invectives of Dolabella and the elder Curio, in which Dolabella
calls him 'the queen's rival, the inner partner of the royal couch,' and Curio, 'the
brothel of Nicomedes and the stew of Bithynia.' I take no account of the edicts of
Bibulus, in which he posted his colleague as 'the queen of Bithynia,' saying that 'of old
he was enamored of a king, but now of a king's estate.' At this same time, so Marcus
Brutus declares, one Octavius, a man whose disordered mind made him somewhat free with his
tongue, after saluting Gnaeus Pompeius as Rex [or 'king'] in a crowded assembly,
greeted Caesar as Regina ["queen"]. But Gaius Memmius makes the direct
charge that he acted as cup-bearer to Nicomedes with the rest of his wantons at a large
dinner-party, and that among the guests were some merchants from Rome, whose names Memmius
gives. Cicero, indeed, is not content with having written in sundry letters that Caesar
was led by the king's attendants to the royal apartments, that he lay on a golden couch
arrayed in purple, and that the virginity of this son of Venus was lost in Bithynia; but
when Caesar was once addressing the senate in defence of Nysa, daughter of Nicomedes, and
was enumerating his obligations to the king, Cicero cried: "No more of that, pray,
for it is well known what he gave you, and what you gave him in turn." Finally, in
his Gallic triumph his soldiers, among the bantering songs which are usually sung by those
who follow the chariot, shouted these lines, which became a by-word:
"All the Gauls did Caesar vanquish, Nicomedes vanquished him;
Lo! now Caesar rides in triumph, victor over all the Gauls,
Nicomedes does not triumph, who subdued the conqueror."
L. That he was unbridled and extravagant in his intrigues is the general opinion, and
that he seduced many illustrious women, among them Postumia, wife of Servius Sulpicius,
Lollia, wife of Aulus Gabinius, Tertulla, wife of Marcus Crassus, and even Gnaeus
Pompeius' wife Mucia. At all events there is no doubt that Pompeius was taken to task by
the elder and the younger Curio, as well as by many others, because through a desire for
power he had afterwards married the daughter of a man on whose account he divorced a wife
who had borne him three children and whom he had often referred to with a groan as an
Aegisthus. But beyond all others Caesar loved Servilia, the mother of Marcus Brutus, for
whom in his first consulship he bought a pearl costing six million sesterces. During the
civil war, too, besides other presents, he knocked down some fine estates to her in a
public auction at a nominal price, and when some expressed their surprise at the low
figure, Cicero wittily remarked: "It's a better bargain than you think, for there is
a third off'---and in fact it was thought that Servilia was prostituting her own daughter
Tertia to Caesar [The word play is on tertia (pars)--- 'third part'---and Tertia,
daughter of Servilia, in a rather low and vulgar sexual jest].
LI. That he did not refrain from intrigues in the provinces is shown in particular by
this couplet, which was also shouted by the soldiers in his Gallic triumph:
'Men of Rome, keep close your consorts, here's a bald adulterer.
Gold in Gallia you spent in dalliance, which you borrowed here in Rome."
LII. He had love affairs with queens too, including Eunoe the Mauretanian, wife of
Bogudes, on whom, as well as on her husband, he bestowed many splendid presents, as Naso
writes; but above all with Cleopatra, with whom he often feasted until daybreak, and he
would have gone through Egypt with her in her state-barge almost to Aethiopia [i.e.,
Kush], had not his soldiers refused to follow him. Finally he called her to Rome and did
not let her leave until he had ladened her with high honors and rich gifts, and he allowed
her to give his name to the child which she bore. In fact, according to certain Greek
writers, this child was very like Caesar in looks and carriage. Marcus Antonius declared
to the senate that Caesar had really acknowledged the boy, and that Gaius Matius, Gaius
Oppius, and other friends of Caesar knew this. Of these Gaius Oppius, as if admitting that
the situation required apology and defence, published a book, to prove that the child whom
Cleopatra fathered on Caesar was not his. Helvius Cinna, tribune of the plebeians,
admitted to several that he had a bill drawn up in due form, which Caesar had ordered him
to propose to the people in his absence, making it lawful for Caesar to marry what wives
he wished, and as many as he wished, 'for the purpose of begetting children' [the words liberorum
quaerendorum causa are a legal formula indicating that the purpose of marriage is to
beget legal heirs]. But to remove all doubt that he had an evil reputation both for
shameless vice and for adultery, I have only to add that the elder Curio in one of his
speeches calls him "every woman's man and every man's woman."
LIII. That he drank very little wine not even his enemies denied. There is a saying of
Marcus Cato that Caesar was the only man who undertook to overthrow the state when sober.
Even in the matter of food Gaius Oppius tells us that he was so indifferent, that once
when his host served stale oil instead of fresh, and the other guests would have none of
it, Caesar partook even more plentifully than usual, not to seem to charge his host with
carelessness or lack of manners.
LIV. Neither when in command of armies nor as a magistrate at Rome did he show a
scrupulous integrity; for as certain men have declared in their memoirs, when he was
proconsul in Hispania, he not only begged money from the allies, to help pay his debts,
but also attacked and sacked some towns of the Lusitanians although they did not refuse
his terms and opened their gates to him on his arrival. In Gallia he pillaged shrines and
temples of the gods filled with offerings, and oftener sacked towns for the sake of
plunder than for any fault. In consequence he had more gold than he knew what to do with,
and offered it for sale throughout Italia and the provinces at the rate of three thousand
sesterces the pound. In his first consulship he stole three thousand pounds of gold from
the Capitol, replacing it with the same weight of gilded bronze. He made alliances and
thrones a matter of barter, for he extorted from Ptolemy alone in his own name and that of
Pompeius nearly six thousand talents, while later on he met the heavy expenses of the
civil wars and of his triumphs and entertainments by the most bare-faced pillage and
sacrilege.
LV. In eloquence and in the art of war he either equalled or surpassed the fame of
their most eminent representatives. After his accusation of Dolabella, he was without
question numbered with the leading advocates. At all events, when Cicero reviews the
orators in his Brutus, he says that he does not see to whom Caesar ought to yield
the palm, declaring that his style is elegant as well as transparent, even grand and in a
sense noble. Again in a letter to Cornelius Nepos he writes thus of Caesar: "Come
now, what orator would you rank above him of those who have devoted themselves to nothing
else? Who has cleverer or more frequent epigrams? Who is either more picturesque or more
choice in diction?" He appears, at least in his youth, to have imitated the manner of
Caesar Strabo, from whose speech entitled Pro Sardis he actually transferred some
passages word for word to a trial address of his own. He is said to have delivered himself
in a high-pitched voice with impassioned action and gestures, which were not without
grace. He left several speeches, including some which are attributed to him on
insufficient evidence. Augustus had good reason to think that the speech Pro Quintus
Metellus was rather taken down by shorthand writers who could not keep pace with his
delivery, than published by Caesar himself; for in some copies I find that even the title
is not Pro Metellus, but, Quam scripsit Metello ["Which he wrote for
Metellus"] although the discourse purports to be from Caesar's lips, defending
Metellus and himself against the charges of their common detractors. Augustus also
questions the authenticity of the address Apud milites quoque in Hispania, although
there are two sections of it, one purporting to have been spoken at the first battle, the
other at the second when Asinius Pollio writes that because of the sudden onslaught of the
enemy, he actually did not have time to make an harangue.
LVI. He left memoirs too of his deeds in the Gallic war and in the civil strife with
Pompeius; for the author of the Alexandrian, African, and Hispanic Wars is unknown; some
think it was Oppius, others Hirtius, who also supplied the final book of the Gallic War,
which Caesar left unwritten. With regard to Caesar's memoirs Cicero, also in the Brutus
speaks in the following terms: "He wrote memoirs which deserve the highest praise;
they are naked in their simplicity, straightforward yet graceful, stripped of all
rhetorical adornment, as of a garment; but while his purpose was to supply material to
others, on which those who wished to write history might draw, he haply gratified silly
folk, who will try to use the curling-irons on his narrative, but he has kept men of any
sense from touching the subject." Of these same memoirs Hirtius uses this emphatic
language: "They are so highly rated in the judgment of all men, that he seems to have
deprived writers of an opportunity, rather than given them one; yet our admiration for
this feat is greater than that of others; for they know how well and faultlessly he wrote,
while we know besides how easily and rapidly he finished his task." Asinius Pollio
thinks that they were put together somewhat carelessly and without strict regard for
truth; since in many cases Caesar was too ready to believe the accounts which others gave
of their actions, and gave a perverted account of his own, either designedly or perhaps
from forgetfulness; and he thinks that he intended to rewrite and revise them. He left
besides a work in two volumes De Analogia, the same number of Anti-Catones ['Against
Cato'], in addition to a poem, entitled Iter ['The Journey']. He wrote the first of
these works while crossing the Alps and returning to his army from Gallia Citerior, where
he heard lawsuits; the second about the time of the battle of Munda, and the third in the
course of a twenty-four days' journey from Rome to Hispania Ulterior. Some letters of his
to the senate are also preserved, and he seems to have been the first to reduce such
documents to pages and the form of a note-book [i.e., to book form], whereas
previously consuls and generals sent their reports written right across the sheet [i.e.,
without columns or margins, but across the sheet without rhyme or reason]. There are
also letters of his to Cicero, as well as to his intimates on private affairs, and in the
latter, if he had anything confidential to say, he wrote it in cipher, that is, by so
changing the order of the letters of the alphabet, that not a word could be made out. If
anyone wishes to decipher these, and get at their meaning, he must substitute the fourth
letter of the alphabet, namely D, for A, and so with the others. We also have mention of
certain writings of his boyhood and early youth, such as the Laudes Herculis
["Praises of Hercules"], a tragedy Oedipus, and a Dicta Collectanea ["Collection
of Apophthegms"]; but Augustus forbade the publication of all these minor works in a
very brief and frank letter sent to Pompeius Macer, whom he had selected to set his
libraries in order.
LVII. He was highly skilled in arms and horsemanship, and of incredible powers of
endurance. On the march he headed his army, sometimes on horseback, but oftener on foot,
bareheaded both in the heat of the sun and in rain. He covered great distances with
incredible speed, making a hundred miles a day in a hired carriage and with little
baggage, swimming the rivers which barred his path or crossing them on inflated skins, and
very often arriving before the messengers sent to announce his coming.
LVIII. In the conduct of his campaigns it is a question whether he was more cautious or
more daring, for he never led his army where ambuscades were possible without carefully
reconnoitering the country, and he did not cross to Britannia without making personal
inquiries about the harbors, the course, and the approach to the island. But on the other
hand, when news came that his camp in Germania was beleaguered, he made his way to his men
through the enemies' pickets, disguised as a Gaul. He crossed from Brundisium to
Dyrrachium in winter time, running the blockade of the enemy's fleets; and when the troops
which he had ordered to follow him delayed to do so, and he had sent to fetch them many
times in vain, at last in secret and alone he boarded a small boat at night with his head
muffled up; and he did not reveal who he was, or suffer the helmsman to give way to the
gale blowing in their teeth, until he was all but overwhelmed by the waves.
LIX. No regard for religion ever turned him from any undertaking, or even delayed him.
Though the victim escaped as he was offering sacrifice, he did not put off his expedition
against Scipio and Juba. Even when he had a fall as he disembarked, he gave the omen a
favorable turn by crying: "I hold you fast, Africa." Furthermore, to make the
prophecies ridiculous which declared that the stock of the Scipios was fated to be
fortunate and invincible in that province, he kept with him in camp a contemptible fellow
belonging to the Cornelian family, to whom the nickname Salvito had been given as a
reproach for his manner of life.
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