By C. Suetonius Tranquillus; To which are added, his Lives of the
Grammarians, Rhetoricians, and Poets.
Translation by Alexander Thomson, M.D.; Revised and corrected by T.Forester, Esq., A.M.
Annotation of text copyright ©2007 David Trumbull, Agathon Associates. All Rights Reserved.
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Julius Caesar, 100-44 B.C.
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CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR.
I. Julius Caesar, the Divine, lost his father when he was in the sixteenth
year of his age /1/; and the year following,
being nominated to the office of high-priest of Jupiter, he repudiated
Cossutia, who was very wealthy, although her
family belonged only to the equestrian order, and to whom he had been contracted
when he was a mere boy. He then married Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, who
was four times consul; and had by her, shortly afterwards, a daughter named
Julia. Resisting all the efforts of the dictator Sylla to induce him to divorce
Cornelia, he suffered the penalty of being stripped of his sacerdotal office,
his wife's dowry, and his own patrimonial estates; and, being identified with
the adverse faction, was compelled to withdraw from Rome. After changing his
place of concealment nearly every night, although he was suffering from a
quartan ague, and having
effected his release by bribing the officers who had tracked his footsteps, he
at length obtained a pardon through the intercession of the vestal virgins, and
of Mamercus Aemilius and Aurelius Cotta, his near relatives. We are assured that
when Sylla, having withstood for a while the entreaties of his own best friends,
persons of distinguished rank, at last yielded to their importunity, he
exclaimed—either by a divine impulse, or from a shrewd conjecture: "Your suit is
granted, and you may take him among you; but know," he added, "that this man,
for whose safety you are so extremely anxious, will, some day or other, be the
ruin of the party of the nobles, in defence of which you are leagued with me;
for in this one Caesar, you will find many a Marius."
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LXXVI. His other words and actions, however, so far outweigh all his good
qualities, that it is thought he abused his power, and was justly cut off. For
he not only obtained excessive honours, such as the consulship every year, the
dictatorship for life, and the censorship, but also the title of emperor,
and the surname of FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY /2/,
besides having his statue amongst the kings,
and a lofty couch in the theatre. He even suffered some
honours to be decreed to him, which were unbefitting the most exalted of
mankind; such as a gilded chair of state in the senate-house and on his
tribunal, a consecrated chariot, and banners in the Circensian procession,
temples, altars, statues among the gods, a bed of state in the temples, a
priest, and a college of priests dedicated to himself, like those of Pan; and
that one of the months should be called by his name. There were, indeed, no
honours which he did not either assume himself, or grant to others, at his will
and pleasure. In his third and fourth consulship, he used only the title of the
office, being content with the power of dictator, which was conferred upon him
with the consulship; and in both years he substituted other consuls in his room,
during the three last months; so that in the intervals he held no assemblies of
the people, for the election of magistrates, excepting only tribunes and ediles
of the people; and appointed officers, under the name of praefects, instead of
the praetors, to administer the affairs of the city during his absence. The
office of consul having become vacant, by the sudden death of one of the consuls
the day before the calends of January [the 1st Jan.], he conferred it on a
person who requested it of him, for a few hours. Assuming the same licence, and
regardless of the customs of his country, he appointed magistrates to hold their
offices for terms of years. He granted the insignia of the consular dignity to
ten persons of pretorian rank. He admitted into the senate some men who had been
made free of the city, and even natives of Gaul, who were semi-barbarians.
He likewise appointed to the management of the mint, and the public revenue of
the state, some servants of his own household; and entrusted the command of
three legions, which he left at Alexandria, to an old catamite of his, the son
of his freed-man Rufinus.
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