He had often smilingly sworn, while still in their power, that he would soon capture and crucify them and this is exactly what he did. As soon as the stipulated fifty talents arrived (which make 12,000 gold pieces), and the pirates duly set him ashore, he raised a fleet and went after them. They kept him prisoner for nearly forty days, to his intense annoyance he had with him only a physician and two valets, having sent the rest of his staff away to borrow the ransom money. Winter had already set in when he sailed for Rhodes and was captured by pirates off the island of Pharmacussa. After this revolt was suppressed, Caesar brought a charge of extortion against Cornelius Dolabella, an ex-consul who had once been awarded a triumph, but failed to secure a sentence so he decided to visit Rhodes until the resultant ill-feeling had time to die down, meanwhile taking a course in rhetoric from Apollonius Mole, the best living exponent of the art. Nevertheless, though Lepidus made him very advantageous offers, Caesar turned them down: he had small confidence in Lepidus's capacities, and found the political atmosphere less promising than he had been led to believe.Ĥ. He also campaigned in Cilicia under Servilius Isauricus, but not for long, because the news of Sulla's death sent him hurrying back to Rome, where a revolt headed by Marcus Lepidus seemed to offer prospects of rapid advancement. However, Caesar's reputation improved later in the campaign, when Thermus awarded him the civic crown of oak-leaves, at the storming of Mytilene, for saving a fellow-soldier's life.ģ. When Thermus sent Caesar to raise a fleet in Bithynia, he wasted so much time at King Nicomedes's court that a homosexual relationship between them was suspected, and suspicion gave place to scandal when, soon after his return to headquarters, he revisited Bithynia: ostensibly collecting a debt incurred there by one of his freedmen. Caesar first saw military service in Asia, where he went as aide-de-camp to Marcus Thermus, the provincial governor-general. There are many Marius's in this fellow Caesar.'Ģ. Whether he was divinely inspired or showed peculiar foresight is an arguable point, but these were his words: 'Very well then, you win! Take him! But never forget that the man whom you want me to spare will one day prove the ruin of the party which you and I have so long defended. It is well known that, when the most devoted and eminent members of the aristocratic party pleaded Caesar's cause and would not let the matter drop, Sulla at last gave way. Finally he won Sulla's pardon through the intercession of the Vestal Virgins and his near relatives Mamerius Aemilius and Aurelius Cotta. Caesar disappeared from public view and, though suffering from a virulent attack of quartan fever, was forced to find a new hiding-place almost every night and bribe house holders to protect him from Sulla's secret police. The Dictator Sulla tried to make Caesar divorce Cornelia and when he refused stripped him of the priesthood, his wife's dowry, and his own inheritance, treating him as if he were a member of the popular party. Instead, he married Cornelia, daughter of that Cinna who had been Consul four times, and later she bore him a daughter named Julia. During the next consulship, after being nominated to the priesthood of Jupiter, he broke an engagement, made for him while he was still a boy, to marry one Cossutia for, though rich, she came of only equestrian family. GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR lost his father at the age of fifteen. (The introductory paragraphs on the origins of Caesar's family are lost in all manuscripts.)ġ. Caesar from 'The Twelve Caesars' by Suetonius Caesar (Afterwards Deified)įrom The Twelve Caesars by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus
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