Refusing to entangle himself in the abortive and equivocal schemes of Lepidus to subvert the Sullan constitution, Caesar took up the only instrument of political warfare left to the opposition by prosecuting two senatorial governors, Cn. he was serving under Servilius Isauricus against the Cilician pirates when the news of Sulla’s death reached him and he at once returned to Rome. Released from his religious obligations, Caesar now (81 B.C.) left Rome for the East and served his first campaign under Minucius Thermus, who was engaged in stamping out the embers of resistance to Roman rule in the province of Asia, and received from him the “civic crown” for saving a fellow-soldier’s life at the storm of Mytilene. His career was soon after interrupted by the triumphant return of Sulla (82 B.C.), who ordered him to divorce his wife, and on his refusal deprived him of his property and priesthood and was induced to spare his life only by the intercession of his aristocratic relatives and the college of vestal virgins. In the following year (which saw the death of Marius) Caesar, rejecting a proposed marriage with a wealthy capitalist’s heiress, sought and obtained the hand of Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, and thus became further identified with the ruling party. Caesar was at once marked out for high distinction, being created flamen Dialis or priest of Jupiter. The social war (90–89 B.C.) had been brought to a close by the enfranchisement of Rome’s Italian subjects and the civil war which followed it led, after the departure of Sulla for the East, to the temporary triumph of the populares, led by Marius and Cinna, and the indiscriminate massacre of their political opponents, including both of Caesar’s uncles. In his sixteenth year (87 B.C.) Caesar lost his father, and assumed the toga virilis as the token of manhood. It is possible that Caesar may have derived from him his interest in Gaul and its people and his sympathy with the claims of the Romanized Gauls of northern Italy to political rights. Antonius Gnipho, a native of Gaul (by which Cisalpine Gaul may be meant), who is said to have been equally learned in Greek and Latin literature, and to have set up in later years a school of rhetoric which was attended by Cicero in his praetorship 66 B.C. xxviii.) couples her name with that of Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, as an example of the Roman matron whose disciplina and severitas formed her son for the duties of a soldier and statesman. His mother, Aurelia, belonged to a distinguished family, and Tacitus ( Dial. Of his education we know scarcely anything. Caesar was born in the year of Marius’s first great victory over the Teutones, and as he grew up, inspired by the traditions of the great soldier’s career, attached himself to his party and its fortunes. The determining factor is no doubt to be sought in his relationship with C. Most of the family seem to have belonged to the senatorial party ( optimates) but Caesar himself was from the first a popularis. Caesar’s uncle was consul in 91 B.C., and his father held the praetorship. Years.Julii Caesares, however, had also acquired the new nobilitas, which belonged to holders of the great magistracies. Caesar made the most of his divine ancestry and built a temple in his forum to Venus Genetrix but his patrician descent was of little importance in politics and disqualified Caesar from holding the tribunate, an office to which, as a leader of the popular party, he would naturally have aspired. His family was of patrician rank and traced a legendary descent from Iulus, the founder of Alba Longa, son of Aeneas and grandson of Venus and Anchises. CAESAR, GAIUS JULIUS (102–44 B.C.), the great Roman soldier and statesman, was born on the 12th of July 102 B.C.
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