old man.

defence of king Deiotarus, who had given Caesar assistance in the war against Pharnaces (p. 293). Deiotarus was now an His name had long been familiar to the Romans during the wars with Mithridates, and at the end of these wars Pompeius granted him additional territory in Asia with the title of king, which was confirmed by the Roman Senate (vol. iii. p. 192). In the civil war Deiotarus joined Pompeius, as we have seen, and escaped with him in his flight after the battle of Pharsalia. Though Deiotarus brought aid to Caesar against Pharnaces, Caesar after the battle of Zela took from Deiotarus Armenia the Less and the country of the Galatian Trocmi. Caesar was not satisfied with the behaviour of Deiotarus, and he knew or suspected that he was now on his side only because he was victorious. M. Brutus made a speech on behalf of Deiotarus before Caesar at Nicaea in Bithynia, for the purpose of inducing Caesar, as we suppose, not to deprive Deiotarus of part of his territories. Caesar, we are told (Cic. ad Attic. xiv. 1) used to say of M. Brutus, "What this man wills, is no indifferent matter; for what he does will, he wills with all his might;" and Caesar observed this temper of Brutus in his speech at Nicaea, in which Brutus spoke with great vehemence and freedom.

A daughter of Deiotarus married a man of mean birth, as Cicero says. His name was Castor and he had a son named Castor. The old king and his family were not on good terms; and after Caesar's return from Spain, the grandson Castor charged his grandfather with the design of assassinating Caesar while he was the guest of Deiotarus in Galatia. Deiotarus was now at home, but he sent some friends to defend him, and among them his slave and physician Pheidippus; but Pheidippus was bribed by Castor, as Cicero says, to give evidence against his master. Cicero defended Deiotarus before Caesar, who heard the case in his own house. The speech is extant, the last that Cicero delivered in Caesar's lifetin.c. *Cicero sent a copy of this speech to Dolabella, with the remark that the matter was not worth a carefully written oration; however he wished to send his old friend a little present, slight and of coarse material as it was, like the king's own presents (Ad Fam. ix. 12).

The charge of the intention to assassinate Caesar was probably false. The evidence of the physician contained nothing about a design of poisoning Caesar, which, as Cicero contends, would have been the easiest and surest way of killing him (c. 6). The charge was that Deiotarus intended to employ armed men to assassinate Caesar, while he was the king's guest. It is hardly possible that a man in his senses would think of murdering the victorious Roman general at such a time. Cicero also argues that such a design was quite inconsistent with the many and great virtues of the Galatian king; but other authorities make it very doubtful if the virtues of Deiotarus were so great as the orator proclaims. Cicero is less successful in answering the charge of Deiotarus being hostile to Caesar and showing it during the African war, at a time when he may have had some hopes that Caesar would perish. The speech contains some of the most extravagant flattery that Cicero ever employed. Caesar made no decision; and Cicero states that when Deiotarus heard of Caesar's death, he forcibly took possession of the territories of which he had been deprived.

The intimacy between Caesar and Cicero since the year B.C. 55 has made us better acquainted with Caesar. There is one letter which brings us nearer to him than any evidence that remains, and presents the Dictator to us in his hours of relaxation (Ad Attic. xiii. 52). It is as good authority for the facts which it contains as any letter written in our own times about contemporary matters. In the middle of December B.C. 45 Caesar was visiting the coast of Campania. On the second day of the Saturnalia in the evening he arrived at the villa of L. Marcius Philippus the second husband of Atia, the mother of C. Octavius, who was afterwards named Augustus. The villa was so filled with soldiers that there was hardly room for Caesar to dine: there were two thousand of them. Cicero, who lived near and expected the Dictator to dinner next day was in great trouble; but one of Caesar's* officers came to his relief and set a guard at his villa: the soldiers encamped on the land, and the villa was protected. On the third day of the Saturnalia Caesar was with Philippus to the seventh hour and no person was admitted. Cicero sup

He was then oiled He was at this time

poses that Caesar was looking over his accounts with Balbus, for he was very exact in keeping his books. He then walked on the seashore. At the eighth hour he took his bath apparently at Cicero's villa, and listened to something that was spoken or written about Mamurra, said to have been chief of engineers under Caesar in Gallia : it was a satire or something against Mamurra, and perhaps Caesar, for it is said that the Dictator did not change his countenance. and rubbed, and he sat down to dinner. under a course of emetics, and so he ate and drank without restraint; the dinner was abundant and well served.* This was not all; but, as Lucilius says, the entertainment was seasoned with good discourse, which made it pass pleasantly. Besides Caesar's table, his immediate friends were supplied at three tables. His freedmen of the "inferior class and the slaves wanted nothing: those of a higher class were treated sumptuously." "I think that I managed the business very well," says Cicero, "but the guest was not one to whom a man would say, I entreat you to call again when you shall return. Once is enough. We talked of no serious matters, and a good deal on literature. Caesar was much pleased and enjoyed himself. He said that he would spend one day at Puteoli, and the next at Baiae." I suppose that the commentators have inferred from what Caesar said that he visited Cicero at his villa at or near Puteoli, and it may be so. Cicero remarks at the end of his letter that Nicias told him that when Caesar was passing the villa of Dolabella, his armed attendants marched in two columns on the right and left of the horse which Caesar rode, and nowhere else.

4 «εμετικὴν agebat.” Some commentators explain these words to mean that Caesar intended to take an emetic after dinner, and so he could eat and drink freely. Mongault thinks that he had taken his emetic in the morning and he refers to Celsus (i. c. 3, 25); but the passage does not determine this weighty matter. Celsus says, "If a man has taken his emetic in the morning, he must walk, then be rubbed, and then dine: if he has taken it after dinner, he must bathe next day and sweat in the bath-room." I understand the words "μETIK agebat" to mean that Caesar was under an emetic régime. Heberden, who was a physician, simply translates "he was anointed and sat down to table, following an emetic course," which is hardly sense. In a note he says course prescribed to such as were using vomits."

a

CHAPTER XXXII.

CAESAR'S ACTS.

B.C. 44.

IN the year B.c. 44 Caesar was consul for the fifth time, and M. Antonius was his colleague. In the previous year Caesar had entered on his fifth Dictatorship,' and M. Lepidus was named his Magister Equitum, which office he held also in B.C. 44. Caesar had promised Dolabella the consulship, though the man had never been praetor, and was far below the legal age required for the consulship. But Caesar took the consulship himself and Dolabella was greatly offended. Antonius, who was active in this business, preferred Caesar as a colleague to Dolabella, for Caesar was intending to leave Rome for the Parthian war, and Antonius would then have all the power in his hands. However on the 1st of January B.C. 44 Caesar stated in the Senate that Dolabella should be appointed consul before he set out for the Parthian war; but Antonius, who was an augur, declared that he would prevent the election of Dolabella, and when the day came, he did stop the election. The question of the validity of the interposition of Antonius was reserved for the Ides of March. Cicero has told this story about Antonius (Phil. ii. 32–35).

For this year there were appointed forty quaestors as in the year before, and six aediles, two of them out of the patrician and four out of the plebeian body. Two of the plebeian aediles had the duty of looking after the supply of corn and were

1 Or the fourth, if the first short dictatorship is not reckoned. Drumann, Julii, p. 656, note 60.

named Cereales (Dion, 43. c. 51). Sixteen praetors were appointed.

For the purpose of easing Rome of her useless citizens and perhaps also giving them the means of living, the Dictator established a settlement at Pharos near Alexandria; and settlers were also sent to Narbo and Arelate in Gallia under Tiberius Nero, the father of the emperor Tiberius. Carthage and Corinth were also restored. A settlement, named Junonia, had been made at Carthage by C. Gracchus (vol. i. p. 276), and it appears that the city of Gracchus still existed. Caesar restored the old name, and as Strabo (p. 833) says, rebuilt the place many Romans who preferred Carthage to Rome were sent there, and some soldiers; and it is now, adds Strabo, more populous than any town in Libya. Caesar sent to Corinth a large number of freedmen, and other settlers were afterwards sent by Augustus; but it is certain that many Greeks came to live in the new Corinth, for it became a Greek town. Corinth was a mass of ruins when the new settlers came, and while they were removing the rubbish, they grubbed up the burialplaces where they found a great number of earthen figures and bronze urns, which they sold at a high price and filled Rome with them (Strabo, p. 382). Caesar also, it is said, had the design of cutting a canal through the isthmus of Corinth.

Suetonius reports that eighty thousand citizens went to Caesar's transmarine colonies. Of course he does not tell us what means or capital these emigrants had. Some absurd regulations however were made with the view, as it is reported, of keeping up the population of Italy: no man between the ages of twenty and forty, except those in military service, was permitted to be absent from Italy more than three years in succession; and no son of a senator was allowed to go abroad except on the staff of a magistrate. A new master must do something to please the common sort in a great capital, and building is the readiest thing to his hand. Caesar designed to build a temple to Mars, such as had never been seen, and to erect it on the site of the lake Codetanus, where he had exhibited the spectacle of a Naumachia in B.C. 46. He also planned a theatre of enormous size near the Tarpeian rock,