Better be first, he said, in a little Iberian village
Than be second in Rome; and I think he was right when he said it.
Twice was he married before he was twenty, and many times after;
Battles five hundred he fought, and a thousand cities he conquered;
But was finally stabbed by his friend the orator Brutus.
Longfellow, Courtship of Miles Standish, ii.
Longfellow refers to Pliny, vii. 25, where he says that Cæsar "could employ, at one and the same time, his ears to listen, his eyes to read, his hand to write, and his tongue to dictate." He is said to have conquered three hundred nations; to have taken eight hundred cities, to have slain in battle a million men, and to have defeated three millions. (See below, CÆSAR'S WARS.)
Cæsar and his Fortune. Plutarch says that Cæsar told the captain of the vessel in which he sailed that no harm could come to his ship, for that he had "Cæsar and his fortune with him."
Now am I like that proud insulting ship,
Which Cæsar and his fortune bare at once.