As it appeared in the time of Cæsar
Early Life of Cæsar
Such in brief was the world in which Gaius Julius Cæsar lived (100-44 B. C.) Belonging to the bluest-blooded aristocracy, he began life with all the advantages of wealth and family repute. As a boy and youth he enjoyed the best education of the time. It consisted mainly in the study and imitation of Greek writers, especially orators, in preparation for a career as public speaker and statesman. Rome had derived her civilization from Greece; and every business man or diplomatist had to speak the Greek language, which was the chief medium of communication throughout the Mediterranean world.
In company with other young aristocrats Cæsar in early life indulged in all the dissipations and vices of his class. The foppish negligence of his attire proclaimed him a rake, while exorbitant luxuries, costly entertainments, forbidden love-intrigues, gambling—in brief, the indulging of a great variety of expensive tastes—exhausted his fortune and loaded him with debts so portentous that he could never hope to pay them by legal means. Through all these immoralities he kept a sound mind and a body capable of extreme activity and endurance, though in his later years he was subject to fainting and to epileptic fits.
The clearness and quickness of his intelligence was such that he could carry on several lines of thought and keep a number of stenographers[1] occupied simultaneously with his dictations. These extraordinary mental powers enabled him to master the most complex political situations and on the battlefield to turn many a defeat into victory. For the knowledge necessary to his manifold activities he devoured the contents of a multitude of books on a great variety of subjects. He was an orator of splendid power, a writer of clear and simple Latin, a man of scientific taste, interested in the customs and character of the peoples with whom he came in contact, and in the phenomena of nature; a general with few equals in the world’s history, and a statesman variously estimated by modern historians.
[1] In that age stenography was a well-developed art, essential to the work of a secretary.
THE ROMAN FORUM (restored), northwest side
From History of Rome, by G. W. Botsford, The Macmillan Co., Publishers