This early house, appearing beneath the building of later date, is in all probability the house in which Julius Cæsar lived. The construction agrees with that of earlier and contemporary date. It is the first house on the Via Sacra, and the site coincides with the notices which we have of Cæsar's house:—
"He first inhabited a small house in the Suburra; but after his advancement to the pontificate, he occupied a palace belonging to the state in the Via Sacra. Many writers say that he liked his residence to be elegant ... and that he carried about in his expeditions tesselated and marble slabs for the floor of his tent" (Suetonius, "Cæsar," xlvi.).
"As a mark of distinction he was allowed to have a pediment on his house" (Florus, iv. 3).
"Julius Cæsar once shaded the whole Forum and Via Sacra from his house, as far as the Clivus Capitolinus" (Pliny, xix. 6).
"The night before his murder, as he was in bed with his wife, the doors and windows of the room flew open at once.... Calpurnia dreamed that the pediment was fallen, which, as Livy tells us (in the lost books), the senate had ordered to be erected upon Cæsar's house by way of ornament and distinction; and that it was the fall of it which she lamented and wept for" (Plutarch, in "Cæsar").
"He lay for some little time after he expired, until three of his slaves laid the body on a litter and carried it home, with one arm hanging down over the side" (Suetonius, "Cæsar," lxxxii.).
The house of Cæsar was under the Palatine, on which, above Cæsar's, stood the house of Cicero. "He (Vettius) did not name me, but mentioned that a certain speaker, of consular rank (Cicero), and neighbour to the consul (Cæsar), had suggested to him that some Ahala Servilius, or Brutus, must be found" (Cicero, "Ad Att." ii. 24).
In Cæsar's fourth consulship, the year before he was killed, for some reason or other the defence of King Deiotarus by Cicero was heard by Cæsar in his own house. Cicero says to Cæsar: "I am affected also by the unusual circumstance of the trial in this place, because I am pleading so important a cause—one the fellow of which has never been brought under discussion—within the walls of a private house. I am pleading it out of the hearing of any court or body of auditors, which are a great support and encouragement to an orator. I rest on nothing but your eyes, your person, your countenance. I behold you alone; the whole of my speech is necessarily confined to you alone.... But since the walls of a house narrow all these topics, and since the pleading of the cause is greatly crippled by the place, it behoves you, O Cæsar," &c. ("Pro Deiot." ii.).
It was in the year of his prætorship (62 B.C.) that the scandal of Clodius being found in the house whilst they were about to celebrate the rites of the Bona Dea happened. "When the anniversary of the festival comes, the consul or prætor (for it is at the house of one of them that it is kept) goes out, and not a male is left in it" (Plutarch, "Cæsar"). The trial that such a scene gave rise to caused Cæsar's celebrated words on being asked why he had divorced his wife: "Because I would have the chastity of my wife clear even of suspicion" (Plutarch, "Cæsar").
Plutarch speaks of it as "a great house." Ovid says the house of Numa, the Regia, was "small," showing that the house of Cæsar and the Regia were two distinct edifices.