Hero Tales from History

by Smith Burnham

By right of the might of her wonderful armies, Rome made herself “Mistress of the World.” So the patricians and the freemen looked with contempt upon other nations and said to themselves, “To be a Roman is greater than to be a king.” The patricians were the proudest Romans, and the Cæsars were among the haughtiest patricians. Their family belonged to the rich, ruling class when little Julius was born.

Of course, there was no such thing as the Christian religion in Julius Cæsar’s day. The only believers in the one true God were the Jews, who lived in the little, far-off country now called the Holy Land. The best educated Romans believed in Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Venus, and many other deities who, they imagined, were ruling over them, and who were as selfish and cruel as the Romans themselves.

There were no public schools for children in Rome. Instead of millions of printed books, there were a few rolls of parchment on which Latin words were printed very slowly by hand. Instead of using paper to write on, the Romans scratched their letters and messages on tablets of wax with large needles. As there were no newspapers then, the people learned what was going on in the world by word of mouth from speakers in the Forum, an open city square with a stone platform, around which crowded thousands of listeners.

The highest ambition of the youthful Julius Cæsar was to speak well to the people in the Forum and to win their friendship. He grew to be a tall, handsome, brilliant young man. He was not rich, and while his friends led lives of ease and pleasure, this young Cæsar studied hard. He learned to read and speak Greek, because then the greatest poems, orations, and plays were in that language. He traveled thousands of miles, to Greece and Asia Minor, to learn to be a good speaker and writer. And though he was a patrician, his real sympathy lay with the poor and the middle class, whose side he took almost from boyhood.

The Romans governed themselves, in some ways, as the people of the United States do to-day. That is, their consuls, or governors, were elected by the patricians and the free men. Sometimes the patricians were in power; at other times, the people of the middle class succeeded in electing their leaders. But in those cruel times the winning party sometimes killed the chiefs on the other side, and treated them all as if they were enemies at war. The uncle of Julius Cæsar had been one of the chiefs overthrown in such a civil war, and the young man inherited his uncle’s love for the cause of the common people.

The first deed of Cæsar that brought him into public notice took place while he was traveling in the East. A crew of pirates, or sea robbers, captured him and held him prisoner until a large sum of money, or a ransom, should be paid. Julius Cæsar succeeded in raising the amount and paid it to them to set him free. But before he left the pirates he told them that if he ever caught them he would have his revenge. Then he went and collected men and ships, caught his former captors, won back his ransom money, and ordered the ring-leaders crucified. Crucifixion was the Roman penalty for pirates and other thieves.

From the time Julius Cæsar was thirty years old, he was constantly in one office or another in the Roman republic. One early position was that of director of shows and sports. The Romans had theaters, with seats of stone rising one behind another from the central space, like the seats in a circus or college stadium. Here thousands of people could see and hear actors, poets, orators, and debaters. One of these theaters was so large that eighty thousand people could witness the games at one time. Instead of football and baseball, the Romans had running races and wrestling matches by athletes and fighters who came from all parts of the world. Most of them were slaves. Among them were men called gladiators, who fought each other with swords until one or the other was killed. The cruel Romans liked this part of the sport best.

Julius Cæsar provided such splendid shows and games that he made himself very popular with the people. He was elected to one office after another; and finally, after being sent as a kind of governor to Spain, was chosen one of the two consuls. The office of consul was the highest in Rome, and was somewhat similar to our president. When his term expired, Cæsar was made governor over the Gauls, a half savage people who lived in the country that is now northern Italy, Switzerland, and France.

During the nine years while Cæsar was in Gaul, he had to fight many battles and conquer many dangerous tribes. Besides that, he crossed to the island of Britain, now called England. But Cæsar was kind to his enemies and prisoners. His “Journal,” which tells of his wars in Gaul, is read to-day as one of the simplest and best books ever written.