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This young man, Gaius Julius Caesar, was born on the 12th of July 102, the year when at Aquae Sextiae Marius checked the advance of the Teutons in Gaul. He belonged to a branch of the patrician Julian family, which traced descent from Aeneas and so from the gods, and his grandmother Marcia claimed the blood of Ancus Marcius, the fourth of the early Roman kings. His mother, Aurelia, was also of the inner circle of the aristocracy. His branch of the Julii had held in recent generations many high public offices, but had produced no figure of the first importance. They were patricians of the moderate school, and his aunt Julia had broken with the traditions of her caste and married the plebeian Marius.

When he was not yet eighteen his father died, for the Caesars were a short-lived race. His mother lived for thirty years more, long enough to see her son the conqueror of Gaul, and it would appear that Aurelia was the chief formative influence of his youth. To the end of her life she was his friend and counsellor, a gentler figure than the mother of the Gracchi, but with much of the antique Roman discipline. Of his education we know little. He had as tutor not a Greek but a Cisalpine Gaul, but, according to the fashion, most of his training must have been on Greek lines, since the Latin schools of rhetoric were closed when he was ten years old. For Hellenic culture he cherished an abiding love; when in 48 Athens surrendered to him after Pharsalus, he spared the people ‘because of their dead’; nevertheless he was always more Roman than Greek in his habits of thought. He dabbled in literature, and wrote a tragedy and some boyish love-songs, which long afterwards Augustus took pains to suppress, believing that they would not add to his fame; he also acquired two hobbies which never left him, astronomy and an eager curiosity about the undiscovered regions of the globe, and he pored over the Alexandrian geographers.

Quite early he seems to have developed an interest in politics, and to have leaned, through the influence of his mother, and of the Marian circle to which his aunt’s marriage introduced him, to the side of the Populares. When he was sixteen Marius and Cinna nominated him as flamen dialis, or priest of Jupiter, and his father, who was then living, did not object. When he was nineteen he married Cornelia, Cinna’s daughter, a bold step, for Cinna’s power was crumbling and the avenging Sulla was on the seas. A year later his cousin, the younger Marius, died at Praeneste, and had his head spiked in the market-place to the accompaniment of Sulla’s caustic epigram, ‘One must first become an oarsman before handling the rudder.’ Presently the conqueror set about rearranging Roman society. Pompey obediently divorced his wife at Sulla’s command and accepted the hand of his step-daughter. But the young Caesar defied him. He refused to divorce Cinna’s daughter, with the consequence that he lost his priesthood and his wife’s dowry, and was compelled to hide in fever-stricken nooks of the Apennines, being saved only by the influence of his mother’s house and the intercession of the college of the Vestal Virgins. It was a bold act for a young man of twenty, but Caesar never throughout his life knew the meaning of fear.

His politics were still a boy’s politics, based on personalities and romance. Old Marius his kinsman, of whose ugly side he knew little, had been the hero of his youth, and his cousin, the younger Marius, was a picturesque adventurer. A boy takes sides in any quarrel, and Caesar’s side was predestined. He was brought daily into contact with the leaders of the Populares, and also with the rising capitalist classes. His father had tried to marry him to a financier’s daughter, and his niece had espoused one Gaius Octavius, the son of a rich country banker. He heard the talk of these people, their complaints of the inefficiency of the Senate and the blundering arrogance of the oligarchy, and it sank deep into his mind. He may also have suffered personally from the boorishness of the elder senatorians and the raffish insolence of the younger. But he was a young man with whom no one took liberties, very courteous and with a pleasant wit of his own, but not inclined to air his opinions or reveal his heart. Cicero, who knew him as a boy, makes fun in his letters of every other contemporary, but he never trifles with Caesar.

From earliest youth he cast a curious spell over all who met him. He had a genius for attracting people to him, and doing kindnesses with a graciousness which left no sting. Already he was schooling himself to discover men’s souls and play on them as on an instrument of music. He ranked as tall among the small-boned Romans—perhaps five foot eight; he was very slim, but his figure was wiry and athletic, and he excelled in swimming, riding, and swordsmanship. In a gluttonous age he was noted for his moderation in both food and wine. He dressed carefully and always kept his body in hard condition. His head was large, beautifully shaped, and set on a sinewy neck; his forehead was broad, his nose strong and aquiline, his complexion a healthy pallor, and his eye dark and piercing like an eagle’s. He was capable of feats of great endurance, but constitutionally he was always a little delicate, suffering from recurring bouts of fever. Altogether a formidable young man, whose eyes revealed nothing and missed nothing, a puzzle alike to strenuous arrivistes like Cicero and to the apolaustic youth of his own class. He was biding his time and forming himself, for he remembered Sulla’s gibe about his cousin Marius.

When he escaped the Sullan proscription he went to the East for his term of military service. He served under one of Sulla’s lieutenants at the siege of Mytilene, and won the ‘civic crown’ for saving a soldier’s life. He was despatched on duty to Bithynia, whose king, Nicomedes, had been restored to the throne. A quarter of a century later Roman gossip credited him with indulging at Nicomedes’ court in orgies of oriental vice. There is no reason to believe the slander, for it was one regularly spread in the Roman world about every great figure in public life, just as charges of incontinence were automatically levied by the Puritans against every Cavalier. Exotic debaucheries had no attraction for Caesar, and it is to be noted that in a plea for certain Bithynians, made when he was Pontifex Maximus, he spoke most frankly and naturally of his dealings with Nicomedes, which scarcely suggests a guilty conscience. After Mytilene he joined the fleet of Servilius Isauricus in its campaign against the Cilician pirates. While there he heard of Sulla’s death, and returned to Rome to see if the political world was now ripe for his entrance.

He arrived in time for the abortive rebellion of Lepidus, a light-headed enterprise with which, though solicited by young Cinna his brother-in-law, he would have nothing to do. Instead he turned to the law-courts. He was not rich, but Aurelia had carefully conserved his inheritance, and he had enough to launch him in public life. He prosecuted the ex-proconsul of Macedonia on a charge of extortion, and, though he failed to secure a conviction, he won a certain amount of repute. Next year he attacked another malefactor of the same type and failed again. Clearly he required more training, so, characteristically, he went to seek it where it could best be got. At the age of twenty-eight he sailed for Rhodes to study under Apollonius Molo, who had been Cicero’s master. He had no cause to lose heart because of his comparative failure in the law-courts. Cicero, who had a complete professional training, undertook no political case till he was thirty-six.

But the next year was not to be one of academic study, but an interlude of wild adventure. On the way to Rhodes he was captured by pirates. While his friends were sent off to raise the necessary ransom, Caesar remained as a hostage, and for twenty-eight days was the life and soul of the company. He promised cheerfully to hang them all, a promise which he faithfully kept, when the ransom arrived and he could hire ships at Miletus. Apollonius must have had an unsatisfactory pupil, for the next we hear is of Caesar raising troops to repel the new invasion of Mithridates. Meantime, in his absence he had been elected through the influence of his mother’s family to a place in the college of pontifices, and he felt that, in Napoleon’s phrase, he had done enough ‘pour chauffer la gloire’ and should return home. He knew that he would get short shrift if pirates captured him a second time, so he hired a vessel which could outsail any pirate craft, and reached Rome at the end of 74. There he won his first elective office, that of military tribune, and as such he may have served against Spartacus in the Slave insurrection which presently broke out. He was living in a modest establishment with his mother and his wife, improving daily in his oratory in spite of his high-pitched voice, and circumspectly surveying the political field. He was now entering his thirtieth year.