To give a biographical account of Cæsar would be, in fact, nothing less than to trace the contemporary history of Rome; for Roman history had now become the history of those master-minds who seized upon, or were invested by their countrymen with, supreme power. Although the rapid and energetic talents of Cæsar never permitted him to lose a day, his active devotion to the truly Roman employments of politics and war, left him little time for sedentary occupations. His literary biography, therefore, will necessarily occupy but a short space, compared with the other great events of his career. C. Julius Cæsar was descended from a family of the Julian _gens_, one of the oldest among the patrician families of Rome, of which all but a very few had by this time become extinct. The Cæsar family was not only of patrician descent, but numbered amongst its members, during the century which preceded the birth of the Dictator, many who had served curule offices with great distinction. He was born on the 4th of the ides of July (the 12th,) B. C. 100, and attached himself, both by politics and by matrimonial connexion to the popular party: his good taste, great tact, and pleasing manners, contributed, together with his talents, to insure his popularity. He became a soldier in the nineteenth year of his age; and hence his works display all the best qualities which are fostered by a military education, and which therefore characterize the military profession—frankness, simplicity, and brevity. He served his first campaign at the conclusion of the first Mithridatic war, during which he was present at the siege and capture of Mitylene,[907] and received the honour of a civic crown for saving the life of a citizen. His earliest literary triumph was as an orator. Cn. Dolabella was suspected of oppressive extortion in the administration of his province of Macedonia, and Cæsar came forward as his accuser. The celebrated Hortensius was the advocate for the accused; and although Cæsar did not gain his cause, the skill and eloquence which he displayed as a pleader gave promise of his becoming hereafter a consummate orator. The following year he increased his reputation by taking up the cause of the province of Achaia against C. Antonius, who was accused of the same crime as Dolabella; but he was again unsuccessful in the result.