One of the atrocities of the age was now perpetrated. Ptolemy Auletes, who on account of his utter worthlessness had been driven from Alexandria, came to Rome; and there he bargained with those who were in power about the price of his restoration. The people of Alexandria sent a counter embassy with the most bitter complaints, to prove his guilt; but Ptolemy was powerful enough, with the connivance of the leading men at Rome, to have those who were of highest rank in that Alexandrine embassy assassinated: Clodius had a hand in all this. His tribunate took place in the year after Cæsar’s consulship. C. JULIUS CÆSAR. Cæsar’s consulship (693) is to be looked upon as the true beginning of the civil wars; its date is four years after that of Cicero. He had not been much talked of until then, although he enjoyed extraordinary favour with the people; as yet Pompey and Crassus alone were powerful.—The two biographies of Cæsar by Suetonius and Plutarch, are, strange to say, both of them ἀκέφαλοι.[5] In the former, there is wanting besides the real beginning, the dedication to the then _præfectus prætorio_, a fact which we have known since the year 1812. With regard to the latter, as far as I am aware, this has not been noticed before; but Plutarch could not have altogether passed over his ancestors, the whole of his genealogy, and the history of his boyhood and youth, so as to begin with Sylla’s attempt to have him divorced from his second wife. For this reason, we know hardly anything of his origin. The Julii were an Alban clan, and therefore in the earliest times of Rome belonged to the _gentes minores_: in the first ages of the republic they are often to be met with in curule dignities; but from the fourth to the seventh century, the _gens_ is no where to be found. Notwithstanding their being patricians, they sided with the popular party. The sister of his father having been married to Marius, Cæsar clung from a youth to Marius and his memory; just as Plato did to the uncle of his mother. He was married to Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, a union which Sylla wanted to break; but Cæsar, in an age when all men trembled, showed already the greatness of his soul, disdaining, as he did, to stoop and to forsake the wife of his love. Her dowry was taken from him, as the property of her father had been confiscated; and he had to put up with it: he had also to hide himself; and though he was not on the proscription lists, he was closely hunted, with Sylla’s knowledge, by what were called the Cornelians, and he had to buy his life. He was at that time still very young, having, according to the custom of the high born families, been married very early; yet there was something so extraordinary about him, that even the wild myrmidons of Sylla, and his most eager partisans, could not bear the thought of sacrificing such a fine young man. It was only, however, with great reluctance, that Sylla consented to his being saved from