to light under the researches made into his history after his death, was
this--that, soon after his first entrance upon his government in Gaul,
he had raised, equipped, disciplined, and maintained, from his own
private funds, a legion amounting, perhaps, to six or seven thousand
men, who were bound by no sacrament of military obedience to the state,
nor owed fealty to any auspices except those of Cæsar. This legion, from
the fashion of their crested helmets, which resembled the crested heads
of a small bird of the lark species, received the popular name of
the _Alauda_ (or Lark) legion. And very singular it was that Cato,
or Marcellus, or some amongst those enemies of Cæsar, who watched his
conduct during the period of his Gaulish command with the vigilance of
rancorous malice, should not have come to the knowledge of this fact;
in which case we may be sure that it would have been denounced to the
senate.
Such, then, for its purpose and its uniform motive, was the sagacious
munificence of Cæsar. Apart from this motive, and considered in and for
itself, and simply with a reference to the splendid forms which it often
assumed, this munificence would furnish the materials for a volume. The
public entertainments of Cæsar, his spectacles and shows, his naumachiæ,
and the pomps of his unrivalled triumphs, (the closing triumphs of the
Republic,) were severally the finest of their kind which had then been
brought forward. Sea-fights were exhibited upon the grandest scale,
according to every known variety of nautical equipment and mode of
conflict, upon a vast lake formed artificially for that express purpose.
Mimic land-fights were conducted, in which all the circumstances of real
war were so faithfully rehearsed, that even elephants "indorsed with
towers," twenty on each side, took part in the combat. Dramas
were represented in every known language, (_per omnium linguarum
histriones_.) And hence [that is, from the conciliatory feeling thus
expressed towards the various tribes of foreigners resident in
Rome] some have derived an explanation of what is else a mysterious
circumstance amongst the ceremonial observances at Cæsar's funeral--that
all people of foreign nations then residing at Rome, distinguished
themselves by the conspicuous share which they took in the public
mourning; and that, beyond all other foreigners, the Jews for night
after night kept watch and ward about the emperor's grave. Never before,
according to traditions which lasted through several generations in
Rome, had there been so vast a conflux of the human race congregated to
any one centre, on any one attraction of business or of pleasure, as to
Rome, on occasion of these spectacles exhibited by Cæsar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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