Cæsar’s first wife was named Cossutia, and was a wealthy heiress whom he had married for her money’s sake. Having, however, fallen in love with Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, he divorced Cossutia, and wedded the woman of his heart, pluckily refusing to part with her when ordered to do so for political reasons by the terrible Sulla. Cornelia died in B.C. 68, and in the following year he married Pompeia, of whom we have just heard, in order to strengthen his alliance with Pompey, to whom she was related.
Cæsar’s marriage to Calpurnia, after the dismissal of Pompeia, again showed his indifference to the moral aspect of political life. Calpurnia was the daughter of Calpurnius Piso, the pupil and disciple of Philodemus the Epicurean, a man whose verses in the Greek Anthology, and whose habits of life, were as vicious and poisonous as any in that licentious age. Cæsar at once obtained the consulship for his disreputable father-in-law, thereby causing Cato to protest that it was intolerable that the government should be prostituted by such marriages, and that persons should advance one another to the highest offices in the land by means of women. Cæsar went so far as to propose, shortly after this, that he should divorce Calpurnia and marry Pompey’s daughter, who would have to be divorced from her husband, Faustus Sulla, for the purpose; and that Pompey should marry Octavia, Cæsar’s niece, although she was at that time married to C. Marcellus, and also would have to be divorced.
There was a startling nonchalance in Cæsar’s behaviour, a studied callousness, which was not less apparent to his contemporaries than to us. His wonderful ability to squander other people’s money, his total disregard of principle, his undisguised satisfaction in political and domestic intrigue, revealed an unconcern which must inspire for all time the admiration of the criminal classes, and which, in certain instances, must appeal very forcibly to the imagination of all high-spirited persons. Who can resist the charm of the story of his behaviour to the pirates of Pharmacusa? For thirty-eight days he was held prisoner at that place by a band of most ferocious and bloodthirsty Cilicians, and during that time he treated his captors with a degree of reckless _insouciance_ unmatched in the history of the world. When they asked him for a ransom of twenty talents (£5000) he laughed in their faces, and said that he was worth at least fifty (£12,500), which sum he ultimately paid over to them. He insisted upon joining in their games, jeered at them for their barbarous habits, and ordered them about as though they were his slaves. When he wished to sleep he demanded that they should keep absolute silence as they sat over their camp-fires; or, when the mood pleased him, he took part in their sing-songs, read them his atrocious Latin verses (for he was ever a poor poet), and abused them soundly if they did not applaud. A hundred times a day he told them that he would have them all hanged as soon as he was free, a pleasantry at which the pirates laughed heartily, thinking it a merry jest; but no sooner was he released than he raised a small force, attacked his former captors, and, taking most of them prisoners, had them all crucified. Crucifixion is a form of death by torture, the prolonged and frightful agony of which is not fully appreciated at the present day, owing to a complacent familiarity with the most notorious case of its application; but Cæsar being, on occasion, with all his indifference, a kind-hearted man, decided at the last moment mercifully to put an end to the agonies of his disillusioned victims, and with a sort of considerate nonchalance he therefore quietly cut their throats.