The man capable of so lofty a mission already existed; but perhaps, in spite of his name, he might have still remained long unknown, if the penetrating eye of Sylla had not discovered him in the midst of the crowd, and, by persecution, pointed him out to public attention. That man was Cæsar.
I. About the time when Marius, by his victories over the Cimbri and Teutones, saved Italy from a formidable invasion, was born at Rome the man who would one day, by again subduing the Gauls and Germans, retard for several centuries the irruption of the barbarians, give the knowledge of their rights to oppressed peoples, assure continuance to Roman civilisation, and bequeath his name to the future chiefs of nations, as a consecrated emblem of power.
Caius Julius Cæsar was born at Rome on the 4th of the ides of Quintilis (July 12), 654,[743] and the month Quintilis, called _Julius_ [July] in honour of him, has borne for 1,900 years the name of the great man. He was the son of C. Julius Cæsar,[744] prætor, who died suddenly at Pisa about 670,[745] and of Aurelia, descended from an illustrious plebeian family.
By ancestry and alliances, Cæsar inherited that double prestige which is derived from ancient origin and recent renown.
On one side, he claimed to be descended from Anchises and Venus;[746] on the other, he was the nephew of the famous Marius who had married his aunt Julia. When the widow of this great captain died in 686, Cæsar pronounced her funeral oration, and thus traced out his own genealogy:--“My aunt Julia, on the maternal side, is of the issue of kings; on the paternal side, she descends from the immortal gods: for her mother was a Marcia,[747] and the family Marcius Rex are the descendants of Ancus Marcius. The Julia family, to which I belong, descends from Venus herself. Thus our house unites to the sacred character of kings, who are the most powerful among men, the venerated holiness of the gods, who hold kings themselves under their subjection.”[748]
This proud glorification of his race attests the value which was set at Rome upon antiquity of origin; but Cæsar, sprung from that aristocracy which had produced so many illustrious men, and impatient to follow in their footsteps, showed, from early youth, that nobility obliges, instead of imitating those whose conduct would make one believe that nobility dispenses.