Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/556

Rh 538 CAESAR. 7. § 10 ; PHn. H. N. xvii. 3. s. 4), son of No. 8, and brother of No. 9. He commenced his public career in B. c. 103, when still young, by accusing T. Albucius, who had been praetor in Sicily, of extortion (repctundtie) in that province : Cn. Pom- peius Strabo, who had been quaestor to Albu- cius, wished to conduct the prosecution, but was obliged to give waj' to Caesar. Albucius was con- demned, and the speech which Caesar delivered on this occasion was much admired, and was after- wards closely imitated by his great namesake, the dictator, in the speech which he delivered upon the appointment of an accuser against Dolabella. (Suet. Cues. 55.) He was curule aedile in b. c. 90 in the consulship of his brother, and not in the following year, as some modern writers state ; for we are told, that he was aedile in the tribuneship of C. Curio, which we know was in the year 90. In a. c. 88 he became a candidate for the consul- ship, without having been praetor, and was strongly supported by the aristocracy, and as strongly op- posed by the popular party. Tliis contest was, indeed, as Asconius states, one of the immediate ciiuses of the civil war. The tribunes of the plebs, P. Sulpicius and P. Antistius, contended, and vith justice, that Caesar could not be elected consul without a violation of the lex Annalis ; but since he persevered in spite of their opposition, the tri- bunes had recourse to arms, and thus prevented his election. Shortly afterwards, Sulla entered Rome, and expelled the leaders of the popular party ; but upon his departure to Greece to prose- cute the war against Mithridates, Marius and Cin- na obtained possession of the city (b. c. 87), and C. Caesar was put to death, together with his bro- ther Lucius. It may be added, that C. Caesar was a member of the college of pontiffs. C. Caesar was regarded as one of the chief ora- tors and poets of his age, and is introduced by Cicero as one of the speakers in the second book of his " De Oratore." Wit was the chief charac- teristic of Caesar's oratory, in which he was supe- rior to all his contemporaiies ; but he was deficient in power and energy. His tragedies were distin- guished by ease and polish, though marked by the same defects as his oratory. His contemporary Accius appears, from a story related by Valerius Maximus (iii. 7. § 1 1 ), to have regarded Caesar's poetry as very inferior to his own. The names of two of his tragedies are preserved, the "Adrastus" and "Tecmessix." (Orelli, Onomast. Ttdl. ii. p. 301, where all the passages of Cicero are quoted ; Gell. iv. 6 ; Appian, B. C. i. 72 ; Val. Max. v. 3. § 3 ; Suet Ckd. 60 ; Veil. Pat. ii. 9. § 2. The fragments of his orations are given by Meyer, Oral. Roman. Frai/m. p. 330, &c. Respecting his tragedies, see Welcker, Die Griedtischen 2Vo^oJiera,p. 1398; and Weichert, Poet. Lai. Rel. p. 127.) 11. L. Julius L. f. L. n. Caesar, son of No. 9, and uncle by his sister Julia of M. Antony the triumvir. He was consul B. c. 64 with C. Marcius, Figulus, and belonged, like his father, to the aris- tocratical party. In the debate in the senate, in B. c. 63, respecting the punishment of the Catilina- rian conspirators, he voted for the death of the conspirators, among whom was the husband of his own sister, P. Lentulus Sura, L. Caesar seems to have remained at Rome some years after his consulship without going to any province. In B.C. .V2, we find him in Gaul, as legate to C. Caesar, after- wards the dictator. Here he remained till the break- CAESAR. ing out of the civil wai- in 49, when he accompanied C. Caesar into Italy. He took, however, no active part in the war ; but it would appear that he de- serted the aristocracy, for he continued to live at Rome, which was in the dictator's power, and he was even entrusted with the care of the city in 47 by his nephew M. Antony, who was obliged to leave Rome to quell the revolt of the legions in Italy. L. Caesar, however, was now advanced in yetirs, and did not possess sufficient energy to keep the turbulent spirits at Rome in order : hence much confusion and contention arose during Anto- ny's absence. After the death of the dictator in 44, L. Caesar preserved neutrality as far as possible, though he rather favoured the party of the conspirators than that of Antony. He retired from Rome soon after this event, and spent some time at Neapolis, where Cicero saw him, at the beginning of May, dange- rously ill. From Neapolis he went to Aricia, and from thence returned to Rome in September, but did not take his seat in the senate, either on ac- count, or under the plea, of ill-health. L. Caesar had expressed to Cicero at Neapolis his approba- tion of Dolabella's opposition to his colleague An- tony ; and as soon as the latter left Rome for Mu- tina, at the close of the year, he openly joined the senatorial party. It was on the proposal of L. Caesar, in b. c. 43, that the agrarian law of An- tony was repealed ; but he opposed the wishes of the more violent of his party, who desired war to be declared against Antony as an enemy of the state, and he carried a proposition in the senate that the contest should be called a " tumult," and not a war. In the same spirit, he proposed that P. Sulpicius, and not C. Cassius or the consuls Hirtius and Pansa, as the more violent of his party wished, should be entrusted with the war against Dolabella. His object then was to prevent matters coming to such extremities as to preclude all hopes of reconciliation ; but, after the defeat of Antony in the middle of April, he was one of the first to express his opinion in favour of declaring Antony an enemy of the state. On the establish- ment of the triumvirate, at the latter end of this year, L. Caesar was included in the proscription ; his name was the second in the list, and the first which was put down by his own uncle. He took refuge in the house of his sister, Julia, who with some difficulty obtained his pardon from her son. From this time we hear no more of him. He was not a man of much power of mind, but had some influence in the state through his family connexions and his position in society. (Orelli, Onomast. Tall. ii. p. 314 ; Sail. Cat. 17; Dion Cass, xxxvii. 6, lOj Caes. B. G. vii. 65, B. C. i. 8 ; Dion Cass. xlii. 30; xlvii. 6, 8 ; Appian, B. C. iv. 12, 37 ; Plut. Ant. 19, Cic. 46; Liv. EpU. 120; VeU. Pat. ii. 57; Flor. iv. 6. § 4.) 12. Julia, the daughter of No. 9, and sister of No. 11. [Julia.] 13. L. Julius L. f. L. n, Caesar, son of No. 1 1, with whom he is sometimes confounded by modern writers, though he is usually distinguished from his father by the addition to his name of jUitis or adolescens. On the breaking out of the civil war in B. c. 49, the younger L. Caesar joined the Pom- peian party, although his father was Caesar's legate. If was probably for this reason, and on account of his family connexion with Caesar, that Poujpey sent him with the pnietor Roscius to