head with one finger,[450] I cannot think that such a wicked
purpose will ever enter into this man's mind as the overthrow of the
Roman State." This, however, belongs to a later period.

V. He received the first proof of the good will of the people towards
him when he was a competitor against Caius Popilius for a military
tribuneship,[451] and was proclaimed before him. He received a second
and more conspicuous evidence of popular favour on the occasion of the
death of Julia[452] the wife of Marius, when Caesar, who was her
nephew, pronounced over her a splendid funeral oration in the Forum,
and at the funeral ventured to exhibit the images[453] of Marius,
which were then seen for the first time since the administration of
Sulla, for Marius and his son had been adjudged enemies. Some voices
were raised against Caesar on account of this display, but the people
responded by loud shouts, and received him with clapping of hands, and
admiration, that he was bringing back as from the regions of Hades,
after so long an interval, the glories of Marius to the city. Now it
was an ancient Roman usage to pronounce funeral orations[454] over
elderly women, but it was not customary to do it in the case of young
women, and Caesar set the first example by pronouncing a funeral
oration over his deceased wife, which brought him some popularity and
won the many by sympathy to consider him a man of a kind disposition
and full of feeling. After the funeral of his wife he went to Iberia
as quaestor to the Praetor Vetus,[455] for whom he always showed great
respect, and whose son he made his own quaestor when he filled the
office of Praetor. After his quaestorship he married for his third wife
Pompeia[456] he had by his wife Cornelia a daughter, who afterwards
married Pompeius Magnus. Owing to his profuse expenditure (and indeed
men generally supposed that he was buying at a great cost a
short-lived popularity, though in fact he was purchasing things of the
highest value at a low price) it is said that before he attained any
public office he was in debt to the amount of thirteen hundred
talents. Upon being appointed curator of the Appian Road,[457] he laid
out upon it a large sum of his own; and during his aedileship[458] he
exhibited three hundred and twenty pair of gladiators, and by his
liberality and expenditure on the theatrical exhibitions, the
processions, and the public entertainments, he completely drowned all
previous displays, and