e further identified with
the ruling party. His career was soon after interrupted by the triumphant
return of Sulla (82 B.C.), who ordered him to divorce his wife, and on his
refusal deprived him of his property and priesthood and was induced to
spare his life only by the intercession of his aristocratic relatives and
the college of vestal virgins.

Released from his religious obligations, Caesar now (81 B.C.) left Rome for
the East and served his first campaign under Minucius Thermus, who was
engaged in stamping out the embers of resistance to Roman rule in the
province of Asia, and received from him the "civic crown" for saving a
fellow-soldier's life at the storm of Mytilene. In 78 B.C. he was serving
under Servilius Isauricus against the Cilician pirates when the news of
Sulla's death reached him and he at once returned to Rome. Refusing to
entangle himself in the abortive and equivocal schemes of Lepidus to
subvert the Sullan constitution, Caesar took up the only instrument of
political warfare left to the opposition by prosecuting two senatorial
governors, Cn. Cornelius Dolabella (in 77 B.C.) and C. Antonius (in 76
B.C.) for extortion in the provinces of Macedonia and Greece, and though he
lost both cases, probably convinced the world at large of the corruption of
the senatorial tribunals. After these failures Caesar determined to take no
active part in politics for a time, and retraced his steps to the East in
order to study rhetoric under Molon, at Rhodes. On the journey thither he
was caught by pirates, whom he treated with consummate nonchalance while
awaiting his ransom, threatening to return and crucify them; when released
he lost no time in carrying out his threat. Whilst he was studying at
Rhodes the third Mithradatic War broke out, and Caesar at once raised a
corps of volunteers and helped to secure the wavering loyalty of the
provincials of Asia. When Lucullus assumed the command of the Roman troops
in Asia, Caesar returned to Rome, to find that he had been elected to a
seat on the college of _pontifices_ left vacant by the death of his uncle,
C. Aurelius Cotta. He was likewise elected first of the six _tribuni
militum a populo_, but we hear nothing of his service in this capacity.
Suetonius tells us that he threw himself into the agitation for the
restoration of the ancient powers of the tribunate curtailed by Sulla, and
that he secured the passing of a law of amnesty in favour of the partisans
of Sertor