en of such talent
has Rome brought forth, nor one to whom the law would be indebted more, if
he the path of right had followed out. As it was, the corruption of the
age ruined the city when desire for office, pomp, and the power which
wealth gives, ever to be dreaded, had swept away his wavering mind with
sidelong flood, and the change of Curio, snared by the spoils of Gaul and
the gold of Caesar, was that which turned the tide of history. Although
mighty Sulla, fierce Marius, the blood-bespattered Cinna, and all the line
of Caesar's house have held our throats at their mercy with the sword, to
whom was e'er such power vouchsafed? All others bought, _he_ sold the
state."

Gaius Matius, a Friend of Caesar

"_Non enim Caesarem ... sum secutus, sed amicum_."

Gaius Matius, the subject of this sketch, was neither a great warrior, nor
statesman, nor writer. If his claim to remembrance rested on what he did
in the one or the other of these roles, he would long ago have been
forgotten. It is his genius for friendship which has kept his memory
green, and that is what he himself would have wished. Of his early life we
know little, but it does not matter much, because the interest which he
has for us centres about his relations to Caesar in early manhood. Being of
good birth, and a man of studious tastes, he probably attended the
University at Athens, and heard lectures there as young Cicero and Messala
did at a later period. He must have been a man of fine tastes and
cultivation, for Cicero, in writing to a friend, bestows on Matius the
title "doctissimus," the highest literary compliment which one Roman could
pay another, and Apollodorus of Pergamum dedicated to him his treatise on
rhetoric. Since he was born about 84 B.C., he returned from his years of
study at Athens about the time when Caesar was setting out on his brilliant
campaign in Gaul. Matius joined him, attracted perhaps by the personal
charms of the young proconsul, perhaps by the love of adventure, perhaps,
like his friend Trebatius, by the hope of making a reputation.

At all events he was already with Caesar somewhere in Gaul in 53 B.C., and
it is hard to think of an experience better suited to lay bare the good
and the bad qualities in Caesar's character than the years of camp life
which Matius spent with him in the wilds of Gaul and Britain. As
aide-de-camp, or orderly, for such a position he probably held, his place
was by Caesar's side. They ford