🔘 CAESAR SURVIVES THE SOCIAL WAR

“Then followed the consul­ship of Gaius Caesar, who now lays hold upon my pen and compels, whatever my haste, to linger a while upon him. Sprung from the noble family of the Julii, and tra­cing his descent from Venus and Anchises, a claim conceded by all investigators of antiquity, he surpassed all his fellow-citizens in beauty of person. He was exceedingly keen and vigorous of mind, lavish in his generosity, and possessed a courage exceeding the nature, and even the credence, of man. In the magnitude of his ambitions, in the rapidity of his military operations, and in his endurance of danger, he closely resembled Alexander the Great, but only when Alexander was free from the influence of wine and master of his passions for Caesar, in a word, never indulged in food or in sleep except as they ministered, not to pleasure, but to life. To Gaius Marius he was closely related by blood; he was also the son-in‑law of Cinna, whose daughter no consideration of fear would induce him to divorce, whereas Marcus Piso, a man of consular rank, had divorced Annia, who had been the wife of Cinna, in order to win Sulla's favour. Caesar was only about eighteen years of age at the time of Sulla's dictator­ship; and when a search was made for him with a view to putting him to death, not, it is true, by Sulla himself, but by his minions and partisans, he escaped from the city at night by assuming a disguise which effectually concealed his rank.”

Velleius Paterculus, Roman History