road that led southward from
Rome, and was the route for travelers to Greece and the East). He spent
a great sum of money in repairs. His next office of aedile was still
more expensive. Expensive it always was, for the aedile, besides keeping
the temples and other public buildings in repair (the special business
signified by his name), had the management of the public games. An
allowance was made to him for his expenses from the treasury, but he was
expected, just as the Lord Mayor of London is expected, to spend a good
deal of his own money. Caesar far outdid all his predecessors. At one of
the shows which he exhibited, three hundred and twenty pairs of
gladiators fought in the arena; and a gladiator, with his armor and
weapons, and the long training which he had to undergo before he could
fight in public, was a very expensive slave. The six hundred and forty
would cost, first and last, not less than a hundred pounds apiece, and
many of them, perhaps a third of the whole number, would be killed in
the course of the day. Nor was he content with the expenses which were
more or less necessary. He exhibited a great show of wild beasts in
memory of his father, who had died nearly twenty years before. The whole
furniture of the theater, down to the very stage, was made on this
occasion of solid silver.

For all this seeming folly, there were those who discerned thoughts and
designs of no common kind. Extravagant expenditure was of course an
usual way of winning popular favors. A Roman noble bought office after
office till he reached one that entitled him to be sent to govern a
province. In the plunder of the province he expected to find what would
repay him all that he had spent and leave a handsome sum remaining.
Caesar looked to this end, but he looked also to something more. He
would be the champion of the people, and the people would make him the
greatest man at Rome. This had been the part played by Marius before
him; and he determined to play it again. The name of Marius had been in
ill repute since the victory of his great rival, Sulla, and Caesar
determined to restore it to honor. He caused statues of this great man
to be secretly made, on which were inscribed the names of the victories
by which he had delivered Rome from the barbarians. On the morning of
the show these were seen, splendid with gilding, upon the height of the
Capitol. The first feeling was a general astonishment at the young
magistrate's audacity. T