d entertainments, the
money for which he borrowed. At thirty-seven he was elected Pontifex
Maximus, so great was his popularity, and the following year he obtained
the praetorship, B.C. 62, and on the expiration of his office he obtained
the province of Further Spain. His debts were so enormous that he applied
for aid to Crassus, the richest man in Rome, and readily obtained the loan
he sought. In Spain, with an army at his command, he gained brilliant
victories over the Lusitanians, and returned to Rome enriched, and sought
the consulship. To obtain this, he relinquished the customary triumph,
and, with the aid of Pompey, secured his election, and entered into that
close alliance with Pompey and Crassus which historians call the first
triumvirate. It was merely a private agreement between the three most
powerful men of Rome to support each other, and not a distinct magistracy.

(M1008) As consul, Caesar threw his influence against the aristocracy, to
whose ranks he belonged, both by birth and office, and caused an agrarian
law to be passed, against the fiercest opposition of the Senate, by which
the rich Campanian lands were divided for the benefit of the poorest
citizens--a good measure, perhaps, but which brought him forward as the
champion of the people. He next gained over the equites, by relieving
them, by a law which he caused to be passed, of one-third of the sum they
had agreed to pay for the farming of the taxes of Asia. He secured the
favor of Pompey by causing all his acts in the East to be confirmed. At
the expiration of his consulship he obtained the province of Gaul, as the
fullest field for the development of his military talents, and the surest
way to climb to subsequent greatness. At this period Cicero went into
exile without waiting for his trial--that miserable period made memorable
for aristocratic broils and intrigues, and when Clodius, a reckless young
noble, entered into the house of the Pontifex Maximus, disguised as a
woman, in pursuit of a vile intrigue with Caesar's wife.

(M1009) The succeeding nine years of Caesar's life were occupied by the
subjugation of Gaul. In the first campaign he subdued the Helvetii, and
conquered Ariovistus, a powerful German chieftain. In the second campaign
he opposed a confederation of Belgic tribes--the most warlike of all the
Gauls, who had collected a force of three hundred thousand men, and
signally defeated them, for which victories the Senate decreed a publ