derable risk on
that occasion; but it is less known that he was a party to at least two
other conspiracies. There was even a fourth, meditated by Crassus, which
Caesar so far encouraged as to undertake a journey to Rome from a very
distant quarter merely with a view to such chances as it might offer to
him; but, as it did not, upon examination, seem to him a very promising
scheme, he judged it best to look coldly upon it, or not to embark in it
by any personal co-operation. Upon these and other facts we build our
inference--that the scheme of a revolution was the one great purpose of
Caesar from his first entrance upon public life. Nor does it appear that
he cared much by whom it was undertaken, provided only there seemed to
be any sufficient resources for carrying it through, and for sustaining
the first collision with the regular forces of the existing oligarchies,
taking or _not_ taking the shape of triumvirates. He relied, it seems,
on his own personal superiority for raising him to the head of affairs
eventually, let who would take the nominal lead at first.

To the same result, it will be found, tended the vast stream of Caesar's
liberalities. From the senator downwards to the lowest _faex Romuli_, he
had a hired body of dependents, both in and out of Rome, equal in
numbers to a nation. In the provinces, and in distant kingdoms, he
pursued the same schemes. Everywhere he had a body of mercenary
partisans; kings even are known to have taken his pay. And it is
remarkable that even in his character of commander-in-chief, where the
number of legions allowed to him for the accomplishment of his Gaulish
mission raised him for a number of years above all fear of coercion or
control, he persevered steadily in the same plan of providing for the
distant day when he might need assistance, not _from_ the state, but
_against_ the state. For, amongst the private anecdotes which came to
light under the researches made into his history after his death, was
this--that, soon after his first entrance upon his government in Gaul,
he had raised, equipped, disciplined, and maintained, from his own
private funds, a legion amounting, possibly, to six or seven thousand
men, who were bound to no sacrament of military obedience to the state,
nor owed fealty to any auspices except those of Caesar. This legion,
from the fashion of their crested helmets, which resembled the heads of
a small aspiring bird, received the popular name of the _Alaud