IX. Dubious Attitude of Strabo

11. IV. IX. Carbo Assailed on Three Sides of Etruria

12. IV. VII. Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation

13. IV. X. Reorganization of the Senate

14. It is usual to set down the year 654 as that of Caesar's
birth, because according to Suetonius (Caes. 88), Plutarch (Caes.
69), and Appian (B. C. ii. 149) he was at his death (15 March 710)
in his 56th year; with which also the statement that he was 18
years old at the time of the Sullan proscription (672; Veil. ii.
41) nearly accords. But this view is utterly inconsistent with
the facts that Caesar filled the aedileship in 689, the praetorship in
692, and the consulship in 695, and that these offices could,
according to the -leges annales-, be held at the very earliest in
the 37th-38th, 40th-41st, and 43rd-44th years of a man's life
respectively. We cannot conceive why Caesar should have filled all
the curule offices two years before the legal time, and still less
why there should be no mention anywhere of his having done so.
These facts rather suggest the conjecture that, as his birthday
fell undoubtedly on July 12, he was born not in 654, but in 652; so
that in 672 he was in his 20th-21st year, and he died not in his
56th year, but at the age of 57 years 8 months. In favour of this
latter view we may moreover adduce the circumstance, which has been
strangely brought forward in opposition to it, that Caesar "-paene
puer-" was appointed by Marius and Cinna as Flamen of Jupiter
(Veil. ii. 43); for Marius died in January 668, when Caesar was,
according to the usual view, 13 years 6 months old, and therefore
not "almost," as Velleius says, but actually still a boy, and most
probably for this very reason not at all capable of holding such
a priesthood. If, again, he was born in July 652, he was at
the death of Marius in his sixteenth year; and with this the expression
in Velleius agrees, as well as the general rule that civil
positions were not assumed before the expiry of the age of boyhood.
Further, with this latter view alone accords the fact that
the -denarii- struck by Caesar about the outbreak of the civil war are
marked with the number LII, probably the year of his life; for
when it began, Caesar's age was according to this view somewhat
over 52 years. Nor is it so rash as it appears to us who are
accustomed to regular and official lists of births, to charge our
authorities with an error in this respect. Those f