s elasticity of mind and of heart unimpaired.
In fencing and in riding he was a match for any of his soldiers,
and his swimming saved his life at Alexandria; the incredible rapidity
of his journeys, which usually for the sake of gaining time
were performed by night--a thorough contrast to the procession-like
slowness with which Pompeius moved from one place to another--
was the astonishment of his contemporaries and not the least
among the causes of his success. The mind was like the body.
His remarkable power of intuition revealed itself in the precision
and practicability of all his arrangements, even where he gave orders
without having seen with his own eyes. His memory was matchless,
and it was easy for him to carry on several occupations simultaneously
with equal self-possession. Although a gentleman, a man of genius,
and a monarch, he had still a heart. So long as he lived,
he cherished the purest veneration for his worthy mother Aurelia
(his father having died early); to his wives and above all
to his daughter Julia he devoted an honourable affection,
which was not without reflex influence even on political affairs.
With the ablest and most excellent men of his time, of high
and of humbler rank, he maintained noble relations of mutual fidelity,
with each after his kind. As he himself never abandoned
any of his partisans after the pusillanimous and unfeeling manner
of Pompeius, but adhered to his friends--and that not merely
from calculation--through good and bad times without wavering,
several of these, such as Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Matius, gave,
even after his death, noble testimonies of their attachment to him.

If in a nature so harmoniously organized any one aspect of it
may be singled out as characteristic, it is this--that he stood aloof
from all ideology and everything fanciful. As a matter of course,
Caesar was a man of passion, for without passion there is no genius;
but his passion was never stronger than he could control.
He had had his season of youth, and song, love, and wine had taken
lively possession of his spirit; but with him they did not penetrate
to the inmost core of his nature. Literature occupied him long
and earnestly; but, while Alexander could not sleep for thinking
of the Homeric Achilles, Caesar in his sleepless hours mused
on the inflections of the Latin nouns and verbs. He made verses,
as everybody then did, but they were weak; on the other hand
he was interested in subje