re qualified for a very high
appreciation of intellectual pursuits and pleasures. In the absence,
therefore, of all facilities for private reading, the Forum became the
great central point of attraction. The same kind of interest which, in
our day, finds its gratification in reading volumes of printed history
quietly at home, or in silently perusing the columns of newspapers and
magazines in libraries and reading-rooms, where a whisper is seldom
heard, in Caesar's day brought every body to the Forum, to listen to
historical harangues, or political discussions, or forensic arguments in
the midst of noisy crowds. Here all tidings centered; here all questions
were discussed and all great elections held. Here were waged those
ceaseless conflicts of ambition and struggles of power on which the fate
of nations, and sometimes the welfare of almost half mankind depended.
Of course, every ambitious man who aspired to an ascendency over his
fellow-men, wished to make his voice heard in the Forum. To calm the
boisterous tumult there, and to hold, as some of the Roman orators could
do, the vast assemblies in silent and breathless attention, was a power
as delightful in its exercise as it was glorious in its fame. Caesar had
felt this ambition, and had devoted himself very earnestly to the study
of oratory.

[Sidenote: Apollonius.]
[Sidenote: Caesar studies under him.]

His teacher was Apollonius, a philosopher and rhetorician from Rhodes.
Rhodes is a Grecian island, near the southwestern coast of Asia Minor
Apollonius was a teacher of great celebrity, and Caesar became a very
able writer and speaker under his instructions. His time and attention
were, in fact, strangely divided between the highest and noblest
intellectual avocations, and the lowest sensual pleasures of a gay and
dissipated life. The coming of Sylla had, however, interrupted all; and,
after receiving the dictator's command to give up his wife and abandon
the Marian faction, and determining to disobey it, he fled suddenly from
Rome, as was stated at the close of the last chapter, at midnight, and
in disguise.

[Sidenote: Caesar's wanderings.]
[Sidenote: He is seized by a centurion.]

He was sick, too, at the time, with an intermittent fever. The paroxysm
returned once in three or four days, leaving him in tolerable health
during the interval. He went first into the country of the Sabines,
northeast of Rome, where he wandered up and down, exposed continually to