led to public admiration and
applause. The patrician partisans who were present attempted to rebuke
this bold maneuver with expressions of disapprobation, but these
expressions were drowned in the loud and long-continued bursts of
applause with which the great mass of the assembled multitude hailed and
sanctioned it. The experiment was very bold and very hazardous, but it
was triumphantly successful.

[Footnote 2: In modern books this pulpit is sometimes called the
Rostrum, using the word in the singular.]

[Sidenote: Caesar's oration on his wife.]
[Sidenote: Alarm of the patricians.]

A short time after this Caesar had another opportunity for delivering a
funeral oration; it was in the case of his own wife, the daughter of
Cinna, who had been the colleague and coadjutor of Marius during the
days of his power. It was not usual to pronounce such panegyrics upon
Roman ladies unless they had attained to an advanced age. Caesar,
however, was disposed to make the case of his own wife an exception to
the ordinary rule. He saw in the occasion an opportunity to give a new
impulse to the popular cause, and to make further progress in gaining
the popular favor. The experiment was successful in this instance too.
The people were pleased at the apparent affection which his action
evinced; and as Cornelia was the daughter of Cinna, he had opportunity,
under pretext of praising the birth and parentage of the deceased, to
laud the men whom Sylla's party had outlawed and destroyed. In a word,
the patrician party saw with anxiety and dread that Caesar was rapidly
consolidating and organizing, and bringing back to its pristine strength
and vigor, a party whose restoration to power would of course involve
their own political, and perhaps personal ruin.

[Sidenote: Caesar in office.]
[Sidenote: Shows and entertainments.]

Caesar began soon to receive appointments to public office, and thus
rapidly increased his influence and power. Public officers and
candidates for office were accustomed in those days to expend great sums
of money in shows and spectacles to amuse the people. Caesar went beyond
all limits in these expenditures. He brought gladiators from distant
provinces, and trained them at great expense, to fight in the enormous
amphitheaters of the city, in the midst of vast assemblies of men. Wild
beasts were procured also from the forests of Africa, and brought over
in great numbers, under his direction, that the people might b