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 be entertained by their combats with captives taken in war, who were reserved for this dreadful fate.  Caesar gave, also, splendid entertainments, of the most luxurious and costly character, and he mingled with his guests at these entertainments, and with the people at large on other occasions, in so complaisant and courteous a manner as to gain universal favor.

[Sidenote:  Caesar’s extravagances.] [Sidenote:  His embarrassments.]

He soon, by these means, not only exhausted all his own pecuniary resources, but plunged himself enormously into debt.  It was not difficult for such a man in those days to procure an almost unlimited credit for such purposes as these, for every one knew that, if he finally succeeded in placing himself, by means of the popularity thus acquired, in stations of power, he could soon indemnify himself and all others who had aided him.  The peaceful merchants, and artisans, and husbandmen of the distant provinces over which he expected to rule, would yield the revenues necessary to fill the treasuries thus exhausted.  Still, Caesar’s expenditures were so lavish, and the debts he incurred were so enormous, that those who had not the most unbounded confidence in his capacity and his powers believed him irretrievably ruined.

The particulars, however, of these difficulties, and the manner in which Caesar contrived to extricate himself from them, will be more fully detailed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER III.

Advancement to the consulship.

[Sidenote:  Caesar’s rise to power.]

From this time, which was about sixty-seven years before the birth of Christ, Caesar remained for nine years generally at Rome, engaged there in a constant struggle for power.  He was successful in these efforts, rising all the time from one position of influence and honor to another, until he became altogether the most prominent and powerful man in the city.  A great many incidents are recorded, as attending these contests, which illustrate in a very striking manner the strange mixture of rude violence and legal formality by which Rome was in those days governed.

[Sidenote:  Government of Rome.] [Sidenote:  Bribery and corruption.] [Sidenote:  Public amusements.]