[Sidenote:  His success.]

Caesar entered into this policy with his whole soul, founding all his hopes of success upon the favor of the populace.  Of course, he had many rivals and opponents among the patrician ranks, and in the Senate, and they often impeded and thwarted his plans and measures for a time, though he always triumphed in the end.

[Sidenote:  He is made quaestor.] [Sidenote:  Caesar leaves Spain.] [Sidenote:  His project.]

One of the first offices of importance to which he attained was that of quaestor, as it was called, which office called him away from Rome into the province of Spain, making him the second in command there.  The officer first in command in the province was, in this instance, a praetor.  During his absence in Spain, Caesar replenished in some degree his exhausted finances, but he soon became very much discontented with so subordinate a position.  His discontent was greatly increased by his coming unexpectedly, one day, at a city then called Hades—­the present Cadiz—­upon a statue of Alexander, which adorned one of the public edifices there.  Alexander died when he was only about thirty years of age, having before that period made himself master of the world.  Caesar was himself now about thirty-five years of age, and it made him very sad to reflect that, though he had lived five years longer than Alexander, he had yet accomplished so little.  He was thus far only the second in a province, while he burned with an insatiable ambition to be the first in Rome.  The reflection made him so uneasy that he left his post before his time expired, and went back to Rome, forming, on the way, desperate projects for getting power there.

[Sidenote:  Caesar accused of treason.]

His rivals and enemies accused him of various schemes, more or less violent and treasonable in their nature, but how justly it is not now possible to ascertain.  They alleged that one of his plans was to join some of the neighboring colonies, whose inhabitants wished to be admitted to the freedom of the city, and, making common cause with them, to raise an armed force and take possession of Rome.  It was said that, to prevent the accomplishment of this design, an army which they had raised for the purpose of an expedition against the Cilician pirates was detained from its march, and that Caesar, seeing that the government were on their guard against him, abandoned the plan.

They also charged him with having formed, after this, a plan within the city for assassinating the senators in the senate house, and then usurping, with his fellow-conspirators, the supreme power.  Crassus, who was a man of vast wealth and a great friend of Caesar’s, was associated with him in this plot, and was to have been made dictator if it had succeeded.  But, notwithstanding the brilliant prize with which Caesar attempted to allure Crassus to the enterprise, his courage failed him when the time for action arrived.  Courage and enterprise, in fact, ought not to be expected of the rich; they are the virtues of poverty.