sympathy with his soldiers which gained him their hearts so entirely.  On other occasions, when travelling apart from his army, he seems more frequently to have rode in a carriage than on horseback.  His purpose in making this preference must have been with a view to the transport of luggage.  The carriage which he generally used was a rheda, a sort of gig, or rather curricle, for it was a four-wheeled carriage, and adapted (as we find from the imperial regulations for the public carriages, &c.,) to the conveyance of about half a ton.  The mere personal baggage which Caesar carried with him, was probably considerable, for he was a man of the most elegant habits, and in all parts of his life sedulously attentive to elegance of personal appearance.  The length of journeys which he accomplished within a given time, appears even to us at this day, and might well therefore appear to his contemporaries, truly astonishing.  A distance of one hundred miles was no extraordinary day’s journey for him in a rheda, such as we have described it.  So elegant were his habits, and so constant his demand for the luxurious accommodations of polished life, as it then existed in Rome, that he is said to have carried with him, as indispensable parts of his personal baggage, the little lozenges and squares of ivory, and other costly materials, which were wanted for the tesselated flooring of his tent.  Habits such as these will easily account for his travelling in a carriage rather than on horseback.

The courtesy and obliging disposition of Caesar were notorious, and both were illustrated in some anecdotes which survived for generations in Rome.  Dining on one occasion at a table where the servants had inadvertently, for sallad-oil, furnished some sort of coarse lamp-oil, Caesar would not allow the rest of the company to point out the mistake to their host for fear of shocking him too much by exposing the mistake.  At another time, whilst halting at a little cabaret, when one of his retinue was suddenly taken ill, Caesar resigned to his use the sole bed which the house afforded.  Incidents, as trifling as these, express the urbanity of Caesar’s nature; and hence one is the more surprised to find the alienation of the Senate charged, in no trifling degree, upon a failure in point of courtesy.  Caesar neglected to rise from his seat, on their approaching him in a body with an address of congratulation.  It is said, and we can believe it, that he gave deeper offence by this one defect in a matter of ceremonial observance, than by all his substantial attacks upon their privileges.  What we find it difficult to believe, however, is not that result from the offence, but the possibility of the offence itself, from one so little arrogant as Caesar, and so entirely a man of the world.  He was told of the disgust which he had given, and we are bound to believe his apology, in which he charged it upon sickness, which would not at the moment allow him to maintain a standing attitude.  Certainly the whole tenor of his life was not courteous only, but kind; and, to his enemies, merciful in a degree which implied so much more magnanimity than men in general could understand, that by many it was put down to the account of weakness.