secured most of them.  All their property he made his booty; but the pirates, he lodged in prison at Pergamum, and then went to Junius,[443] who, as governor of the provinces of Asia, was the proper person to punish the captives.  But as the governor was casting a longing eye on the booty, which was valuable, and said he would take time to consider about the captives, Caesar without more ado, left him and going straight to Pergamum took all the pirates out of prison and crucified them, as he had often told them he would do in the island when they thought he was merely jesting.

III.  Sulla’s power was now declining, and Caesar’s friends in Rome recommended him to return.  However, he first made a voyage to Rhodus in order to have the instruction of Apollonius the son of Molon,[444] of whom Cicero also was a hearer.  This Apollonius was a distinguished rhetorician, and had the reputation of being a man of a good disposition.  Caesar is said to have had a great talent for the composition of discourses on political matters, and to have cultivated it most diligently, so as to obtain beyond dispute the second rank; his ambition to be first in power and arms, made him from want of leisure give up the first rank, to which his natural talents invited him, and consequently his attention to military matters and political affairs by which he got the supreme power, did not allow him to attain perfection in oratory.  Accordingly at a later period, in his reply to Cicero about Cato,[445] he deprecates all comparison between the composition of a soldier and the eloquence of an accomplished orator who had plenty of leisure to prosecute his studies.

IV.  On his return to Rome he impeached[446] Dolabella[447] for maladministration in his province, and many of the cities of Greece gave evidence in support of the charge.  Dolabella, indeed, was acquitted; but to make some return to the Greeks for their zeal in his behalf, Caesar assisted them in their prosecution of Publius Antonius[448] for corruption before Marcus Lucullus, the governor of Macedonia; and his aid was so effectual that Antonius appealed to the tribunes, alleging that he had not a fair trial in Greece with the Greeks for his accusers.  At Rome Caesar got a brilliant popularity by aiding at trials with his eloquence; and he gained also much good will by his agreeable mode of saluting people and his pleasant manners, for he was more attentive to please than persons usually are at that age.  He was also gradually acquiring political influence by the splendour of his entertainments and his table and of his general mode of living.  At first those who envied him, thinking that when his resources failed his influence would soon go, did not concern themselves about his flourishing popularity:  but at last when his political power had acquired strength and had become difficult to overthrow and was manifestly tending to bring about a complete revolution, they perceived that no beginnings