the Roman people, cost him--for the ground merely on which it stood--
nearly eight hundred thousand pounds. To the citizens of Rome he
presented, in one _congiary_, about two guineas and a half a head. To
his army, in one _donation_, upon the termination of the Civil War, he
gave a sum which allowed about two hundred pounds a man to the infantry,
and four hundred to the cavalry. It is true that the legionary troops
were then much reduced by the sword of the enemy, and by the tremendous
hardships of their last campaigns. In this, however, he did perhaps no
more than repay a debt. For it is an instance of military attachment,
beyond all that Wallenstein or any commander, the most beloved amongst
his troops, has ever experienced, that, on the breaking out of the Civil
War, not only did the centurions of every legion severally maintain a
horse soldier, but even the privates volunteered to serve without pay,
and (what might seem impossible) without their daily rations. This was
accomplished by subscriptions amongst themselves, the more opulent
undertaking for the maintenance of the needy. Their disinterested love
for Caesar appeared in another and more difficult illustration: it was a
traditionary anecdote in Rome that the majority of those amongst
Caesar's troops who had the misfortune to fall into the enemy's hands
refused to accept their lives under the condition of serving against
_him_.

In connexion with this subject of his extraordinary munificence, there
is one aspect of Caesar's life which has suffered much from the
misrepresentations of historians, and that is--the vast pecuniary
embarrassments under which he laboured, until the profits of war had
turned the scale even more prodigiously in his favour. At one time of
his life, when appointed to a foreign office, so numerous and so
clamorous were his creditors that he could not have left Rome on his
public duties had not Crassus come forward with assistance in money, or