he had raised, equipped, disciplined, and maintained, from his own
private funds, a legion amounting, possibly, to six or seven thousand
men, who were bound to no sacrament of military obedience to the state,
nor owed fealty to any auspices except those of Caesar. This legion,
from the fashion of their crested helmets, which resembled the heads of
a small aspiring bird, received the popular name of the _Alauda_ (or
Lark) legion. And very singular it was that Cato, or Marcellus, or some
amongst those enemies of Caesar who watched his conduct during the
period of his Gaulish command with the vigilance of rancorous malice,
should not have come to the knowledge of this fact; in which case we may
be sure that it would have been denounced to the Senate.

Such, then, for its purpose and its uniform motive, was the sagacious
munificence of Caesar. Apart from this motive, and considered in and for
itself, and simply with a reference to the splendid forms which it often
assumed, this munificence would furnish the materials for a volume. The
public entertainments of Caesar, his spectacles and shows, his
naumachiae, and the pomps of his unrivalled triumphs (the closing
triumphs of the Republic), were severally the finest of their kind which
had then been brought forward. Sea-fights were exhibited upon the
grandest scale, according to every known variety of nautical equipment
and mode of conflict, upon a vast lake formed artificially for that
express purpose. Mimic land-fights were conducted, in which all the
circumstances of real war were so faithfully rehearsed that even
elephants "indorsed with towers," twenty on each side, took part in the
combat. Dramas were represented in every known language (_per omnium
linguarum histriones_). And hence (that is, from the conciliatory
feeling thus expressed towards the various tribes of foreigners resident
in Rome) some have derived an explanation of what is else a mysterious
circumstance amongst the ceremonial observances at Caesar's funeral--