[Illustration: The Forum under the Caesars.]

It is known that Cornelia died when still very young, after only a few
years of married life, and that Caesar's third marriage in the year 68
B.C., was quite different from his first and second, since the third
wife, Pompeia, belonged to one of the noblest families of the
conservative aristocracy--was, in fact, a niece of Sulla. How could
the nephew of Marius, who had escaped as by miracle the proscriptions
of Sulla, ever have married the latter's niece? Because in the dozen
years intervening between 80 and 68, the political situation had
gradually grown calmer, and a new air of conciliation had begun to blow
through the city, troubled by so much confusion, burying in oblivion
the bloodiest records of the civil war, calling into fresh life
admiration for Marius, that hero who had conquered the Cimbri and the
Teutons. In that moment, to be a nephew of Marius was no longer a
crime among any of the great families; for some, on the contrary, it
was coming to be the beginning of glory. But that situation was
short-lived. After a brief truce, the two parties again took up a
bitter war, and for his fourth wife Caesar chose Calpurnia, the
daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul in 58, and a most
influential senator of the popular party.

Whoever studies the history of the influential personages of Caesar's
time, will find that their marriages follow the fortunes of the
political situation. Where a purely political reason was wanting,
there was the economic. A woman could aid powerfully a political
career in two ways: by ably administering the household and by
contributing to its expenses her dower or her personal fortune.
Although the Romans gave their daughters an education relatively
advanced, they never forgot to inculcate in them the idea that it was