of mercenary partisans; kings are known to have taken his pay. And it is
remarkable that even in his character of commander in chief, where the
number of legions allowed to him for the accomplishment of his mission
raised him for a number of years above all fear of coercion or control, he
persevered steadily in the same plan of providing for the day when he
might need assistance, not from the state, but _against_ the state.
For amongst the private anecdotes which came to light under the researches
made into his history after his death, was this--that, soon after his
first entrance upon his government in Gaul, he had raised, equipped,
disciplined, and maintained, from his own private funds, a legion
amounting, perhaps, to six or seven thousand men, who were bound by 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 crested heads of a small bird of the
lark species, 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