recommend him. At the age of forty he became praetor, and was sent to
Spain, where he left a mark again by the successful severity by which he
cleared the province of banditti. He was a man neither given himself to
talking nor much talked about in the world; but he was sought for wherever
work was to be done, and he had made himself respected and valued in high
circles, for after his return from the peninsula he had married into one
of the most distinguished of the patrician families.

The Caesars were a branch of the Gens Julia, which claimed descent from
Iulus the son of Aeneas, and thus from the gods. Roman etymologists could
arrive at no conclusion as to the origin of the name. Some derived it from
an exploit on an elephant-hunt in Africa--Caesar meaning elephant in
Moorish; some to the entrance into the world of the first eminent Caesar
by the aid of a surgeon's knife;[3]some from the color of the eyes
prevailing in the family. Be the explanation what it might, eight
generations of Caesars had held prominent positions in the Commonwealth.
They had been consuls, censors, praetors, aediles, and military tribunes,
and in politics, as might be expected from their position, they had been
moderate aristocrats. Like other families they had been subdivided, and
the links connecting them cannot always be traced. The pedigree of the
Dictator goes no further than to his grandfather, Caius Julius. In the
middle of the second century before Christ, this Caius Julius, being
otherwise unknown to history, married a lady named Marcia, supposed to be
descended from Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome. By her he had three
children, Caius Julius, Sextus Julius, and a daughter named Julia. Caius
Julius married Aurelia, perhaps a member of the consular family of the
Cottas, and was the father of the Great Caesar. Julia became the wife of
Caius Marius, a _mesalliance_ which implied the beginning of a
political split in the Caesar family. The elder branches, like the
Cromwells of Hinchinbrook, remained by their order. The younger attached