No anecdotes are preserved, of Caesar's childhood. He was taught Greek by
Antonius Gnipho, an educated Gaul from the north of Italy. He wrote a poem
when a boy in honor of Hercules. He composed a tragedy on the story of
Oedipus. His passionate attachment to Aurelia in after-years shows that
between mother and child the relations had been affectionate and happy.
But there is nothing to indicate that there was any early precocity of
talent; and leaving Caesar to his grammar and his exercises, we will
proceed with the occurrences which he must have heard talked of in his
father's house, or seen with his eyes when he began to open them. The
society there was probably composed of his uncle's friends; soldiers and
statesmen who had no sympathy with mobs, but detested the selfish and
dangerous system on which the Senate had carried on the government, and
dreaded its consequences. Above the tumults of the factions in the Capitol
a cry rising into shrillness began to be heard from Italy. Caius Gracchus
had wished to extend the Roman franchise to the Italian States, and the
suggestion had cost him his popularity and his life. The Italian provinces
had furnished their share of the armies which had beaten Jugurtha, and had
destroyed the German invaders. They now demanded that they should have the
position which Gracchus designed for them: that they should be allowed to
legislate for themselves, and no longer lie at the mercy of others, who
neither understood their necessities nor cared for their interests. They
had no friends in the city, save a few far-sighted statesmen. Senate and
mob had at least one point of agreement, that the spoils of the Empire
should be fought for among themselves; and at the first mention of the
invasion of their monopoly a law was passed making the very agitation of
the subject punishable by death.

Political convulsions work in a groove, the direction of which varies
little in any age or country. Institutions once sufficient and salutary