His professional merit continued to
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.
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