CÆSAR, JULIUS, the illustrious Roman general and military historian, was of the family of the Julii, who pretended they were descended from Venus by Æneas. The descendants of Ascanius, sons of Æneas and Creüsa, and surnamed Julii, lived in Alba till that city was ruined by Tullus Hostilius, king of Rome, who carried them to Rome, where they afterwards flourished. We do not find that they produced more than two branches. The first bore the name of Tullus, the other that of Cæsar. The most ancient of the Cæsars were those who held public employments in the eleventh year of the first Punic war. After that time some of the family always enjoyed public offices in the commonwealth, till the time of Caius Julius Cæsar, the subject of this article. He was born at Rome the 12th of the month Quintilis, in the year of the city 653, and lost his father in 669. By his valour and eloquence he soon acquired the highest reputation both in the field and in the senate. Beloved and respected by his fellow-citizens, he enjoyed successively every magisterial and military honour the republic could bestow consistently with its own free constitution. But at length having subdued Pompey, the great rival of his growing power, his boundless ambition effaced the glory of his former actions. For, pursuing his favourite maxim, that he had rather be the first man in a village than the second in Rome, he caused himself to be chosen perpetual dictator; and, not content with this unconstitutional power, his faction had resolved to raise him to the imperial dignity; when the friends of the civil liberties of the republic rashly assassinated him in the senate-house, instead of seizing and bringing him to a legal trial for usurpation. By this impolitic measure they defeated their own purpose; involved the city in consternation and terror, which produced general anarchy; and paved the way for the revolution which they wished to prevent, the monarchical government being absolutely founded on the murder of Julius Cæsar. He fell in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the forty-third before the Christian era. His Commentaries contain a history of his principal voyages, battles, and victories. The London edition in 1712, in folio, is preferred. See ROME.