His insistence on their demanding a larger ransom was not so bad—for an epileptic. Prudence ever thus commands the forces of the future.
Yet we are told that Cæsar was not cruel, that this was but mere playfulness, like a kitten with a mouse, or a terrier with a rat, that he only had that disregard for human life which was of the period rather than of the man. In spite of this vindictiveness as a boy, he subsequently in his victories exercised great clemency for those times, when no quarter was shown the vanquished. So noted for clemency was he that he was called by way of distinction "the lenient conqueror." In the cutting of the throats even of friends in those barbarous days there seems to have been no "compunctious visitings of conscience," not even regret; indeed conscience seems to be a modern invention, anyhow.
After this boyish escapade Cæsar went to Rhodes to study rhetoric, having as fellow-students Cicero and Mark Antony, and was so successful as a student that he afterward became known as the second orator of Rome, only because Cicero was the first. In spite of his infirmity and semi-invalidism, success in any career seemed possible to him, for he had excessive persistence and seems to have been among the earliest of those who lived actively and simultaneously the physical and the intellectual life, a commendable but rare combination. Upon his return from his studies he impeached Dolabella for misdemeanor in office, and Publius Antonius for corruption, and was so convincing as a pleader that the defendants were compelled
