CHAP. I. THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 



The debts of Milo amounted to US. septen- 

 genties 1 . Julius Caesar, before he held any 

 office, owed thirteen hundred talents ; when, 

 after his pretorship, he set out for Spain, he is 

 reported to have said, Pis millies et quingenties 

 sibi deesse, ut nihil haberet ; that is, that he was 

 two millions and eighteen thousand pounds 

 worse than nothing. When he first entered 

 Rome, at the beginning of the civil war, he took 

 out of the treasury to the amount of one million 

 and ninety-five thousand pounds sterling, and 

 brought into it, at the end of that war, four 

 millions eight hundred and forty-three thousand 

 pounds. He is reported to have purchased the 

 friendship of Curio, at the commencement of 

 the civil contests, by a bribe of four hundred 

 eighty-four thousand three hundred and seventy 

 pounds; and that of the consul L. Paulus, the 

 colleague of Marcellus, by one of two hundred 

 seventy-nine thousand five hundred pounds 2 . 



Anthony, on the ides of March, when Caesar 

 was killed, owed three hundred and twenty 

 thousand pounds, which he paid before the 

 kalends of April, and squandered of the public 



1 o565,104 sterling. 



2 It is remarked by Pliny (book xxxiii. cap. 3.), that the city 

 of Rome never possessed so much money as at the beginning 

 of the war between Caesar and Pompey. 



