outvoted, the decree of deposition was passed.  Others were, perhaps, more or less doubtful.  Caesar’s generous forbearance in refusing the offered aid of the populace carried over a number of these sufficient to shift the majority, and thus the action of the body was reversed.  It is in this way that the sudden and apparently total changes in the action of deliberative assemblies which often take place, and which would otherwise, in some cases, be almost incredible, are to be explained.

[Sidenote:  Caesar implicated in Catiline’s conspiracy.] [Sidenote:  He arrests Vettius.]

After this, Caesar became involved in another difficulty, in consequence of the appearance of some definite and positive evidence that he was connected with Catiline in his famous conspiracy.  One of the senators said that Catiline himself had informed him that Caesar was one of the accomplices of the plot.  Another witness, named Vettius, laid an information against Caesar before a Roman magistrate, and offered to produce Caesar’s handwriting in proof of his participation in the conspirator’s designs Caesar was very much incensed, and his manner of vindicating himself from these serious charges was as singular as many of his other deeds.  He arrested Vettius, and sentenced him to pay a heavy fine, and to be imprisoned; and he contrived also to expose him, in the course of the proceedings, to the mob in the Forum, who were always ready to espouse Caesar’s cause, and who, on this occasion, beat Vettius so unmercifully, that he barely escaped with his life.  The magistrate, too, was thrown into prison for having dared to take an information against a superior officer.

[Sidenote:  Caesar’s embarrassment.] [Sidenote:  Spain is assigned to him.]

At last Caesar became so much involved in debt, through the boundless extravagance of his expenditures, that something must be done to replenish his exhausted finances.  He had, however, by this time, risen so high in official influence and power, that he succeeded in having Spain assigned to him as his province, and he began to make preparations to proceed to it.  His creditors, however, interposed, unwilling to let him go without giving them security.  In this dilemma, Caesar succeeded in making an arrangement with Crassus, who has already been spoken of as a man of unbounded wealth and great ambition, but not possessed of any considerable degree of intellectual power.  Crassus consented to give the necessary security, with an understanding that Caesar was to repay him by exerting his political influence in his favor.  So soon as this arrangement was made, Caesar set off in a sudden and private manner, as if he expected that otherwise some new difficulty would intervene.

[Sidenote:  The Swiss hamlet.]