THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

V. The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter IX - Death of Crassus - Rupture between the Joint Rulers

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Page 43

Curio

For the discussions with the senate Caesar had succeeded in purchasing not only one of the two consuls of the year, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, but above all the tribune of the people Gaius Curio, probably the most eminent among the many profligate men of parts in this epoch;(21) unsurpassed in refined elegance, in fluent and clever oratory, in dexterity of intrigue, and in that energy which in the case of vigorous but vicious characters bestirs itself only the more powerfully amid the pauses of idleness; but also unsurpassed in his dissolute life, in his talent for borrowing-- his debts were estimated at 60,000,000 sesterces (600,000 pounds)-- and in his moral and political want of principle. He had previously offered himself to be bought by Caesar and had been rejected; the talent, which he thenceforward displayed in his attacks on Caesar, induced the latter subsequently to buy him up--the price was high, but the commodity was worth the money.

21. -Homo ingeniosissime nequam- (Vellei. ii. 48).

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