CAESAR, Julius, the illustrious Roman general and military historian, was of the family of the Julii, who pretended they were descended from Venus by Aeneas. The descendants of Ascanius, sons of Aeneas and Creüsa, and surnamed Julius, 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 Caesar. The most ancient of the Caesars 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 Caesar, 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 Caesar. 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. Caesar, in Roman Antiquity, a title borne by all the emperors, from the time of Julius Caesar till the destruction of the empire. It was also used as a title of distinction for the intended or presumptive heir of the empire, as King of the łłomans was latterly used for that of the German empire.

This title took its rise from the surname of C. Julius Caesar, which, by a decrec of the senate, all the succeeding emperors were to bear. Under his successor, the appellation of Augustus being appropriated to the emperors, in compliment to the prince of that name, the title Caesar was given to the second person in the empire, though still it continued to be given to the first; and hence the difference betwixt Caesar used simply, and Caesar with the addition of Imperator Augustus.

The dignity of Caesar remained to the second of the empire, till Alexius Comnenus having elected Nicephorus Melissenus Caesar by contract, and it being necessary to confer some higher dignity on his own brother 1saacius, he created him Sebastocrator, with the precedency over Melissenus; ordering, that in all acclamations, Isaacius [7:5:776]Sebastoerator should be narñed the second, and Melíssenus Caesar the third.

Caesar, Sir Julius, a learned civilian, was descended by the femalc line from the Duke de Cessarini in Italy, and was born near Tottenham in Middlesex in the year 1557. He was educated at Oxford, and afterwards studied in the university of Paris, where, in the year 1581, he was created doctor of the civil law, and two years afterwards was admitted to the same degree at Oxford, and also became doctor of the canon law. He was advanced to many honourable employments, and for the last twenty years of his life was master of the rolls. He was remarkable for his extensive bounty and charity to ail persons of worth, so that he seemed to be the ahnoner-gencral of the nation. He died in 1639, in the seventy-ninth year of his age. It is very remarkable that the manuscripts of this lawyer were offered, by the executors of some of his descendants, to a cheesemonger as waste paper; but being timely inspected by Mr Samuel Paterson, this gentleman discovered their value, and had the satisfaction to find his judgment confirmed by the profession, to whom they were sold in lots, for upwards of L.500, in the year 1757.