But
what could Caesar do, in the centre of nearly the whole of the known
world? He could not hope to effect any material improvements either in
Italy or in the provinces. He had been accustomed from his youth, and
more especially during the last fifteen years, to an enormous activity,
and idleness was intolerable to him. At the close of the civil war he
would have had little or nothing to do unless he had turned his
attention to some foreign enterprise. He was obliged to venture upon
something that would occupy his whole soul, for he could not rest. His
thoughts were therefore again directed to war, and that in a quarter
where the most brilliant triumphs awaited him, where the bones of the
legions of Crassus lay unavenged--to a war against the Parthians. About
this time the Getae also had spread in Thrace, and he intended to check
their progress likewise. But his main problem was to destroy the
Parthian empire and to extend the Roman dominion as far as India, a plan
in which he would certainly have been successful; and he himself felt so
sure of this that he was already thinking of what he should undertake
afterward.
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