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Around the year 102-101 BC Gaius Julius Caesar was born into a noble family with links to leading politicians of the day. His aunt Julia was the wife of Gaius Marius, leader of the Popular faction in Rome. At the age of 15 Julius Caesar lost his father and soon after he got married for the first time. This did not last long and at the age of 18 he married Cornelia, the daughter of a prominent member of the Popular faction; she later bore him his only legitimate child, a daughter, Julia. When the Optimate dictator, Sulla, was in power, he ordered Caesar to divorce her; when Caesar refused, Sulla proscribed him (listed him among those to be executed), and Caesar went into hiding. Caesar's influential friends and relatives eventually got him a pardon.

At the age of 21 Caesar was awarded the civic crown (oak leaves) for saving the life of a citizen in battle. His general sent him on an embassy to Nicomedes, the king of Bithynia, to obtain a fleet of ships; Caesar was successful, but subsequently he became the butt of gossip that he had persuaded the king (a homosexual) only by agreeing to sleep with him. When Sulla died in 78, Caesar returned to Rome and began a career as an orator/lawyer.
In 72 BC Caesar was elected military tribune and a few years later he was elected quaestor and obtained a seat in the Senate; After the death of Cornelia in 69 he married Pompeia, a granddaughter of Sulla. Caesar supported Pompey and helped him get an extraordinary generalship against the Mediterranean pirates, later extended to command of the war against King Mithridates in Asia Minor.
The career was in track and in 65 BC he was elected curule aedile and spent lavishly on games to win popular favor; large loans from Crassus made these expenditures possible. There were rumors that Caesar was having an affair with Gnaeus Pompey's wife, Mucia, as well as with the wives of other prominent men.
Caesar spent heavily in a successful effort to get elected pontifex maximus (chief priest) and was elected praetor in 62. He divorced Pompeia because of her involvement in a scandal with another man, although the man had been acquitted in the law courts. In 61 he was sent to the province of Further Spain as propraetor.
He returned from Spain the next year and joined with Pompey and Crassus in The First Triumvirate. In 62, Pompey had returned victorious from Asia, but had been unable to get the Senate to ratify his arrangements and to grant land to his veteran soldiers because he had disbanded his

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