Caesar entered with great zeal into the discharge of the duties of this office.
He made arrangements for the entertainment of the people on the most magnificent scale, and made great additions and improvements to the public buildings, constructing porticoes and piazzas around the areas where his gladiatorial shows and the combats with wild beasts were to be exhibited.

He provided gladiators in such numbers, and organized and arranged them in such a manner, ostensibly for their training, that his enemies among the nobility pretended to believe that he was intending to use them as an armed force against the government of the city.

They accordingly made laws limiting and restricting the number of the gladiators to be employed.

Caesar then exhibited his shows on the reduced scale which the new laws required, taking care that the people should understand to whom the responsibility for this reduction in the scale of their pleasures belonged.

They, of course, murmured against the Senate, and Caesar stood higher in their favor than ever.
[Sidenote: Caesar thwarted.] [Sidenote: His resentment.] [Sidenote: The statutes of Marius restored.] [Sidenote: Rage of the patricians.] He was getting, however, by these means, very deeply involved in debt; and, in order partly to retrieve his fortunes in this respect, he made an attempt to have Egypt assigned to him as a province.