text:  for a variety of reasons, he was starting to fall out of favor with the public, you know, approval numbers being what they are. They were dropping, and Caesar calculated, probably correctly, hey, what I need is a war. What the Romans need are victories. They need news of Caesar's legions conquering Parthia. He was preparing for a war because of, if you're to believe the writing, which is all we can do, because of his sagging approval numbers.