Ab Urbe Condita (Periochae)
Ab Urbe Condita (Periochae) Imperial Titus Livius (Livy) LatinKing Eumenes, who had played a neutral part in the Macedonian War, came to Rome. So that he might neither seem to be judged an enemy, if he were shut out, nor cleared of the charge, if he were admitted, a general law was passed that no king should be allowed to come to Rome. The consul Claudius Marcellus subdued the Alpine Gauls, and the consul Gaius Sulpicius Gallus the Ligurians. The envoys of King Prusias complained of Eumenes, that he was laying waste their borders, and said that he had conspired with Antiochus against the Roman people. An alliance was joined with the Rhodians at their entreaty. A lustration was completed by the censors: there were registered three hundred and thirty-seven thousand and twenty-two citizens. The leader of the Senate was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, driven from his kingdom by his younger brother, was restored by envoys sent to him. On the death of Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, his son Ariarathes received the kingdom and renewed his friendship with the Roman people through envoys. Besides this, the book contains operations carried on against the Ligurians, the Corsicans, and the Lusitanians with varying success, and disturbances in Syria after the death of Antiochus, who had left a son, Antiochus, still a mere boy. This boy Antiochus, together with his guardian Lysias, was secretly killed by Demetrius, son of Seleucus, who had been a hostage at Rome and who, because he was not released, had fled from Rome; and Demetrius himself was received into the kingdom. Lucius Aemilius Paulus, who had conquered Perseus, died. So great was his integrity that, although he had brought back immense wealth from Spain and Macedonia, scarcely enough was realised from the sale of his estate to pay his wife's dowry. The Pomptine marshes were drained by the consul Cornelius Cethegus, to whom that province had fallen, and farmland was made from them.
A fine was imposed on the praetor Gnaeus Tremellius, because he had wrongfully quarrelled with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the chief pontiff; and the authority of the priesthood proved more powerful than that of the magistracies. A law concerning bribery at elections was passed. A lustration was completed by the censors: there were registered three hundred and twenty-eight thousand three hundred and sixteen citizens. The leader of the Senate was Aemilius Lepidus, for the sixth time. Between the brothers Ptolemy, who were at variance, a treaty was struck, that one should reign over Egypt, the other over Cyrene. Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, driven from his kingdom by the counsel and forces of Demetrius, king of Syria, was restored by the Senate. Men were sent by the Senate to judge between Masinissa and the Carthaginians concerning territory. The consul Gaius Marcius fought against the Dalmatians, at first with little success, but afterwards favourably. The reason for going to war with them was that they had ravaged the Illyrians, allies of the Roman people; and the same nation was subdued by the consul Cornelius Nasica. The consul Quintus Opimius subdued the Transalpine Ligurians, who were ravaging the towns of the Massiliotes, Antipolis and Nicaea. Besides this, the book contains operations carried on in Spain by several commanders with little success. In the five hundred and ninety-eighth year from the founding of the city, the consuls began to enter office on the Kalends of January. The reason for changing the date of the elections was that the Spaniards were in revolt. Envoys sent to arbitrate between the Carthaginians and Masinissa reported that they had discovered a great store of naval timber at Carthage. Several praetors, accused on the charge of avarice in their provinces, were condemned.
A lustration was completed by the censors: there were registered three hundred and twenty-four thousand citizens. The seeds of the Third Punic War are reported. When it was said that a vast army of Numidians, under the command of Ariobarzanes, grandson of Syphax, was on the borders of Carthage, Marcus Porcius Cato urged that war be declared on the Carthaginians, on the ground that they kept on their borders an army ostensibly raised against Masinissa but really against the Romans. Publius Cornelius Nasica speaking against this, it was resolved to send envoys to Carthage to spy out what was being done. After the Carthaginian Senate had been reproved for keeping, against the treaty, both an army and naval timber, the envoys wished to make peace between them and Masinissa, on condition that Masinissa withdrew from the land in dispute. But Gisgo, son of Hamilcar, a seditious man who was then in office, when the Senate said it would abide by the envoys' decision, so inflamed the people by urging war against the Romans that the envoys only saved themselves from violence by flight. By reporting this, they made the Senate, already hostile to the Carthaginians, still more incensed. Marcus Porcius Cato held the funeral of his son, who had died during his praetorship, at the slightest expense he could manage — for he was poor. Andriscus, who with great persistence falsely claimed to be a son of Perseus, once king of Macedonia, was sent to Rome. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who had been chosen leader of the Senate by six successive boards of censors, before he died directed his sons to carry him out laid on a bier covered with linen but without purple, and to spend on the rest of the funeral no more than a million asses: it was the custom for the funerals of great men to be ennobled by the display of ancestral images, not by expense. An inquiry was held into poisonings. Publilia and Licinia, noble women who were accused of having murdered their husbands, men of consular rank, after their cases had been heard and they had given the praetor sureties, were put to death by the decree of their kinsmen. Gulussa, son of Masinissa, reported that levies were being held at Carthage, a fleet was being prepared, and beyond doubt war was being made ready. When Cato urged that war be declared on them, and Publius Cornelius Nasica argued that nothing should be done rashly, it was resolved to send ten envoys to investigate. When the consuls Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Aulus Postumius Albinus held the levy strictly and dismissed no one through favour, they were thrown into prison by the tribunes of the plebs, who could not obtain exemption for their friends. When the Spanish War, several times waged with little success, had so dismayed the Roman state that not even men could be found to take up the tribunate or to go as legates, Publius Cornelius Aemilianus came forward and declared that he would undertake whatever kind of military service was ordered; by which example he stirred all to a zeal for soldiering. The consul Lucullus, when Claudius Marcellus, whom he had succeeded, was thought to have pacified all the peoples of Celtiberia, subdued the Vaccaei, the Cantabri, and other peoples of Spain hitherto unknown. There Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, son of Lucius Paulus and grandson of Africanus, though by adoption, slew a barbarian who had challenged him to single combat, while serving as a military tribune; and in the storming of the city of Intercatia he ran an even greater risk, for he was the first to scale the wall. The praetor Servius Sulpicius Galba fought unsuccessfully against the Lusitanians. When the envoys returned from Africa with the spokesmen of the Carthaginians and with Gulussa, son of Masinissa, and reported that they had found both an army and a fleet at Carthage, it was resolved to take a poll of opinions. Cato and other leaders of the Senate urging that an army be transported at once to Africa, since Cornelius Nasica argued that there did not yet seem to be a just cause for war, it was resolved to refrain from war if the Carthaginians burned their fleet and disbanded their army; if not, that the next consuls should bring the matter of a Punic war before the Senate. When the theatre let out by the censors was being built, on the motion of Publius Cornelius Nasica it was demolished by decree of the Senate as useless and likely to harm public morals; and for some time the people watched the games standing. The Carthaginians, when they had made war on Masinissa against the treaty, were defeated by him, then ninety-two years old, who was wont both to chew without any relish and to eat dry bread only, as was his custom; and on top of this they earned a war with Rome. Besides this, disturbances in Syria and wars waged among the kings are reported; in the course of which Demetrius, king of Syria, was killed.
The beginning of the Third Punic War, in the six hundred and second year from the founding of the city, completed within the fifth year of its outbreak. Between Marcus Porcius Cato and Scipio Nasica — of whom the one was held the wisest man in the state, and the other had even been judged by the Senate the best man — there was a contest of opposing opinions, Cato urging war and that Carthage be removed and destroyed, Nasica advising against it. It was resolved nonetheless, because they kept ships against the treaty, because they had led an army beyond their borders, because they had borne arms against Masinissa, an ally and friend of the Roman people, and because they had not received into their town his son Gulussa, who was with the Roman envoys, that war be declared on them. Before any forces were put aboard the ships, the envoys of Utica came to Rome, surrendering themselves and all they had. That embassy, like an omen, was welcome to the Fathers and bitter to the Carthaginians. Games were held at Tarentum to Dis the Father, in accordance with the precept of the books — games that had been held a hundred years before, in the First Punic War, in the five hundred and second year from the founding of the city. Thirty envoys came to Rome, through whom the Carthaginians surrendered themselves. Cato's opinion prevailed, that the decree be adhered to, and that the consuls set out for war as soon as possible. When they had crossed into Africa, and had received the three hundred hostages they had demanded and all the arms and instruments of war that were at Carthage, when by the authority of the Fathers they ordered them to build their town in another place, provided it was not less than ten miles from the sea, by the indignity of the thing they drove the Carthaginians to war. Carthage began to be besieged and assaulted by the consuls Lucius Marcius and Manius Manilius. In that assault, when two tribunes had rashly broken in with their cohorts at a point where the walls had been left unguarded, and were being heavily cut down by the townsfolk, they were extricated by Scipio. Through him too a fort of the Romans, which the enemy were storming by night, was relieved with the help of a few horsemen; and he himself bore the chief glory for the relief of the camp, which the Carthaginians, sallying out from the city with all their forces at once, were attacking. Besides, when one of the consuls — for the other had gone to Rome for the elections — was leading the army from the fruitless assault of Carthage against Hasdrubal, who with a large force had occupied a difficult pass, Scipio first advised the consul not to fight in so unfavourable a place. Then, overcome by the opinions of several who envied both his prudence and his valour, the consul himself entered the pass. When, as Scipio had foretold, the Roman army was routed and put to flight, and two cohorts were besieged by the enemy, Scipio returned into the pass with a few squadrons of cavalry, relieved them, and led them back unharmed. This valour of his Cato too, a man of a tongue readier to blame, so honoured in the Senate that he said the rest who served in Africa flitted like shadows, while Scipio was full of vigour; and the Roman people embraced him with such favour that at the elections most of the tribes wrote him down as consul, though by reason of his age this was not lawful. When Lucius Scribonius, tribune of the plebs, had promulgated a bill that the Lusitanians who had surrendered to the protection of the Roman people and had been sold by Servius Galba in Gaul should be restored to liberty, Marcus Cato most vehemently supported it. His speech survives, included in his own annals. Quintus Fulvius Nobilior, often torn to pieces by him in the Senate, replied on Galba's behalf. Galba himself, when he saw that he was being condemned, embracing his two sons, still wearing the boy's gown, and the son of Sulpicius Galus, whose guardian he was, pleaded for himself so pitifully that the bill was rejected. Three of his speeches survive: two delivered against the tribune of the plebs Libo and his bill concerning the Lusitanians, and one against Lucius Cornelius Cethegus, in which he confesses that he cut down the Lusitanians who had their camp near his, because he had ascertained that, after sacrificing a horse and a man in their own fashion, they had intended to attack his army under the pretence of peace.
A certain Andriscus, a man of the lowest sort, giving himself out to be the son of King Perseus and, his name being changed, called Philip, when he had secretly fled from the city of Rome — whither Demetrius, king of Syria, had sent him on account of this very lie — and many were flocking to his false tale as though it were true, gathered an army and occupied all Macedonia, either by the goodwill of the inhabitants or by arms. He had invented this tale: that he was born of a concubine and King Perseus, and had been handed over to a certain Cretan to be brought up, so that, against the chances of the war which Perseus was waging with the Romans, some seed, as it were, of the royal stock might survive. He had been brought up at Adramyttium until his twelfth year, believing the man who reared him to be his father, ignorant of his own descent. Then, when this man was failing and near the very end of life, his origin had at last been disclosed to him, and a letter sealed with the seal of King Perseus had been given to the supposed mother, to hand to him when he came to manhood, with final adjurations added that the matter be kept secret until that time. When he came of age the letter was handed over, in which two treasures were said to have been left to him by his father. Then, knowing that he was a changeling, the woman, who knew not his true stock, revealed his descent to him and adjured him to leave those parts before the matter reached Eumenes, the enemy of Perseus, lest he be killed. Terrified by this, and at the same time hoping for some help from Demetrius, he had betaken himself to Syria, and there for the first time dared openly to declare who he was.
Thessaly, when the false Philip wished to invade and occupy it too with his arms, was defended by the auxiliaries of the Achaeans through the envoys of the Romans. Prusias, king of Bithynia, a man of all the basest vices, was killed by his son Nicomedes, with the help of Attalus, king of Pergamum. He had another son, who is said to have had, in place of his upper row of teeth, a single continuous bone. When three envoys had been sent by the Romans to make peace between Nicomedes and Prusias, and one of them had a head scarred with many wounds, another was lame in the feet, and the third was reckoned dull of wit, Marcus Cato said that this embassy had neither head, nor feet, nor heart. In Syria, which at that time had a king equal in lineage to the Macedonian kings but like Prusias in sloth and dullness — while he lay among taverns and brothels, Hammonius reigned, through whom all the king's friends, Queen Laodice, and Antigonus, son of Demetrius, were killed. Masinissa, king of Numidia, died, more than ninety years old, a remarkable man. Among other youthful feats which he performed to the last, he was so vigorous even in the use of love in old age that after his eighty-sixth year he begot a son. Among his three children — the eldest by birth Micipsa, then Gulussa, then Mastanabal, who was also learned in Greek letters — when their father had left the kingdom common to them and had ordered them to divide it with Scipio Aemilianus as arbiter, Scipio apportioned the parts of administering the kingdom. Likewise he persuaded Phameas Himilco, commander of the Carthaginian cavalry, a brave man whose service the Carthaginians chiefly relied on, to go over to the Romans with his cavalry. Of the three envoys who had been sent to Masinissa, Marcus Claudius Marcellus was overwhelmed by the waves when a storm arose. The Carthaginians killed in the senate-house Hasdrubal, grandson of Masinissa, whom they had as their general, a man suspected of treason; this suspicion arose from the fact that he was a kinsman of Gulussa, who was aiding the Roman cause. Publius Scipio Aemilianus, while seeking the aedileship, was named consul by the people. Since by his years it was not lawful for him to become consul, after a great struggle, the plebs voting for him and the Fathers for some time resisting, he was released from the laws and created consul. Manius Manilius stormed several towns lying around Carthage. The false Philip in Macedonia, after the praetor Publius Juventius had been killed with his army, was defeated and captured by Quintus Caecilius, and Macedonia was recovered.
Carthage, extending twenty-three miles in circuit, was besieged with great labour and captured piece by piece, first by the legate Mancinus, then by the consul Scipio, to whom the province of Africa had been given outside the lot. The Carthaginians, having made a new harbour, because the old one had been blocked by Scipio, and having secretly assembled in a short time a large fleet, fought unsuccessfully a naval battle. The camp also of Hasdrubal, their general, set in a difficult place near the town of Nepheris, was destroyed with his army by Scipio, who at length took the city in the seven hundredth year from its founding. The greater part of the spoils was returned to the Sicilians, from whom it had been taken. At the final destruction of the city, when Hasdrubal had surrendered himself to Scipio, his wife, who a few days before had been unable to persuade her husband to desert to the victor, hurled herself with her two children from the citadel into the midst of the blazing fire of the burning city. Scipio, after the example of his father Aemilius Paulus, who had conquered Macedonia, held games and threw deserters and runaways to the beasts. The seeds of the Achaean War are reported, as follows: that the Roman envoys were ill-treated at Corinth by the Achaeans, having been sent to separate from the Achaean league those states which had been under the sway of Philip.
With the Achaeans, who had the Boeotians and Chalcidians as auxiliaries, Quintus Caecilius Metellus fought a battle at Thermopylae; and when they were defeated, their leader Critolaus took his own life by poison. In his place Diaeus, the first instigator of the Achaean uprising, was created leader by the Achaeans, and was defeated at the Isthmus by the consul Lucius Mummius. He, having received all Achaia in surrender, razed Corinth by decree of the Senate, because the Roman envoys had been ill-treated there. Thebes too and Chalcis, which had given aid, were razed. Lucius Mummius himself acted as a most abstinent man, and nothing of those works and ornaments which the very wealthy Corinth possessed came into his house. Quintus Caecilius Metellus triumphed over Andriscus, Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus over Carthage and Hasdrubal. Viriathus in Spain, first from a shepherd a hunter, from a hunter a brigand, then soon made leader even of a regular army, occupied all Lusitania, routed the army of the praetor Marcus Vetilius and captured him; and after him the praetor Gaius Plautius conducted the war no more successfully; and that enemy struck such terror that against him there was need of a consular commander and army. Besides this, disturbances in Syria and wars waged among the kings are reported. Alexander, an unknown man of uncertain stock, after King Demetrius had been killed in Syria, as was said before, was reigning. Him Demetrius, son of Demetrius, who had once been sent away by his father to Cnidos against the chances of the war, despising his sloth and idleness, with the help of Ptolemy, king of Egypt, whose daughter Cleopatra he had taken in marriage, slew in war. Ptolemy, gravely wounded in the head, during the treatment, while the doctors tried to bore the bones, expired; and in his place his younger brother Ptolemy, who reigned at Cyrene, succeeded. Demetrius, on account of the cruelty which he exercised on his own people by torture, was overcome in war by a certain Diodotus, one of his subjects, who claimed the kingdom for the two-year-old son of Alexander, and fled to Seleucia. Lucius Mummius triumphed over the Achaeans, and carried in his triumph bronze and marble statues and painted panels.
The consul Appius Claudius subdued the Salassi, an Alpine people. Another false Philip in Macedonia was cut down with his army by the quaestor Lucius Tremellius. Quintus Caecilius Metellus, as proconsul, cut down the Celtiberians, and a great part of Lusitania was recovered by Quintus Fabius, as proconsul, several towns being stormed. The senator Acilius writes the history of Rome in Greek.
The consul Quintus Pompeius in Spain subdued the people of Termes. With them and the Numantines he made a peace which the Roman people invalidated. A lustration was completed by the censors: there were registered three hundred and twenty-eight thousand four hundred and forty-two citizens. When the envoys of the Macedonians had come to complain of the praetor Decimus Junius Silanus, that, having taken money, he had plundered the province, and the Senate wished to inquire into their complaints, Titus Manlius Torquatus, the father of Silanus, sought and obtained that the inquiry be entrusted to himself; and having heard the case at home, he condemned his son and disowned him. And he did not even attend his funeral, when the son had ended his life by hanging; but sitting at home, he granted access to those who consulted him, according to his custom. Quintus Fabius, as proconsul, brought disgrace upon his successful operations in Spain by making peace with Viriathus on equal terms. Viriathus was killed by traitors at the instigation of Servilius Caepio, and was much lamented by his army and nobly buried, a great man and leader, who through the fourteen years in which he waged war with the Romans was more often the victor.
When Publius Cornelius Nasica — surnamed Serapio, a name imposed on him by the tribune of the plebs Curiatius in mockery — and Decimus Junius Brutus were holding a levy as consuls, a deed of most salutary example was done in the sight of the recruits. For Gaius Matienius was accused before the tribunes of the plebs of having deserted the army in Spain, and being condemned, was long beaten with rods under the fork and sold for one sesterce. The tribunes of the plebs, because they could not obtain leave to exempt ten soldiers of their choosing, ordered the consuls to be led to prison. The consul Junius Brutus in Spain gave to those who had served under Viriathus lands and a town, which was called Valentia. Marcus Popilius was routed and put to flight with his army by the Numantines, with whom the Senate had decreed that the peace made should be annulled. When the consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus was sacrificing, the chickens flew out of their cage; then, as he was boarding ship to set out for Spain, the cry occurred, "Stay, Mancinus"; and that these auspices were ill-omened was proved by the outcome. For, defeated by the Numantines and stripped of his camp, when there was no hope of saving the army, he made a shameful peace with them, which the Senate forbade to be ratified. Forty thousand Romans had been defeated by four thousand Numantines. Decimus Junius subdued Lusitania, taking cities by storm all the way to the Ocean; and when his men were unwilling to cross the river Oblivion, he himself, seizing the standard from the standard-bearer, carried it across, and so persuaded them to cross. The son of Alexander, king of Syria, barely ten years old, was killed by treachery by his guardian Diodotus, surnamed Trypho, the doctors being bribed, who, having falsely told the people that the boy was being consumed by the pain of the stone, killed him while they cut.
Decimus Junius Brutus in Further Spain fought successfully against the Gallaeci. With a different outcome, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, as proconsul, conducted operations against the Vaccaei and suffered a disaster like that of Numantia. To release the people from the religious obligation of the Numantine treaty, Mancinus, who had been the author of it, was handed over to the Numantines, but was not received. A lustration was completed by the censors: there were registered three hundred and seventeen thousand nine hundred and thirty-three citizens. The consul Fulvius Flaccus subdued the Vardaei in Illyricum. The praetor Marcus Cosconius fought successfully against the Scordisci in Thrace. When the Numantine War, through the fault of its commanders, was dragging on not without public shame, the consulship was offered unsolicited to Scipio Africanus by the Senate and Roman people; and since on account of the law which forbade anyone to be made consul a second time it was not lawful for him to take it, he was, as in his earlier consulship, released from the laws. A slave war having arisen in Sicily, which could not be put down by the praetors, the task was entrusted to the consul Gaius Fulvius. The beginning of this war was Eunus, a slave, a Syrian by nation; who, having gathered a band of agricultural slaves and opened the slave-prisons, filled out the number of a regular army. Cleon also, another slave, gathered about seventy thousand slaves; and joining their forces, they often waged war against the Roman army.
Scipio Africanus besieged Numantia, and recalled to the strictest military discipline an army corrupted by licence and luxury. He cut away all instruments of pleasure; he expelled two thousand harlots from the camp; he kept the soldier at work daily and forced him to carry thirty days' grain and seven palisade-stakes. To one who advanced with difficulty under the load he said: "When you have learned to entrench yourself with the sword, then leave off carrying the stake." To another who carried his shield rather clumsily, he said that the man was carrying a shield larger than the regulation, and that he did not blame him for it, since he used the shield better than the sword. Whatever soldier he caught out of his place, if he were a Roman, he flogged with the vine-staff, if a foreigner, with rods. He sold all the pack-animals, so that they should not relieve the soldier. Often he fought successfully against the sallies of the enemy. The Vaccaei, when besieged, slaughtered their wives and children and then killed themselves. Scipio, when very ample gifts had been sent to him by Antiochus, king of Syria — though it was the custom for other commanders to conceal the gifts of kings — said that he would receive them publicly before the tribunal, and ordered the quaestor to enter all of them in the public records: from these he would give rewards to brave men. When he had shut in Numantia on every side with the siege, and saw the besieged hard pressed by hunger, he forbade the enemy who had gone out to forage to be killed, saying that they would consume the more quickly the grain they had, if they were more in number.
Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, tribune of the plebs, when he proposed an agrarian law against the will of the Senate and the equestrian order — that no one should possess more than a thousand iugera of public land — broke out into such madness that he stripped his colleague Marcus Octavius, who was defending the cause of the opposing party, of his office by a law passed; and he created himself, his brother Gaius Gracchus, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius commissioners for dividing the land. He promulgated another agrarian law also, by which he might open up the land more widely for himself, namely that the same commissioners should judge which land was public and which private. Then, since there was less land than could be divided, even without offending the plebs — since he had stirred them to a greed of hoping for a generous portion — he announced that he would promulgate a law that to those who were to receive land under the Sempronian law the money which had been King Attalus's should be divided. For Attalus, king of Pergamum, son of Eumenes, had left the Roman people his heir. Moved by so many indignities, the Senate was grievously stirred, and before all Titus Annius, a man of consular rank, who, when he had spoken at length against Gracchus in the Senate and had been seized by him and dragged before the people and denounced to the plebs, again harangued against him from the Rostra. When Gracchus wished to be created tribune of the plebs a second time, at the instigation of Publius Cornelius Nasica he was killed on the Capitol by the optimates, struck first with fragments of a bench; and among others who had been killed in the same disturbance, he was cast unburied into the river. Besides this, the book contains operations carried on in Sicily with varying success against the runaways.
The Numantines, compelled by hunger, slaughtered one another, surrendering each in turn; and Scipio Africanus, having taken the city, destroyed it and triumphed over it, in the fourteenth year after the destruction of Carthage. The consul Publius Rupilius finished the war against the runaways in Sicily. Aristonicus, son of King Eumenes, occupied Asia, although by the will of King Attalus the states bequeathed to the Roman people were to be free. Against him the consul Publius Licinius Crassus, who was at the same time chief pontiff — a thing never done before — having set out from Italy, was defeated in battle and killed. The consul Marcus Perperna received the defeated Aristonicus in surrender. Quintus Pompeius and Quintus Metellus, both then for the first time censors from the plebs, completed a lustration: there were registered three hundred and eighteen thousand eight hundred and twenty-three citizens, besides orphan boys and girls and widows. The censor Quintus Metellus proposed that all men be compelled to take wives for the sake of begetting children. His speech survives, which Augustus Caesar, when he was dealing with the marriage of the orders, read aloud in the Senate as though written for these times. Gaius Atinius Labeo, tribune of the plebs, ordered the censor Quintus Metellus, by whom he had been passed over in the choosing of the Senate, to be cast from the rock; and to prevent this, the other tribunes of the plebs came to his aid. When Carbo, tribune of the plebs, had brought a bill that the same man be allowed to be created tribune of the plebs as often as he wished, Publius Africanus argued against his bill in a most weighty speech, in which he said that Tiberius Gracchus seemed to have been rightly killed. Gaius Gracchus spoke in support of the bill, but Scipio prevailed. Wars waged between Antiochus of Syria and Phraates, king of the Parthians, and the no more peaceful affairs of Egypt, are reported. Ptolemy, surnamed Euergetes, hated by his people on account of his excessive cruelty, when his palace had been set on fire by the people, fled secretly to Cyprus; and when the kingdom had been given by the people to his sister Cleopatra, whom he had repudiated after raping her virgin daughter by force and taking her in marriage, in his anger he killed in Cyprus the son he had by her, and sent the boy's head, hands, and feet to the mother. Disturbances were stirred up by the commissioners for dividing the land, Fulvius Flaccus, Gaius Gracchus, and Gaius Papirius Carbo; and when Publius Scipio Africanus opposed them, and had retired home the day before, sound and strong, he was found dead in his bedroom. His wife Sempronia was suspected of having given him poison, chiefly because she was the sister of the Gracchi, with whom Africanus had been at enmity. Yet no inquiry was held into his death. When he was dead, the disturbances of the commissioners blazed up more fiercely. The consul Gaius Sempronius at first conducted operations against the Iapydes badly; soon he made good the disaster suffered by a victory, through the valour of Decimus Junius Brutus, the one who had subdued Lusitania.
The consul Lucius Aurelius subdued the rebelling Sardinians. Marcus Fulvius Flaccus was the first to subdue the Transalpine Ligurians in war, having been sent to the aid of the Massiliotes against the Salluvian Gauls, who were ravaging the borders of the Massiliotes. The praetor Lucius Opimius received in surrender the people of Fregellae, who had revolted, and razed Fregellae. A pestilence in Africa is recorded to have arisen from a vast multitude of locusts and then from the heap of them killed. A lustration was completed by the censors: there were registered three hundred and ninety-four thousand seven hundred and thirty-six citizens. Gaius Gracchus, brother of Tiberius, tribune of the plebs, more eloquent than his brother, passed several pernicious laws, among them a grain law, that grain should be given to the plebs at six and a third asses; a second agrarian law, which his brother also had passed; a third, by which he might corrupt the equestrian order, then in agreement with the Senate, so that six hundred should be chosen from the knights into the senate-house — and since in those times there were only three hundred senators, the six hundred knights should be mixed with the three hundred senators, that is, so that the equestrian order should have twice as much strength in the Senate. And, his tribunate being continued into a second year, by the agrarian laws he passed he brought it about that several colonies were founded in Italy, and one on the soil of ruined Carthage; whither, being himself created a commissioner, he led the colony. Besides this, the book contains operations carried on by the consul Quintus Metellus against the Baleares, whom the Greeks call Gymnesii, because they spend the summer naked. The Baleares are named from the throwing of the missile, or from Balius, a companion of Hercules, left there when Hercules was sailing to Geryon. Disturbances in Syria are also reported, in which Cleopatra killed her husband Demetrius and her son Seleucus, indignant that, after the killing of his father, he had assumed the diadem without her order.
Gaius Sextius, as proconsul, having conquered the Salluvian nation, founded the colony of Aquae Sextiae, so called on account of the abundance of water from hot and cold springs, and from his own name. Gnaeus Domitius, as proconsul, fought successfully against the Allobroges at the town of Vindalium. The reason for going to war with them was that they had received Toutomotulus, king of the Salluvii, in his flight and aided him with all their power, and because they had ravaged the lands of the Aedui, allies of the Roman people. Gaius Gracchus, having conducted a seditious tribunate, when he had occupied the Aventine also with an armed multitude, was driven out and killed by the consul Lucius Opimius, who had called the people to arms by decree of the Senate; and with him Fulvius Flaccus, a man of consular rank, partner of the same madness. The consul Quintus Fabius Maximus, grandson of Paulus, fought successfully against the Allobroges and Bituitus, king of the Arverni. Of the army of Bituitus, a hundred and twenty thousand were killed; and Bituitus himself, when he had set out for Rome to make amends to the Senate, was given over to Alba for safekeeping, because it seemed contrary to the peace that he should be sent back into Gaul; and it was also decreed that his son Congonnetiacus should be seized and sent to Rome. The Allobroges were received in surrender. Lucius Opimius, accused before the people by Quintus Decius, tribune of the plebs, of having thrown uncondemned citizens into prison, was acquitted.
The consul Quintus Marcius stormed the Stoeni, an Alpine people. Micipsa, king of Numidia, died and left the kingdom to three sons, Adherbal, Hiempsal, and Jugurtha, his brother's son, whom he had adopted. Lucius Caecilius Metellus subdued the Dalmatians. Jugurtha attacked his brother Hiempsal in war, who, when defeated, was killed; and he drove Adherbal from the kingdom, who was restored by the Senate. The censors Lucius Caecilius Metellus and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus removed thirty-two men from the Senate. Besides this, the book contains disturbances in Syria and among the kings.
The consul Gaius Porcius fought badly against the Scordisci in Thrace. A lustration was completed by the censors: there were registered three hundred and ninety-four thousand three hundred and thirty-six citizens. Aemilia, Licinia, and Marcia, Vestal Virgins, were condemned for unchastity; and how that unchastity was committed, and detected, and punished, is reported. The Cimbri, a wandering people, came ravaging into Illyricum; by them the consul Papirius Carbo was routed with his army. The consul Livius Drusus fought successfully against the Scordisci, a people sprung from the Gauls, in Thrace.
Adherbal, attacked in war by Jugurtha and besieged in the town of Cirta, was killed by him contrary to the warning of the Senate; and on account of this, war was declared on Jugurtha. The consul Calpurnius Bestia, ordered to wage it, made peace with Jugurtha without the order of the people and Senate. Jugurtha, summoned under public safe-conduct to disclose the authors of his schemes — for he was said to have corrupted many in the Senate with money — came to Rome; and on account of the murder committed upon a certain princeling named Massiva, who was aiming at his kingdom, hateful to the Roman people, when he was in danger of pleading on a capital charge, he fled secretly; and as he left the city he is said to have remarked, "O city for sale, and soon to perish, if it finds a buyer." The legate Aulus Postumius, after fighting unsuccessfully against Jugurtha, also added a shameful peace, which the Senate judged was not to be kept.
The consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus routed Jugurtha in two battles and laid waste all Numidia. The consul Marcus Junius Silanus fought unsuccessfully against the Cimbri. When the envoys of the Cimbri demanded a dwelling-place and lands in which to settle, the Senate refused. Marcus Minucius, as proconsul, fought successfully against the Thracians. The consul Lucius Cassius was cut down with his army by the Tigurini, a canton of the Helvetii who had seceded from their state, in the territory of the Nitiobroges. The soldiers who had survived that slaughter, after giving hostages and half of all their possessions, made a pact with the enemy that they should be released unharmed.
Jugurtha, driven from Numidia by Gaius Marius, when he had been aided by Bocchus, king of the Moors, and the forces of Bocchus also had been cut down in battle, was bound by Bocchus, who was unwilling to sustain longer a war unhappily undertaken, and handed over to Marius; in which matter the chief service was that of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, quaestor of Gaius Marius.
Marcus Aurelius Scaurus, legate of the consul, when his army had been routed by the Cimbri, was captured; and when, called into their council by them, he tried to deter them from crossing the Alps to make for Italy, on the ground (as he said) that the Romans could not be conquered, he was killed by Boiorix, a fierce young man. By the same enemy the consul Gnaeus Manlius and the proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio were defeated in battle and stripped of both their camps; eighty thousand soldiers were killed, and forty thousand of the camp-followers and sutlers, according to Antias, at Arausio. Of Caepio, by whose rashness the disaster had been incurred, the goods were confiscated upon his condemnation — the first since King Tarquinius — and his command was annulled. In the triumph of Gaius Marius, Jugurtha was led with his two sons before his chariot, and was put to death in prison. Marius entered the Senate in triumphal dress, which no one had done before him; and on account of the fear of the Cimbric War the consulship was continued to him through several years: in his absence he was created consul a second and a third time, and a fourth consulship he obtained, dissemblingly courting it. Gnaeus Domitius was created chief pontiff by the vote of the people. The Cimbri, having laid waste all that lies between the Rhone and the Pyrenees, crossed by a pass into Spain, and there, having ravaged many places, were put to flight by the Celtiberians, and returning into Gaul, joined the Teutoni among the Veliocasses.
The praetor Marcus Antonius pursued the sea-robbers, that is, the pirates, into Cilicia. The consul Gaius Marius defended his camp, attacked with the utmost force by the Teutoni and Ambrones. Then in two battles near Aquae Sextiae he destroyed the same enemy, in which two hundred thousand of the enemy are recorded to have been killed and ninety thousand captured. Marius in his absence was created consul for the fifth time. The triumph offered him he deferred until he should also conquer the Cimbri. The Cimbri, when, having driven the proconsul Quintus Catulus back from the Alps and put him to flight — Catulus who was holding the passes of the Alps — and made him abandon a fort he had occupied on a height above the river Atesis, which fort nonetheless, extricated by its own valour, overtook the fleeing proconsul and his army, had crossed into Italy, were defeated in battle by the joined armies of the same Catulus and Gaius Marius, in which a hundred and forty thousand of the enemy are recorded to have been killed and sixty thousand captured. Marius, received by the consent of the whole state, was content with one triumph in place of the two that were offered. The leading men of the state, who for some time had envied him as a new man raised to such honours, confessed that the commonwealth had been preserved by him. Publicius Malleolus, having killed his mother, was the first to be sewn into a sack and cast into the sea. The sacred shields are reported to have moved with a clatter before the Cimbric War was finished. Besides this, the book contains wars waged among the kings of Syria.
Lucius Apuleius Saturninus, with the help of Gaius Marius and through the killing of his competitor Aulus Nunnius by soldiers, was created tribune of the plebs by violence, and conducted his tribunate no less violently than he had sought it; and when he had carried an agrarian law by violence, he summoned Metellus Numidicus, because he had not sworn to it, to trial. When he was defended by good citizens, Metellus, that he might not be the cause of strife, went into voluntary exile at Rhodes, and there in hearing and reading great men found distraction. After he had departed, Gaius Marius, author of the sedition, who had bought his sixth consulship by money scattered through the tribes, forbade him fire and water. The same Apuleius Saturninus, tribune of the plebs, killed Gaius Memmius, a candidate for the consulship, because he feared him as an opponent of his proceedings. By these acts the Senate was stirred up, to whose cause Gaius Marius too — a man of varying and changeable disposition and counsel, always following his fortune — had gone over; and Saturninus, overpowered by arms, was killed in a kind of war, together with the praetor Glaucia and other partners of the same madness. Quintus Caecilius Metellus was brought back from exile with the great favour of the whole state. Manius Aquilius, as proconsul, finished off the slave war that had broken out in Sicily.
When Manius Aquilius was pleading his cause on a charge of extortion, he himself was unwilling to entreat the judges; Marcus Antonius, who was making the closing speech for him, tore the tunic from his breast, that he might show his honourable scars. He was undoubtedly acquitted. Cicero is the sole authority for this. Titus Didius, as proconsul, fought successfully against the Celtiberians. Ptolemy, king of Cyrene, who had the surname Apion, dying, left the Roman people his heir, and the Senate ordered the states of his kingdom to be free. Ariobarzanes was brought back into the kingdom of Cappadocia by Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Envoys of the Parthians, sent by King Arsaces, came to Sulla to seek the friendship of the Roman people. Publius Rutilius, a man of the highest innocence, because as legate of the proconsul Gaius Mucius he had defended Asia from the wrongs of the tax-farmers, hateful to the equestrian order, in whose hands the courts then were, was condemned for extortion and sent into exile. The praetor Gaius Sentius fought unsuccessfully against the Thracians. The Senate, unwilling to bear the unbridled power of the equestrian order in conducting the courts, began to strive with all its might to transfer the courts to itself, Marcus Livius Drusus, tribune of the plebs, upholding its cause, who, to gain strength for himself, stirred up the plebs with the pernicious hope of largesses. Besides this, the book contains disturbances in Syria and among the kings.
Marcus Livius Drusus, tribune of the plebs, that he might defend with greater strength the cause of the Senate which he had undertaken, solicited the allies and the Italian peoples with the hope of Roman citizenship; and with their help, having carried by violence agrarian and grain laws, he carried a judiciary law also, that the courts should be in equal part in the hands of the Senate and the equestrian order. Then, when the citizenship promised to the allies could not be granted, the Italians in their anger began to plot revolt. Their gatherings and conspiracies and speeches in the councils of their leading men are reported. On account of which Livius Drusus, become hateful even to the Senate as the author, as it seemed, of the Social War, was killed at home, by whom is uncertain.
The Italian peoples revolted: the Picentes, the Vestini, the Marsi, the Paeligni, the Marrucini, the Samnites, the Lucani. The war having been begun by the Picentes, the proconsul Quintus Servilius was killed in the town of Asculum, together with all the Roman citizens who were in that town. The people put on the soldier's cloak. Servius Galba, seized by the Lucani, was rescued from captivity through the service of a single woman, with whom he was lodging. The colonies of Aesernia and Alba were besieged by the Italians. Then the auxiliaries of the Latin name and of foreign nations sent to the Roman people, and the expeditions and stormings of cities on either side, are reported.
The consul Lucius Julius Caesar fought badly against the Samnites. The colony of Nola came into the power of the Samnites, together with the praetor Lucius Postumius, who was killed by them. Several peoples revolted to the enemy. When the consul Publius Rutilius had fought with little success against the Marsi and had fallen in that battle, his legate Gaius Marius engaged the enemy in line with a better outcome. Servius Sulpicius routed the Paeligni in battle. Quintus Caepio, legate of Rutilius, when, being besieged, he had successfully broken in upon the enemy, and on account of that success his command had been made equal to that of Gaius Marius, becoming rash and caught in an ambush, fell with his army routed. The consul Lucius Julius Caesar fought successfully against the Samnites. On account of that victory the soldier's cloaks were laid aside at Rome. And, that the fortune of war might be varied, the colony of Aesernia came into the power of the Samnites, together with Marcus Marcellus. But Gaius Marius also routed the Marsi in battle, Herius Asinius, praetor of the Marrucini, being killed. Gaius Caecilius in Transalpine Gaul conquered the rebelling Salluvii.
Gnaeus Pompeius routed the Picentes in battle . . . and besieged . . . on account of which victory the bordered togas and other insignia of the magistrates were resumed at Rome. Gaius Marius fought with the Marsi with doubtful outcome. The freedmen then for the first time began to serve as soldiers. The legate Aulus Plotius conquered the Umbrians in battle, the praetor Lucius Porcius the Etruscans, when both peoples had revolted. Nicomedes was brought back into the kingdom of Bithynia, Ariobarzanes into that of Cappadocia. The consul Gnaeus Pompeius conquered the Marsi in battle. When the state was oppressed by debt, the praetor Aulus Sempronius Asellio, because he gave judgement in favour of the debtors, was killed in the forum by those who lent at interest. Besides this, the book contains incursions of the Thracians into Macedonia and their ravagings.
The legate Aulus Postumius Albinus, when he was in command of the fleet, defamed by a charge of treason, was killed by his own army. The legate Lucius Cornelius Sulla conquered the Samnites in battle and stormed two of their camps. Gnaeus Pompeius received the Vestini in surrender. The consul Lucius Porcius, after operations successfully conducted and the Marsi several times routed, while he was storming their camp, fell. This circumstance gave the enemy the victory of that battle. Cosconius and Lucceius conquered the Samnites in line, killed Marius Egnatius, the noblest of the enemy's leaders, and received several of their towns in surrender. Lucius Sulla subdued the Hirpini, routed the Samnites in several battles, recovered several peoples, and, having accomplished such great things as scarcely anyone else before the consulship, set out for Rome to seek the consulship.
The legate Aulus Gabinius, after operations successfully conducted against the Lucani and very many towns stormed, fell while besieging the camp of the enemy. The legate Sulpicius cut down the Marrucini and recovered all that region. Gnaeus Pompeius, as proconsul, received the Vestini and Paeligni in surrender. The Marsi too, broken in several battles by the legates Lucius Cinna and Caecilius Pius, began to seek peace. Asculum was captured by Gnaeus Pompeius. The Italians having been cut down by the legate Mamercus Aemilius, Silo Poppaedius, leader of the Marsi and author of that affair, fell in battle. Ariobarzanes was driven from the kingdom of Cappadocia, Nicomedes from that of Bithynia, by Mithridates, king of Pontus. Besides this, the book contains incursions of the Thracians into Macedonia and their ravagings.
When Publius Sulpicius, tribune of the plebs, at the instigation of Gaius Marius had promulgated pernicious laws — that the exiles be recalled, that the new citizens and the freedmen be distributed among the thirty-five tribes, and that Gaius Marius be created leader against Mithridates, king of Pontus — and had offered violence to the consuls Quintus Pompeius and Lucius Sulla, who opposed him, Quintus Pompeius, son of the consul Quintus Pompeius and son-in-law of Sulla, being killed, the consul Lucius Sulla came into the city with an army and fought against the faction of Sulpicius and Marius in the city itself, and drove it out. Of that faction twelve were judged enemies by the Senate, among them Gaius Marius the father and son. Publius Sulpicius, while he was hiding in a certain villa, was dragged out on the information of his own slave and killed. The slave, that he might have the reward promised for the information, was set free, and then for the crime of betraying his master was cast from the rock. Gaius Marius the son crossed into Africa. Gaius Marius the father, while he was hiding in the marshes of Minturnae, was dragged out by the townsfolk; and when a slave, a Gaul by nation, sent to kill him, terrified by the majesty of so great a man, had withdrawn, he was put aboard a ship at public expense and carried to Africa. Lucius Sulla ordered the state, and then led out colonies. The consul Quintus Pompeius, having set out to receive the army from the proconsul Gnaeus Pompeius, was killed at his contrivance. Mithridates, king of Pontus, having occupied Bithynia and Cappadocia and driven out the legate Aquilius, entered Phrygia, a province of the Roman people, with a vast army.
Mithridates occupied Asia; he threw into chains the proconsul Quintus Oppius and the legate Aquilius, and at his order whatever Roman citizens were in Asia were slaughtered in one day. He assaulted the city of Rhodes, which alone had remained in the loyalty of the Roman people, and, defeated in several naval battles, withdrew. Archelaus, the king's commander, came into Greece with an army and occupied Athens. Besides this, the book contains the trepidation of the cities and islands, some drawing their states to Mithridates, others to the Roman people.
The consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna, when he was carrying pernicious laws by violence and arms, was driven from the city by his colleague Gnaeus Octavius, together with six tribunes of the plebs, and his command was annulled; he then reduced into his power the corrupted army of Appius Claudius and made war on the city, summoning Gaius Marius from Africa with the other exiles. In this war two brothers, the one from the army of Pompeius, the other from that of Cinna, met without knowing each other; and when the victor was stripping the slain, recognising his brother, after uttering a piteous lament, he built a pyre for him and ran himself through above the pyre, and was consumed in the same fire. And although Cinna could have been crushed at the outset, through the treachery of Gnaeus Pompeius — who, by favouring both sides, gave strength to Cinna, and brought no help except when the cause of the optimates was already ruined — and through the sloth of the consul, Cinna and Marius, strengthened, with four armies (of which two were given to Quintus Sertorius and Carbo) besieged the city. Marius stormed the colony of Ostia and plundered it cruelly.
The Italian peoples were given citizenship by the Senate. The Samnites, who alone were taking up arms, joined themselves to Cinna and Marius. By them the legate Plautius was cut down with his army. Cinna and Marius, with Carbo and Sertorius, assaulted the Janiculum, and being put to flight by the consul Octavius, withdrew. Marius stormed the colonies of Antium, Aricia, and Lanuvium. When there was no hope for the optimates of resisting, on account of the sloth and perfidy of both the leaders and the soldiers, who, being corrupted, either were unwilling to fight or went over to the opposite side, Cinna and Marius were received into the city; and they, as though it had been taken by storm, laid it waste with slaughters and plunderings, the consul Gnaeus Octavius being killed, and all the nobles of the opposing party slaughtered, among them Marcus Antonius, a most eloquent man, and Gaius and Lucius Caesar, whose heads were set up on the Rostra. Crassus the son was killed by the horsemen of Fimbria. Crassus the father, that he might suffer nothing unworthy of his valour, ran himself through with the sword. And, without any election, they declared themselves consuls for the following year; and on the same day on which they entered office, Marius ordered the senator Sextus Licinius to be cast from the rock, and, after committing very many crimes, died on the Ides of January, a man of whom, if his vices be weighed against his virtues, it would not easily be said whether he was better in war or more pernicious in peace. So thoroughly did he, who as a soldier had saved the commonwealth in arms, first in the toga overthrow it by every kind of fraud, and at last in arms, as an enemy.
Lucius Sulla besieged Athens, which the commander of Mithridates, Archelaus, had occupied, and with great labour stormed it . . . and restored to the city its liberty and what it had possessed. Magnesia, the only state in Asia which had remained in its loyalty, was defended with the utmost valour against Mithridates. Besides this, the book contains incursions of the Thracians into Macedonia.
Sulla conquered in battle the king's forces, which, after the occupation of Macedonia, had come into Thessaly, a hundred thousand of the enemy being killed and the camp also stormed. Then, the war being renewed, he again routed and destroyed the king's army. Archelaus surrendered himself with the royal fleet to Sulla. The consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus, colleague of Cinna, sent to succeed Sulla, hateful to his own army on account of his avarice, was killed by his own legate Gaius Fimbria, a man of the utmost audacity, and the command was transferred to Fimbria. Besides this, the cities stormed in Asia by Mithridates and the cruel plundering of the province, and the incursions of the Thracians into Macedonia, are reported.
Flavius Fimbria in Asia, several of Mithridates' commanders being routed in battle, took the city of Pergamum, and was not far from capturing the king, who was besieged. He stormed and destroyed the city of Ilium, which was reserving itself for the power of Sulla, and recovered a great part of Asia. Sulla cut down the Thracians in several battles. When Lucius Cinna and Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, having created themselves consuls for two years, were preparing war against Sulla, it was brought about through Lucius Valerius Flaccus, leader of the Senate, who delivered a speech in the Senate, and through those who were zealous for concord, that envoys be sent to Sulla concerning peace. Cinna was killed by his own army, which he was compelling against its will to embark and set out against Sulla. Carbo held the consulship alone. Sulla, having crossed into Asia, made peace with Mithridates on these terms, that he withdraw from these provinces: Asia, Bithynia, Cappadocia. Fimbria, deserted by his army, which had gone over to Sulla, struck himself, and prevailed upon his slave, offering his neck, to kill him.
Sulla replied to the envoys who had been sent by the Senate that he would be in the power of the Senate if the citizens who, driven out by Cinna, had fled to him, were restored. Although this condition seemed just to the Senate, through Carbo and his faction, to whom war seemed more useful, it was brought about that no agreement was reached. The same Carbo, when he wished to exact hostages from all the towns and colonies of Italy, to bind their loyalty against Sulla, was forbidden by the consent of the Senate. The new citizens were given the vote by a decree of the Senate. Quintus Metellus Pius, who had followed the party of the optimates, when he was setting on foot a war in Africa, was driven out by the praetor Gaius Fabius; and a decree of the Senate was made through the faction of Carbo and the Marian party, that all armies everywhere be disbanded. The freedmen were distributed among the thirty-five tribes. Besides this, the book contains the preparation of the war which was being stirred up against Sulla.
Sulla crossed into Italy with an army; and after sending envoys to treat of peace, who were ill-treated by the consul Gaius Norbanus, he conquered the same Norbanus in battle. And when he was about to assault the camp of Lucius Scipio, the other consul, with whom he had been doing everything to make peace, but had not been able, the whole army of the consul, solicited by soldiers sent by Sulla, carried its standards over to Sulla. Scipio, when he could have been killed, was let go. Gnaeus Pompeius, son of that Gnaeus Pompeius who had taken Asculum, having enrolled an army of volunteers, had come with three legions to Sulla, to whom all the nobility was betaking itself, so that the city was deserted and men came to his camp. Besides this, the book reports the expeditions of the leaders of both parties throughout all Italy.
When Gaius Marius, son of Gaius Marius, had been created consul by violence twenty years before the legal age, Gaius Fabius in Africa, on account of his cruelty and avarice, was burned alive in his own headquarters. Lucius Philippus, legate of Sulla, occupied Sardinia, the praetor Quintus Antonius being driven out and killed. Sulla struck a treaty with the Italian peoples, that he might not be feared by them as one about to snatch away the citizenship and the right of voting recently granted. And likewise, from confidence in a victory now certain, he ordered the litigants who approached him to refer their cases to Rome, though the city was as yet held by the opposite party. The praetor Lucius Damasippus, at the wish of the consul Gaius Marius, having convened the Senate, slaughtered all the nobility that was in the city. Of their number, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, chief pontiff, fleeing, was killed in the vestibule of the temple of Vesta. Besides this, the book contains the war renewed by Lucius Murena against Mithridates in Asia.
Sulla besieged Gaius Marius in the town of Praeneste, his army being routed and destroyed at Sacriportus, and recovered the city of Rome from the hands of his enemies. He repulsed Marius when he tried to break out. Besides this, the book contains operations carried on everywhere by his legates with the same fortune of the parties.
Sulla, Carbo's army being cut down at Clusium, at Faventia, and at Fidentia, drove Carbo from Italy; with the Samnites, who alone of the Italian peoples had not yet laid down their arms, he fought to a finish near the city of Rome, before the Colline Gate, and, having recovered the commonwealth, stained a most splendid victory with cruelty such as was in no man. Eight thousand of those who had surrendered he slaughtered in the Public Villa; he set up a proscription list, filled the city and all Italy with slaughters, among which he ordered all the unarmed people of Praeneste to be cut down, and put to death Marius, a man of senatorial rank, with his legs and arms broken, his ears cut off, and his eyes gouged out. Gaius Marius, besieged in Praeneste by Lucretius Afella, a man of the Sullan party, when, through a tunnel, he was trying to escape the army that hemmed him in, took his own life. That is to say, in the tunnel itself, when he perceived that he could not escape, he ran together, each with drawn sword, with Telesinus, the companion of his flight; and when he had killed him, he himself, wounded, prevailed upon a slave to kill him.
Marcus Brutus, sent by Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, who had put in at Cossyra, in a fishing-boat to Lilybaeum to find out whether Pompeius was already there, and surrounded by the ships which Pompeius had sent, turning his point against himself and bracing against the thwart of the ship, fell upon it with the weight of his body. Gnaeus Pompeius, sent into Sicily with command by the Senate, took Gnaeus Carbo, who bore his death in a womanish fashion with weeping, and killed him. Sulla, made dictator — a thing no one had ever done — came forth with twenty-four fasces. By new laws he confirmed the constitution of the commonwealth, diminished the power of the tribunes of the plebs, and took away from them all right of bringing laws. He enlarged the college of pontiffs and augurs, so that there were fifteen of each; he filled up the Senate from the equestrian order; he stripped the children of the proscribed of the right of seeking offices and sold their goods, of which he seized very many. Three hundred and fifty million sesterces were realised. Quintus Lucretius Afella, who had dared against his will to seek the consulship, he ordered to be killed in the forum; and when the Roman people resented this, having called an assembly, he said that he had ordered it. Gnaeus Pompeius in Africa conquered and killed Gnaeus Domitius, one of the proscribed, and Hiarbas, king of Numidia, who were setting on foot a war; and at twenty-four years of age, still a Roman knight — which had happened to no one — he triumphed from Africa. Gaius Norbanus, a man of consular rank, proscribed, when he was being arrested in the city of Rhodes, killed himself. Mutilus, one of the proscribed, when he had secretly come, his head covered, to the back door of the house of his wife Bastia, was not admitted, because she said he was proscribed; and so he ran himself through and sprinkled the doors of his wife with his blood. Sulla recovered Aesernia in Samnium. He led forty-seven legions into the captured lands and divided them among these. Volaterrae, a town that was still under arms, after being besieged, he received in surrender. Mytilene also in Asia, the only city which after the conquest of Mithridates still retained its arms, was stormed and destroyed.
Sulla died, and an honour was paid him by the Senate, that he be buried in the Campus Martius. Marcus Lepidus, when he tried to rescind the acts of Sulla, stirred up war. Driven from Italy by his colleague Quintus Catulus, and having set on foot war in Sardinia in vain, he perished. Marcus Brutus, who held Cisalpine Gaul, was killed by Gnaeus Pompeius. Quintus Sertorius, proscribed, stirred up a great war in Further Spain. The proconsul Lucius Manlius and the legate Marcus Domitius were defeated in battle by the quaestor Hirtuleius. Besides this, the book contains operations carried on by the proconsul Publius Servilius against the Cilicians.
Gnaeus Pompeius, while he was still a Roman knight, was sent with consular command against Sertorius. Sertorius stormed several cities and reduced very many states into his power. The proconsul Appius Claudius conquered the Thracians in several battles. The proconsul Quintus Metellus cut down Lucius Hirtuleius, quaestor of Sertorius, with his army.
Gnaeus Pompeius fought with Sertorius with doubtful outcome, so that each side conquered with one wing. Quintus Metellus routed Sertorius and Perperna with their two armies in battle; and Pompeius, wishing to bear a part of that victory, fought with little success. Then Sertorius, besieged at Clunia, by continual sallies inflicted on the besiegers losses no lighter than those he suffered. Besides this, the book contains operations carried on by the proconsul Curio in Thrace against the Dardani, and many cruel deeds of Quintus Sertorius against his own people; for he killed very many of his friends and fellow-proscribed, charging them falsely with the crime of treason.
The proconsul Publius Servilius in Cilicia subdued the Isauri and stormed several cities of the pirates. Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, made the Roman people his heir, and his kingdom was reduced into the form of a province. Mithridates, having struck a treaty with Sertorius, made war on the Roman people. Then the preparation of the royal forces, land and naval; and, Bithynia being occupied, the consul Marcus Aurelius Cotta defeated in battle by the king at Chalcedon; and operations carried on by Pompeius and Metellus against Sertorius . . . was equal in all the arts of war and soldiering . . . and, having driven them from the siege of the town of Calagurris, forced them to make for different regions, Metellus for Further Spain, Pompeius for Gaul.
The consul Lucius Licinius Lucullus fought successfully against Mithridates in cavalry battles and made several prosperous expeditions, and restrained his soldiers, who demanded battle, from mutiny. Deiotarus, tetrarch of Gallograecia, cut down the commanders of Mithridates who were setting on foot war in Phrygia. Besides this, the book contains operations successfully carried on by Gnaeus Pompeius in Spain against Sertorius.
The proconsul Gaius Curio subdued the Dardani in Thrace. Seventy-four gladiators fled from the school of Lentulus at Capua, and, having gathered a multitude of slaves and prison-gangs and stirred up war under the leaders Crixus and Spartacus, conquered in battle the legate Claudius Pulcher and the praetor Publius Varenus. Lucius Lucullus, as proconsul, at the city of Cyzicus destroyed the army of Mithridates by hunger and the sword; and the king, driven from Bithynia and broken by various chances of war and shipwreck, he forced to flee into Pontus.
The praetor Quintus Arrius cut down Crixus, leader of the runaways, with twenty thousand men. The consul Gnaeus Lentulus fought badly against Spartacus. By the same man the consul Lucius Gellius and the praetor Quintus Arrius were defeated in line. Sertorius was killed by Marcus Perperna and Manius Antonius and other conspirators at a banquet, in the eighth year of his leadership, a great leader, and against two commanders, Pompeius and Metellus, even more often the victor — at the last both savage and prodigal. The command of his party was transferred to Marcus Perperna, whom Gnaeus Pompeius conquered, captured, and killed; and he recovered the Spains in about the tenth year after the war had begun. The proconsul Gaius Cassius and the praetor Gnaeus Manlius fought badly against Spartacus, and that war was entrusted to the praetor Marcus Crassus.
The praetor Marcus Crassus first fought successfully with a part of the runaways, which consisted of Gauls and Germans, thirty-five thousand of the enemy being killed, and their leaders Castus and Gannicus. Then he fought it out with Spartacus, sixty thousand being killed, together with Spartacus himself. The praetor Marcus Antonius, having undertaken with little success a war against the Cretans, ended it by his death. Marcus Lucullus, as proconsul, subdued the Thracians. Lucius Lucullus in Pontus fought successfully against Mithridates, more than sixty thousand of the enemy being killed. Marcus Crassus and Gnaeus Pompeius, having been made consuls (Pompeius by decree of the Senate, before he had held the quaestorship, from being a Roman knight), restored the tribunician power. The courts also were transferred to the Roman knights through the praetor Marcus Aurelius Cotta. Mithridates, compelled by despair of his affairs, fled to Tigranes, king of Armenia.
Machares, son of Mithridates, king of the Bosporus, was received into friendship by Lucius Lucullus. The censors Gnaeus Lentulus and Lucius Gellius conducted a harsh censorship, sixty-four men being removed from the Senate. By them a lustration was completed, and nine hundred thousand citizens were registered. The praetor Lucius Metellus conducted operations successfully against the pirates in Sicily. The temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, which had been consumed by fire and rebuilt, was dedicated by Quintus Catulus. Lucius Lucullus in Armenia routed Mithridates and Tigranes and the vast forces of both kings in several battles. The proconsul Quintus Metellus, by order, besieged the city of Cydonia in the war against the Cretans. Gaius Triarius, legate of Lucullus, fought with little success against Mithridates. Lucullus, that he might not pursue Mithridates and Tigranes and put the finishing touch to the victory, was held back by a mutiny of his soldiers, who were unwilling to follow. That is to say, the two Valerian legions, which, declaring that they had completed their term of service, abandoned Lucullus.
The proconsul Quintus Metellus stormed Cnossos and Lyctus and Cydonia and very many other cities. Lucius Roscius, tribune of the plebs, carried a law that the nearest fourteen rows in the theatre be assigned to the Roman knights. Gnaeus Pompeius, ordered by a law brought before the people to pursue the pirates, who had cut off the supply of grain, within the fortieth day drove them from the whole sea; and the war with them in Cilicia being finished, having received the pirates in surrender, he gave them lands and cities. Besides this, the book contains operations carried on by Quintus Metellus against the Cretans, and the letters of Metellus and Gnaeus Pompeius sent to each other. Quintus Metellus complains that the glory of his operations is snatched from him by Pompeius, who had sent his legate into Crete to receive the surrenders of the cities. Pompeius gives the reason that he had been obliged to do this.
Gaius Manilius, tribune of the plebs, to the great indignation of the nobility, carried a law that the Mithridatic War be entrusted to Pompeius. . . . His harangue was a good one. Quintus Metellus, the Cretans being thoroughly subdued, gave laws to the island, which until that time had been free. Gnaeus Pompeius, having set out to wage war against Mithridates, renewed his friendship with Phraates, king of the Parthians, and conquered Mithridates in a cavalry battle. Besides this, the book contains the war waged between Phraates, king of the Parthians, and Tigranes of the Armenians, and then between the son Tigranes and his father.
Gnaeus Pompeius, having conquered Mithridates in a night battle, forced him to flee to the Bosporus. He received Tigranes in surrender, and, having taken from him Syria, Phoenicia, and Cilicia, restored to him the kingdom of Armenia. The conspiracy of those who had been condemned for bribery in their canvass for the consulship, formed to kill the consuls, was suppressed. Gnaeus Pompeius, while he was pursuing Mithridates, penetrated to the farthest and unknown nations; he conquered in battle the Iberians and Albanians, who would not grant passage. Besides this, the book contains the flight of Mithridates through the Colchians and Heniochi, and his operations in the Bosporus.
Gnaeus Pompeius reduced Pontus into the form of a province. Pharnaces, son of Mithridates, made war on his father. By him Mithridates was besieged in his palace; and when, after taking poison, he had made little progress towards death, he was killed at his own entreaty by a soldier, a Gaul named Bituitus, whom he had asked to aid him. Gnaeus Pompeius subdued the Jews; he took their shrine, Jerusalem, inviolate until that time. Lucius Catilina, having suffered two repulses in his canvass for the consulship, conspired with the praetor Lentulus and Cethegus and several others to kill the consuls and the Senate, to burn the city and crush the commonwealth, an army being also got ready in Etruria. That conspiracy was unearthed by the diligence of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Catilina being driven from the city, punishment was inflicted on the rest of the conspirators.
Catilina was cut down with his army by the proconsul Gaius Antonius. Publius Clodius, accused of having secretly entered in a woman's dress into the sanctuary into which it is sacrilege for a man to enter, and of having debauched the wife of Metellus the pontiff, was acquitted. The praetor Gaius Pomptinus subdued the Allobroges, who had revolted, at the Isère. Publius Clodius crossed over to the plebs. Gaius Caesar subdued the Lusitanians; and as he was a candidate for the consulship and aiming to seize the commonwealth, a conspiracy was formed among the three leading men of the state, Gnaeus Pompeius, Marcus Crassus, and Gaius Caesar. Agrarian laws were passed by the consul Caesar with great contention, against the will of the Senate and of the other consul Marcus Bibulus. The proconsul Gaius Antonius in Thrace conducted operations with little success. Marcus Cicero, by a law brought by Publius Clodius, tribune of the plebs, on the ground that he had put to death uncondemned citizens, was sent into exile. Caesar, having set out for the province of Gaul, subdued the Helvetii, a wandering people, who, seeking a dwelling-place, wished to make their way through Caesar's province of Narbonensis. Besides this, the book contains the situation of the Gauls. Pompeius triumphed over the children of Mithridates and over Tigranes, son of Tigranes, and was hailed as the Great by the whole assembly.
The first part of the book contains the situation and customs of Germany. Gaius Caesar, when he was leading his army against the Germans who, under the leadership of Ariovistus, had crossed into Gaul, asked by the Aedui and Sequani, whose land was being occupied, restrained by an address to the army the trepidation of the soldiers that had arisen from fear of the new enemy, and, having conquered the Germans in battle, drove them out of Gaul. Marcus Cicero, Pompeius among others exerting himself and Titus Annius Milo, tribune of the plebs, was brought back from exile to the great joy of the Senate and of all Italy. To Gnaeus Pompeius the care of the grain supply was entrusted for five years. Caesar received in surrender the Ambiani, the Suessiones, the Viromandui, the Atrebates, peoples of the Belgae, of whom there was a vast multitude, conquered in battle; and then against the Nervii, one of these states, he fought with great peril and destroyed that nation, which waged war until, out of sixty thousand armed men, five hundred survived, and out of six hundred senators, only three escaped. A law being passed concerning the reduction of Cyprus into the form of a province and the confiscation of the royal money, the administration of that matter was entrusted to Marcus Cato. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, on account of the wrongs which he suffered from his people, abandoned his kingdom and came to Rome. Gaius Caesar conquered the Veneti, a people bordering on the Ocean, in a naval battle. Besides this, the book contains operations carried on by his legates with the same fortune.
When the elections were being broken off by the vetoes of Gaius Cato, tribune of the plebs, the Senate changed its garb. Marcus Cato, in his canvass for the praetorship, Vatinius being preferred to him, suffered a repulse. The same Cato, when he was hindering the law by which provinces were given to the consuls for five years — Spain to Pompeius, Syria and the Parthian War to Crassus — was led to prison by Gaius Trebonius, tribune of the plebs, the author of the law. The proconsul Aulus Gabinius brought Ptolemy back into the kingdom of Egypt, Archelaus being driven out, whom they had taken to themselves as king. The Germans being conquered in Gaul, Caesar crossed the Rhine and subdued the nearest part of Germany; and then across the Ocean he crossed into Britain, at first with little success owing to adverse storms, a second time more happily; and, a great multitude of the enemy being killed, he reduced some part of the island into his power.
Julia, daughter of Caesar and wife of Pompeius, died, and an honour was paid her by the people, that she be buried in the Campus Martius. Several peoples of the Gauls revolted under the leadership of Ambiorix, king of the Eburones; by whom Cotta and Titurius, legates of Caesar, were surrounded by an ambush and cut down with the army they commanded. And although the camps of other legions also were assaulted and defended with great labour — among them that which Quintus Cicero commanded among the Treveri — the enemy were routed in battle by Caesar himself. Marcus Crassus, about to make war on the Parthians, crossed the river Euphrates, and, defeated in battle, in which his son too fell, when he had withdrawn the remnants of his army onto a hill, was summoned to a parley by the enemy, who pretended that they would treat of peace, whose leader was Surenas; and being seized and resisting, that he might suffer nothing while alive, he was killed.
Gaius Caesar, the Treveri in Gaul being conquered, crossed a second time into Germany; and finding there no enemy, returning into Gaul, he conquered the Eburones and other states which had conspired, and pursued Ambiorix in his flight. The body of Publius Clodius, killed by Titus Annius Milo, candidate for the consulship, on the Appian Way near Bovillae, was burned by the plebs in the senate-house. When there were seditions among the candidates for the consulship — Hypsaeus, Scipio, Milo — who contended with arms and violence, to suppress these Gnaeus Pompeius . . . and was made consul for the third time by the Senate in his absence and alone, which had happened to no other. An inquiry being decreed concerning the death of Publius Clodius, Milo was condemned in court and driven into exile. A law was passed that account be taken of Caesar in his absence in his canvass for the consulship, Marcus Cato being unwilling and speaking against it. Besides this, the book contains operations carried on by Gaius Caesar against the Gauls, who almost all revolted under the leadership of Vercingetorix the Arvernian, and the laborious sieges of cities, among them Avaricum of the Bituriges and Gergovia of the Arverni.
Gaius Caesar conquered the Gauls at Alesia and received in surrender all the states of Gaul that had been in arms. Gaius Cassius, quaestor of Marcus Crassus, cut down the Parthians who had crossed into Syria. In his canvass for the consulship Marcus Cato suffered a repulse, Servius Sulpicius and Marcus Marcellus being created consuls. Gaius Caesar subdued the Bellovaci with other peoples of the Gauls. Besides this, the book contains the contentions among the consuls concerning sending a successor to Gaius Caesar, the consul Marcus Marcellus moving in the Senate that Caesar come to canvass for the consulship in person, when by a law passed he was to hold the provinces until the time of his consulship; and operations carried on by Marcus Bibulus in Syria.
The causes and beginnings of the civil war are reported, and the contentions concerning sending a successor to Gaius Caesar, who said he would not disband his armies unless they were also disbanded by Pompeius. And it contains the proceedings of Gaius Curio, tribune of the plebs, first against Caesar, then for Caesar. When a decree of the Senate had been made that a successor be sent to Caesar, and Marcus Antonius and Quintus Cassius, tribunes of the plebs, because they were hindering that decree by their vetoes, had been driven from the city . . . and it was entrusted by the Senate to the consuls and Gnaeus Pompeius to see that the commonwealth take no harm. Gaius Caesar, about to pursue his enemies in war, came with an army into Italy, took Corfinium with Lucius Domitius and Publius Lentulus and let them go, and drove Gnaeus Pompeius and the rest of his party out of Italy.
Gaius Caesar besieged Massilia, which had closed its gates; and leaving his legates Gaius Trebonius and Decimus Brutus to besiege that city, he set out for Spain, received in surrender at Ilerda Lucius Afranius and Marcus Petreius, legates of Gnaeus Pompeius, with seven legions, and let them all go unharmed, Varro too, a legate of Pompeius, being reduced into his power with his army. He gave citizenship to the people of Gades. The Massiliotes, defeated in two naval battles, after a long siege surrendered themselves to the power of Caesar. Gaius Antonius, legate of Caesar, after conducting operations badly against the Pompeians in Illyricum, was captured; in which war the men of Opitergium, beyond the Po, auxiliaries of Caesar, their raft being hemmed in by the ships of the enemy, rather than come into the power of the enemy, fell upon one another and died. Gaius Curio, legate of Caesar in Africa, when he had fought successfully against Varus, leader of the Pompeian party, was cut down with his army by Juba, king of Mauretania. Gaius Caesar crossed into Greece.
The praetor Marcus Caelius Rufus, when he was stirring up seditions in the city, the plebs being solicited by the hope of cancelling debts, was, his office being annulled, driven from the city and joined himself to the exile Milo, who had gathered an army of runaways. Both, while they were setting on foot war, were killed. Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, was driven from her kingdom by her brother Ptolemy. On account of the avarice and cruelty of the praetor Quintus Cassius, the people of Corduba in Spain, with two Varronian legions, fell away from the party of Caesar. Gnaeus Pompeius, besieged at Dyrrachium by Caesar, and the garrisons of Caesar being stormed with great loss to the opposing party, was freed from the siege; and the war being transferred into Thessaly, he was defeated in line at Pharsalus. Cicero remained in the camp, a man born for anything rather than war. And Caesar pardoned all of the opposing party who had committed themselves to the power of the victor.
The trepidation and flight of the conquered party into the different parts of the world are reported. Gnaeus Pompeius, when he had made for Egypt, by order of King Ptolemy, his ward, at the instigation of his tutor Theodotus, whose authority with the king was great, and of Pothinus, was killed by Achillas, to whom that crime had been delegated, in a small boat, before he disembarked. His wife Cornelia and his son Sextus Pompeius fled to Cyprus. Caesar, following after three days, when Theodotus had offered him the head and ring of Pompeius, was incensed and wept; . . . and he entered the tumultuous Alexandria without danger. Caesar, created dictator, brought Cleopatra back into the kingdom of Egypt, and conquered Ptolemy, who was making war on him at the instigation of the same men who had killed Pompeius, with great peril to himself. Ptolemy, while he fled, sank in his boat in the Nile. Besides this, the book contains the laborious march of Marcus Cato in Africa, through the deserts with his legions, and the war waged with little success by Gnaeus Domitius against Pharnaces.
The Pompeian party in Africa being strengthened, the command of it was conferred on Publius Scipio, Cato, to whom it was offered on equal terms, yielding. And when there was deliberation about destroying the city of Utica on account of the favour of its people towards Caesar, and Marcus Cato had prevailed that this be not done, Juba urging that it be destroyed, the guardianship and watch of it was entrusted to Cato. Gnaeus Pompeius, son of the Great, in Spain, having gathered forces, the leadership of which neither Afranius nor Petreius wished to undertake, renewed the war against Caesar. Pharnaces, son of Mithridates, king of Pontus, was conquered without any delay of war. When seditions had been stirred up at Rome by Publius Dolabella, tribune of the plebs, who brought a law concerning the cancelling of debts, and on that account the plebs was in tumult, soldiers being led into the city by Marcus Antonius, master of the horse, eight hundred of the plebs were cut down. Caesar gave discharge to the veterans, who demanded it with mutiny; and when he had crossed into Africa, he fought with great peril against the forces of King Juba.
Caecilius Bassus, a Roman knight of the Pompeian party, stirred up war in Syria, being abandoned by the legion of Sextus Caesar, which had gone over to Bassus, and Sextus being killed. Caesar conquered the praetor Scipio and Juba at Thapsus, their camps being stormed. Cato, having heard the news, when he had struck himself at Utica, and was being tended, his son intervening, in the very midst of the tending tore open his wound and expired, in the forty-eighth year of his age. Petreius killed Juba and himself. Publius Scipio, surrounded on his ship, added a word also to an honourable death: for when the enemy asked for the commander, he said, "The commander is well." Faustus and Afranius were killed. To the son of Cato pardon was given. Brutus, legate of Caesar in Gaul, conquered the rebelling Bellovaci in battle.
Caesar held four triumphs, over Gaul, over Egypt, over Pontus, over Africa, and gave a banquet and spectacles of every kind. To Marcus Marcellus, a man of consular rank, the Senate asking it, he granted return; which kindness of his Marcellus could not enjoy, being killed at Athens by Gnaeus Magius, his own client. He conducted a census, in which a hundred and fifty thousand citizens were registered. Setting out for Spain against Gnaeus Pompeius, after many expeditions on both sides and several cities stormed, he won the crowning victory with great peril at the city of Munda. . . . Pompeius; Sextus escaped.
Caesar held his fifth triumph, from Spain. And when very many and very great honours had been decreed him by the Senate — among them that he be called Father of the Fatherland and be sacrosanct and dictator in perpetuity — they furnished a cause of resentment against him: because, when the Senate offered him these honours while he sat before the temple of Venus Genetrix, he did not rise; and because, when the diadem placed upon his head by Marcus Antonius the consul, his colleague, while he ran among the Luperci, he set back into the seat; and because, when the tribunes of the plebs Epidius Marullus and Caesetius Flavus were stirring up resentment against him as one aiming at kingship, their power was annulled. For these reasons a conspiracy was formed against him, whose heads were Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius, and from Caesar's own party Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius, and he was killed in the senate-house of Pompeius with twenty-three wounds, and the Capitol was occupied by his murderers. Then, oblivion of his murder being decreed by the Senate, hostages for their children being received from Antonius and Lepidus, the conspirators came down from the Capitol. By Caesar's will, Gaius Octavius, grandson of his sister, was instituted heir to one half and adopted into his name. When Caesar's body was being carried to the Campus Martius, it was burned by the plebs before the Rostra. The honour of the dictatorship was abolished forever. Chamates, a man of the lowest sort, who gave himself out to be a son of Gaius Marius, when he was stirring up seditions among the credulous plebs, was put to death.
Gaius Octavius came to Rome from Epirus (for thither Caesar had sent him in advance, being about to wage war in Macedonia), and being received with prosperous omens, he assumed the name of Caesar. In the confusion and tumult of affairs, Marcus Lepidus seized the chief pontificate. And when Marcus Antonius the consul was tyrannising without restraint, and had carried by violence a law concerning the exchange of provinces, and had treated with great wrongs Caesar also, who asked him to aid him against the murderers of his uncle, Caesar, about to prepare strength for himself and for the commonwealth against him, roused the veterans settled in the colonies. The fourth and the Martian legions also carried their standards from Antonius to Caesar. Then several others too, on account of the savagery of Marcus Antonius, who was slaughtering everywhere in his camp those who were suspected by him, fell away to Caesar. Decimus Brutus, to oppose Antonius who was seeking Cisalpine Gaul, occupied Mutina with an army. Besides this, the book contains the rushing about of the men of both parties to take possession of provinces, and the preparation of war.
Marcus Brutus in Greece, under the pretext of the commonwealth and of the war undertaken against Marcus Antonius, reduced into his power the army which Publius Vatinius commanded, together with the province. To Gaius Caesar, who as a private citizen had taken up arms for the commonwealth, command as propraetor was given by the Senate, with the ornaments of consular rank, and it was added that he should be a senator. Marcus Antonius besieged Decimus Brutus at Mutina; and envoys sent to him by the Senate concerning peace availed little to compose it. The Roman people put on the soldier's cloak. Marcus Brutus in Epirus subdued the praetor Gaius Antonius with his army to his power.
Gaius Trebonius in Asia was killed by the treachery of Publius Dolabella. On account of that crime Dolabella was judged an enemy by the Senate. When the consul Pansa had fought badly against Antonius, the consul Aulus Hirtius, coming up with an army and routing the forces of Marcus Antonius, made equal the fortune of both parties. Then Antonius, defeated by Hirtius and Caesar, fled into Gaul and joined to himself Marcus Lepidus with the legions which were under him; and he was judged an enemy by the Senate, together with all who were within his garrisons. Aulus Hirtius, who after the victory had fallen in the very camp of the enemy, and Gaius Pansa, who died of the wound he had received in the unsuccessful battle, were buried in the Campus Martius. Towards Gaius Caesar, who alone of the three leaders survived, the Senate was insufficiently grateful; for, having decreed the honour of a triumph to Decimus Brutus, freed from the siege of Mutina by Caesar, it made too ungrateful mention of Caesar and his soldiers. On account of which Gaius Caesar, his goodwill with Marcus Antonius being reconciled through Marcus Lepidus, came to Rome with an army; and those who were hostile to him being dismayed by his arrival, when he was nineteen years of age, he was created consul.
The consul Gaius Caesar carried a law concerning the holding of an inquiry against those by whose agency his father had been killed; and, prosecuted under that law, Marcus Brutus, Gaius Cassius, and Decimus Brutus were condemned in their absence. When Asinius Pollio also and Munatius Plancus, joined with their armies, had increased the strength of Marcus Antonius, Decimus Brutus, whom the Senate had charged to pursue Antonius, abandoned by his legions, by order of Antonius, into whose power he had come, fleeing, was cut down and killed by Capenus the Sequanian. Gaius Caesar made peace with Antonius and Lepidus on these terms, that there should be three men for setting in order the commonwealth for five years — himself and Lepidus and Antonius — and that each should proscribe his own enemies. In which proscription there were very many Roman knights, and the names of a hundred and thirty senators, and among them Lucius Paulus, brother of Marcus Lepidus, and Lucius Caesar, uncle of Antonius, and Marcus Cicero. Of him, killed by Popillius, a legionary soldier, when he was sixty-three years old, the head too, with the right hand, was set up on the Rostra. Besides this, the book contains operations carried on by Marcus Brutus in Greece.
Gaius Cassius, who had been charged by the Senate to pursue in war Dolabella, judged an enemy, aided by the authority of the commonwealth, reduced into his power Syria with the three armies that were in that province, and forced Dolabella, besieged in the city of Laodicea, to die. By the order of Marcus Brutus too, Gaius Antonius was captured and killed.
Marcus Brutus conducted operations with little success against the Thracians; and all the provinces and armies across the sea being reduced into his power and that of Gaius Cassius, both met at Smyrna to settle their plans for the coming war. By common counsel they pardoned the brother of Marcus Messala Publicola, who had been put in chains.
Sextus Pompeius, son of the Great, having gathered from Epirus the proscribed and the runaways, with an army for a long time, without possession of any place, plundering on the sea, occupied first the town of Messana in Sicily, then the whole province; and, the praetor Pompeius Bithynicus being killed, he conquered Quintus Salvidienus, legate of Caesar, in a naval battle. Caesar and Antonius crossed into Greece with their armies, about to wage war against Brutus and Cassius. Quintus Cornificius in Africa conquered in battle Titus Sextius, leader of the Cassian party.
Gaius Caesar and Antonius at Philippi fought with varying outcome against Brutus and Cassius, so that the right wing of each conquered, and the camp also was stormed on both sides by those who had conquered. But the death of Cassius made the fortune of the parties unequal; for, having been in that wing which had been routed, thinking the whole army routed, he took his own life. Then on the next day Marcus Brutus, defeated, also ended his life, having entreated Strato, the companion of his flight, to drive the sword into him. He was about forty years old . . . among whom Quintus Hortensius was killed.
Caesar, leaving Antonius across the sea — for the provinces situated in that part of the empire had fallen to him — returned into Italy and divided lands among the veterans. The mutinies of his army, which the soldiers, corrupted by Fulvia, wife of Marcus Antonius, had stirred up against their commander, he restrained with grave peril. Lucius Antonius the consul, brother of Marcus Antonius, the same Fulvia counselling, made war on Caesar. Having received into his party the peoples whose lands had been assigned to the veterans, and Marcus Lepidus, who was in charge of the guard of the city with an army, being routed, he burst into the city as an enemy.
Caesar, when he was twenty-three years old, besieged Lucius Antonius in the town of Perusia, and, after he had several times tried to break out and been repulsed, forced him by hunger to come into surrender, and pardoned him and all his soldiers, and razed Perusia. And all the armies of the opposing party being reduced into his power, he finished the war without any bloodshed.
The Parthians, under the leadership of Labienus, who had been of the Pompeian party, burst into Syria; and, Decidius Saxa, legate of Marcus Antonius, being conquered, they occupied all that province. Marcus Antonius, when to wage war against Caesar . . . his wife Fulvia, that she might not stand in the way of the concord of the leaders, peace being made with Caesar, took in marriage Caesar's sister Octavia. Quintus Salvidienus, who had set on foot wicked schemes against Caesar, he brought to light by his own information; and Salvidienus, being condemned, took his own life. Publius Ventidius, legate of Antonius, conquered the Parthians in battle and drove them from Syria, their leader Labienus being killed. When Sextus Pompeius, an enemy near to Italy, held Sicily and impeded the supply of grain, Caesar and Antonius made the peace he demanded with him, on condition that he should hold the province of Sicily. Besides this, the book contains disturbances in Africa and wars waged there.
When Sextus Pompeius again rendered the sea unsafe by piracies and did not keep the peace he had accepted, Caesar of necessity undertook war against him, and fought two naval battles with doubtful outcome. Publius Ventidius, legate of Marcus Antonius, conquered the Parthians in Syria in battle and killed their king. The Jews also were subdued by the legates of Antonius. Besides this, the book contains the preparation of the Sicilian war.
Against Sextus Pompeius operations were carried on with varying outcome in naval battles, so that of Caesar's two fleets the one, which Agrippa commanded, conquered, while the other, which Caesar had led, being destroyed, the soldiers set ashore were in great peril. Then Pompeius, defeated, fled into Sicily. Marcus Lepidus, who had crossed from Africa as though to a partnership in the war waged against Sextus Pompeius by Caesar, when he made war on Caesar too, being abandoned by his army, the honour of the triumvirate being annulled, obtained his life. Marcus Agrippa was presented with the naval crown by Caesar, an honour which had been paid to no one before him.
Marcus Antonius, while he revelled with Cleopatra, having tardily entered Media, made war on the Parthians with eighteen legions and sixteen thousand horse; and when, two legions being lost and nothing turning out prosperously, he was retreating, the Parthians pursuing again and again, with great trepidation and great peril to the whole army he returned into Armenia, having traversed in flight three hundred miles in twenty-one days. About eight thousand men he lost to storms. Storms also hostile to him, on top of a Parthian war so unhappily undertaken, he suffered by his own fault, because he was unwilling to winter in Armenia, while he hastened to Cleopatra.
Sextus Pompeius, when he came into the protection of Marcus Antonius, setting on foot war against him in Asia, was overpowered by his legates and killed, in the eighth year of his leadership. Caesar restrained a mutiny of the veterans, stirred up with great destruction, and subdued the Iapydes and the Dalmatians and the Pannonians. Antonius ordered Artavasdes, king of Armenia, brought to him under safe-conduct, to be thrown into chains, and gave the kingdom of Armenia to his own son born of Cleopatra, whom, long since captivated by love of her, he had begun to treat as a wife.
Caesar in Illyricum subdued the Dalmatians. When Marcus Antonius, on account of his love of Cleopatra, by whom he had two sons, Philadelphus and Alexander, would neither come to the city nor, the time of the triumvirate being finished, lay down his command, but was setting on foot a war to make on the city and Italy, vast forces both naval and land being gathered for this purpose, and a divorce being sent to Octavia, Caesar's sister, Caesar crossed into Epirus with an army. Then the naval battles and cavalry engagements favourable to Caesar are reported.
Marcus Antonius, defeated at Actium in a naval battle, fled to Alexandria; and besieged by Caesar, in the utmost despair of his affairs, driven especially by a false report of Cleopatra's death, killed himself. Caesar, Alexandria being reduced into his power, and Cleopatra, that she might not come into the power of the victor, having ended her life by voluntary death, returned into the city and held three triumphs, one over Illyricum, the second over the Actian victory, the third over Cleopatra, an end being imposed on the civil wars in the twenty-second year. Marcus Lepidus, son of the Lepidus who had been triumvir, having formed a conspiracy against Caesar and being about to set on foot war, was overpowered and killed.
Gaius Caesar, affairs being settled and all the provinces reduced to a fixed form, was also surnamed Augustus; and the month Sextilis was called in his honour. When he held an assembly at Narbo, a census was taken of the three Gauls, which Caesar his father had conquered. The war against the Bastarnae and the Moesi and other nations by Marcus Crassus . . . is reported.
The war waged by Marcus Crassus against the Thracians and by Caesar against the Spaniards is reported, and the Salassi, an Alpine people, were thoroughly subdued.
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The Raeti were subdued by Tiberius Nero and Drusus, stepsons of Caesar. Agrippa, son-in-law of Caesar, died. A census was conducted by Drusus.
The states of Germany situated on this side of the Rhine and beyond the Rhine were assaulted by Drusus, and the disturbance which had arisen in Gaul over the census was composed. An altar of the deified Caesar was dedicated at the confluence of the Saône and the Rhone, Gaius Julius Vercondaridubnus the Aeduan being created its priest.
The Thracians subdued by Lucius Piso, and likewise the Cherusci, the Tencteri, the Chauci, and other nations of the Germans beyond the Rhine subdued by Drusus, are reported. Octavia, sister of Augustus, died, having earlier lost her son Marcellus; whose monuments are a theatre and a portico dedicated in his name.
The war waged against the nations beyond the Rhine by Drusus is reported, in which, among the foremost, Chumstinctus and Avectius, tribunes from the state of the Nervii, fought. Nero, brother of Drusus, subdued the Dalmatians and the Pannonians. Peace was made with the Parthians, the standards which had been captured under Crassus and afterwards under Antonius being returned by their king.
The war waged against the states of the Germans beyond the Rhine by Drusus is reported. He himself, from a fracture, his horse having collapsed upon his leg, died on the thirtieth day after it happened. His body was carried to Rome by his brother Nero, who, summoned by news of his illness, had hurried at full speed, and was laid in the tomb of Gaius Julius. He was eulogised by Caesar Augustus, his stepfather, and many further honours were paid to his memory.