[-37-] It was against this people, then, that Caesar at that time conducted a campaign.  At first he did not devastate or plunder at all, although they abandoned their villages in the plain.  He hoped to make them his subjects of their free will.  But when they harassed him as he advanced to Siscia, he became angry, burned their land, and took all the booty he could.  When he drew near the city the natives for a moment listened to their rulers and made terms with him and gave hostages, but afterward shut their gates and accepted a state of siege.  They possessed strong walls and were in general encouraged by the presence of two navigable rivers.  The one named the Colops[56] flows past the very circuit of the wall and empties into the Savus not far distant:  it has now encircled the entire city, for Tiberius gave it this shape by constructing a great canal through which it rejoins its ancient course.  At that time between the Colops on the one hand, which flowed on past the very walls, and the Savus on the other, which flowed at a little distance, an empty space had been left which had been buttressed with palisades and ditches.  Caesar secured boats made by the allies in that vicinity, and after towing them through the Ister into the Savus, and through that stream into the Colops, he assailed the enemy with infantry and ships together, and had some naval battles on the river.  For the barbarians prepared in turn some boats made of one piece of wood with which they risked a conflict; and on the river they killed besides many others Menas the freedman of Sextus, and on the land they vigorously repulsed the invader until they ascertained that some of their allies had been ambushed and destroyed.  Then in dejection they yielded.  When they had thus been captured the remainder of Pannonian territory was induced to capitulate.

[-38-] After this he left Fufius Geminus there with a small force and himself returned to Rome.  The triumph which had been voted to him he deferred, but granted Octavia and Livia images, the right of administering their own affairs without a supervisor, and freedom from fear and inviolability equally with the tribunes.

[B.C. 34 (a. u. 720)]

In emulation of his father he had started out to lead an expedition into Britain, and had already advanced into Gaul after the winter in which Antony for the second time and Lucius Libo were consuls, when some of the newly captured and Dalmatians with them rose in revolt.  Geminus, although expelled from Siscia, recovered the Pannonians by a few battles; and Valerius Messala overthrew the Salassi and the rest who had joined them in rebellion.  Against the Dalmatians first Agrippa and then Caesar also made campaigns.  The most of them they subjugated after undergoing many terrible experiences themselves, such as Caesar’s being wounded, barley being given to some of the soldiers instead of wheat, and others, who had deserted the standards, being decimated:  with the remaining tribes[57] Statilius Taurus carried on war.