in check by their commanding officers, but mostly through hopes of the wealth of Egypt.  The men, however, who had helped Caesar to gain the victory and had been dismissed from the service, were irritated at having obtained no meed of valor, and not much later they began a revolutionary movement.  Caesar was suspicious of them, and fearing that they might despise Maecenas, to whom at that time Rome and the remainder of Italy had been entrusted, because he was a knight, he sent Agrippa to Italy as if on some routine business.  He also gave to Agrippa and to Maecenas so great authority over everything that they might read beforehand the letters which he often wrote to the senate and to various officials, and then change whatever they wished in them.  Therefore they received also from him a ring, so that they should have the means of sealing the epistles.  He had had the seal which he used most at that time made double, with a sphinx raised on both sides alike.  Subsequently he had his own image made in intaglio, and sealed everything with that.  Later emperors likewise employed it, except Galba.  The latter gave his sanction with an ancestral device which showed a dog bending forward from the prow of a ship.  The way that Octavius wrote both to these two magistrates and to the rest of his intimate friends whenever there was need of forwarding information to them secretly was to write in place of the proper letter in each word the second one following.

[-4-] Octavius, with the idea that there would be no more danger from the veterans, administered affairs in Greece and took part in the Mysteries of the two goddesses.  He then went over into Asia and settled matters there, all the time keeping a sharp lookout for Antony’s movements.  For he had not yet received any definite information regarding the course his rival had followed in his escape, and so he kept making preparations to proceed against him, if he should find out exactly.  Meantime the ex-soldiers made an open demonstration, because he was so far separated from them, and he began to fear that if they got a leader they might do some damage.

[B.C. 30 (a. u. 724)]

Consequently he assigned to others the task of searching for Antony, and hurried to Italy himself, in the middle of the winter of the year that he was holding office for the fourth time, with Marcus Crassus.  The latter, in spite of having been attached to the cause of Sextus and of Antony, was then his fellow consul without having even passed through the praetorship.  Caesar came, then, to Brundusium but progressed no farther.  The senate on ascertaining that his boat was Hearing Italy went there to meet him, save the tribunes and two praetors, who by decree stayed at home; and the class of knights as well as the majority of the people and still others, some represented by embassy and many as voluntary followers, came together there, so that there was no further sign of rebellion on the part of any one, so brilliant was his arrival,