every breach of discipline.  When the orders to embark for Sicily arrived, and the soldier was to exchange the luxurious ease of Campania for a third campaign certainly not inferior to those of Spain and Thessaly in point of hardship, the reins, which had been too long relaxed and were too suddenly tightened, snapt asunder.  The legions refused to obey till the promised presents were paid to them, scornfully repulsed the officers sent by Caesar, and even threw stones at them.  An attempt to extinguish the incipient revolt by increasing the sums promised not only had no success, but the soldiers set out in masses to extort the fulfilment of the promises from the general in the capital.  Several officers, who attempted to restrain the mutinous bands on the way, were slain.  It was a formidable danger.  Caesar ordered the few soldiers who were in the city to occupy the gates, with the view of warding off the justly apprehended pillage at least at the first onset, and suddenly appeared among the furious bands demanding to know what they wanted.  They exclaimed:  “discharge.”  In a moment the request was granted.  Respecting the presents, Caesar added, which he had promised to his soldiers at his triumph, as well as respecting the lands which he had not promised to them but had destined for them, they might apply to him on the day when he and the other soldiers should triumph; in the triumph itself they could not of course participate, as having been previously discharged.  The masses were not prepared for things taking this turn; convinced that Caesar could not do without them for the African campaign, they had demanded their discharge only in order that, if it were refused, they might annex their own conditions to their service.  Half unsettled in their belief as to their own indispensableness; too awkward to return to their object, and to bring the negotiation which had missed its course back to the right channel; ashamed, as men, by the fidelity with which the Imperator kept his word even to soldiers who had forgotten their allegiance, and by his generosity which even now granted far more than he had ever promised; deeply affected, as soldiers, when the general presented to them the prospect of their being necessarily mere civilian spectators of the triumph of their comrades, and when he called them no longer “comrades” but “burgesses,”—­by this very form of address, which from his mouth sounded so strangely, destroying as it were with one blow the whole pride of their past soldierly career; and, besides all this, under the spell of the man whose presence had an irresistible power—­the soldiers stood for a while mute and lingering, till from all sides a cry arose that the general would once more receive them into favour and again permit them to be called Caesar’s soldiers.  Caesar, after having allowed himself to be sufficiently entreated, granted the permission; but the ringleaders in this mutiny had a third cut off from their triumphal presents.  History knows no greater psychological masterpiece, and none that was more completely successful.