however, felt so toward him that on meeting him once he clapped his hand over his nose and his mouth, thereby signifying to the bystanders that it was not safe even to breathe in the man’s presence.  Another person, although unknown, approached him with witnesses and asked if Largus recognized him.  When the one questioned said “no”, he recorded his denial on a tablet, thus making it beyond the power of the rascal to inform against a person at least whom he had not previously known.

Thus we see that most men emulate the exploits of others, though they be evil, instead of guarding against their fate.  So also at this time there was Marcus Egnatius Rufus, who had been an aedile:  the majority of his deeds had been good, and with his own slaves and with some others that were hired he lent aid to the houses that took fire during his year of office.  In return he received from the people the expenses incurred in his position and by a suspension of the law was made praetor.  Elated at these marks of favor he despised Augustus so much as to record that he (Rufus) had delivered the City unimpaired and entire to his successor.  All the foremost men, and Augustus himself most of all, became indignant at this.  He prepared therefore to teach the upstart a lesson in the near future not to exalt his mind above the mass of men.  For the time being he issued an edict to the aediles to see to it that no building took fire and, if aught of the kind did happen, to extinguish the blaze.

[-25-] In this same year also Polemon, who was king of Pontus, was enrolled among the friends and allies of the Roman People; front seats for the senators were provided in all the theatres of the emperor’s whole domain.  Augustus, finding that the Britons would not come to terms, wished to make an expedition into their country, but was detained by the Salassi, who had revolted against him, and by the Cantabri and Astures, who had been made hostile.  The former dwell close under the Alps, as has been herein stated,[7] whereas both of the latter tribes hold the strongest region of the Pyrenees on the Spanish side and the plain which is below it.  For these reasons Augustus, now in his ninth consulship with Marcus Silanus, sent Terentius Varro against the Salassi.

[B.C. 25 (a. u. 729)]

The latter invaded their territory at many points at once in order that they might not unite and become harder to subdue, and had a very easy time in conquering them because they attacked him only in small groups.  Having forced them to capitulate he demanded a fixed sum of money, allowing it to be supposed that he would impose no other punishment.  After that he sent soldiers everywhere, apparently to attend to the collection of the indemnity and arrested those of military age, whom he sold under an agreement that none of them should be liberated within twenty years.  The best of their land was given to members of the Pretorians and came to include a city called Augusta Praetoria.[8]