[-29-] As soon as Augustus had departed from Spain, leaving behind Lucius AEmilius[11] as governor of it, the Cantabri and Astures made an uprising.  They sent to AEmilius before anything about it became known to him and said they wished to give the army grain and some other presents.  Then, having secured a number of soldiers, who were presumably to carry the supplies, they led them to suitable places and butchered them.  Their pleasure, however, did not last long.  When their country had been devastated and some forts burned and, chiefest of all, the hands of every one that was caught were cut off, they were quickly subdued.  While this was going on, another new campaign had its beginning and end.  It was led by AElius Gallus, governor of Egypt, against the so-called Arabia Felix[12] of which Sabos was king.  At first he encountered no one at all, yet did not proceed without effort.  The desert, the sun, and the water (which had some peculiar nature), distressed them greatly so that the majority of the army perished.  The disease proved to be dissimilar to any ordinary complaint, and fell upon the head, which it caused to wither.  This killed most of them at once, but in the case of the survivors it descended to the legs, skipping all the intervening parts of the body, and wrought injury to them.  There was no remedy for it except by both drinking and rubbing on olive oil mixed with wine.  This was in the power of only a few of them to do, for the country produces neither of these articles and the men had not provided a large supply of them beforehand.  In the midst of this trouble the barbarians also fell upon them.  For a while the enemy were defeated whenever they joined battle and lost some places:  later, however, with the disease as an ally they won back their own possessions and drove the survivors of the expedition out of the country.  These were the first of the Romans (and I think the only ones) who traversed so much of this part of Arabia in warfare.  They had advanced as far as the so-named Athlula, a famous locality.

[B.C. 23 (a. u. 731)]

[-30-] Augustus was for the eleventh time consul with Calpurnius Piso, when he fell so sick once more as to have no hope of saving his life.  He accordingly arranged everything in the idea that he was about to die, and gathering about him the officials and the other foremost senators and knights he appointed no successor, though they were expecting that Marcellus would be preferred before all for the position.  After conversing briefly with them about public matters he gave Piso the list of the forces and the public revenues written in a book, and handed his ring to Agrippa.  The emperor became unable to do even the very simplest things, yet a certain Antonius Musas managed to restore him to health by means of cold baths and cold drinks.  For this he received a great deal of money from both Augustus and the senate, as well as the right to wear gold rings,—­he