For this act he received praise, as also because he chose to take his place Lucius Sestius, who had always been an enthusiastic follower of Brutus, had campaigned with the latter in all his wars, and even at this time made mention of him, had his images, and delivered eulogies.  So far from disliking the friendly and faithful qualities of the man, the emperor even honored him.

The senate consequently voted that Augustus be tribune for life and that he might bring forward at each meeting of the senate any business he liked concerning any one matter, even if he should not be consul at the time, and allowed him to hold the office of proconsul once for all perpetually, so that he had neither to lay it down on entering the pomerium nor to take it up again outside.  The body also granted him more power in subject territory than the several governors possessed.  As a result both he and subsequent emperors gained a certain legal right to the use of the tribunican authority, in addition to their other powers.  But the actual name of tribune neither Augustus nor any other emperor has held.

[-33-] And it seems to me that he then acquired these rights as described not from flattery but as a mark of real honor.  In most ways he behaved toward the Romans as if they were free citizens.  For, when Tiridates in person and envoys from Phraates arrived to settle their mutual disputes, he introduced them to the senate.  After this, when the decision of the question had been entrusted to him by that body, he refused to surrender Tiridates to Phraates, but sent back to him his son, whom Tiridates had formerly received from the other and was keeping, on condition that the captives and the military standards taken in the disasters of Crassus and of Antony be returned.

In this same year one of the inferior aediles died and Gaius Calpurnius succeeded him, in spite of having served previously as one of the patrician aediles.  This is not mentioned as having occurred in the case of any other man.  During the Feriae there were two praefecti urbi each day, and one of them, who was not yet admitted to the standing of a youth, nevertheless held office.

Livia, however, was accused of having caused the death of Marcellus because he had been preferred before her sons.  This suspicion became a matter of controversy both in that year and in the following, which proved so unhealthful that great numbers perished during its progress.  And, as it usually happens that some sign occurs before such events, so on this occasion a wolf had been caught in the city, fire and storm damaged many buildings, and the Tiber, rising, washed away the wooden bridge and rendered the city submerged for three days.

[Footnote 1:  Following Dindorf’s reading [Greek:  hyper heauton].]

[Footnote 2:  A reference to Cornelius Gallus (see Book Fifty-one, chapter 17).]

[Footnote 3:  The expression to which Dio here refers is doubtless the adjective quinquefascalis, found in inscriptional Latin.  All the editions from Xylander to Dindorf gave “six lictors”, erroneously, as was pointed out by Mommsen (Romisches Staatsrecht, 12, p. 369, note 4).  Boissevain is the first editor to make the correction. (See the latter portion of chapter 17, Book Fifty-seven, which should be compared with Tacitus, Annals, II, 47, 5.)