[-26-] At Placentia some soldiers mutinied and refused to accompany Caesar longer, under the pretext that they were exhausted, but really because he did not allow them to plunder the country nor to do all the other things on which their minds were set; they were hoping to obtain anything whatever of him, inasmuch as he stood in such tremendous need of them.  Yet he did not yield, but, with a view to being safe from them and in order that after listening to his address and seeing the persons punished they should feel no wish in an way to transgress the established rules, he called together both the mutinous body and the rest, and spoke as follows:—­[-27-] “Fellow soldiers, I desire to have your love, and still I should not choose on that account to participate in your errors.  I am fond of you and should wish, as a father might for his children, that you should be preserved, be prosperous, and have a good repute.  Do not think it is the duty of one who loves to assent to things which ought not to be done, and for which it is quite inevitable that dangers and ill-repute should fall to the lot of his beloved, but rather he must teach them the better way and keep them from the worse, both by advising and by disciplining them.  You will recognize that I speak the truth if you do not estimate advantage with reference to the pleasure of the moment but instead with reference to what is continually beneficial, and if you will avoid thinking that gratifying your desires is more noble than restraining them.  It is disgraceful to take pleasure temporarily in something of which you must later repent, and it is outrageous after conquering the enemy to be vanquished by some pleasure or other.

[-28-] “To what do the words I speak apply?  To the fact that you have provisions in abundance,—­I am going to speak right out with no disguise:  you do get your pay in full and on time and you are always and everywhere supplied with plenty of food—­that you endure no inglorious toil nor useless danger; furthermore that you gather many great prizes for your bravery and are rebuked little or not at all for your errors, and yet you do not see fit to be satisfied with these things.  I am speaking not of all of you, for you are not all such men, but only to those who for their own gain are casting reproach on the rest.  Most of you obey my orders very scrupulously and satisfactorily, abide by your ancestral customs, and in that way have acquired so much land and wealth and glory; some few, however, are attaching much disgrace and disrespect to all of us.  Though I understood clearly before this that they were that sort of persons,—­for there is none of your interests that I fail to notice,—­still I pretended not to know it, thinking that they might become better if they believed they were not observed in some of their evil deeds and had the fear that if they ever presumed too far they might be punished for the guilt of which they were conscious.  Since they, however, proceeding on the ground that they may