came a voluntary suppliant, nevertheless, since he had fought against him straight through, he at first bade him stand trial so that the conqueror might seem to have some legal right on his side in condemning him:  later Caesar shrank from killing him by his own vote, and put it off for the time, but afterward did slay him secretly. [-13-] Even among his own followers those that did not suit him he sacrificed without compunction to the opposing side in some cases, and in others by prearrangement caused them to perish in the actual conflicts, through the agency of their own comrades, for, as I have said, he did not take measures openly against all those that had troubled him, but any that he could not prosecute on some substantial charge he quietly put out of the way in some obscure fashion.  And yet at that time he burned without reading all the papers that were found in the private chests of Scipio, and of the men who had fought against him he preserved many for their own sakes, and many also on account of their friends.  For, as has been said, he allowed each of his fellow-soldiers and companions to ask the life of one man.  He would have preserved Cato, too.  For he had conceived such an admiration for him that when Cicero subsequently wrote an encomium of Cato he was no whit vexed,—­although Cicero had likewise warred against him,—­but merely wrote a short treatise which he entitled Anticato.

[-14-]Caesar after these events at once and before crossing into Italy disencumbered himself of the more elderly among his soldiers for fear they might revolt again.  He arranged the other matters in Africa just as rapidly as was feasible and sailed as far as Sardinia with all his fleet.  From that point he sent the discarded troops in the company of Graius Didius into Spain against Pompey, and himself returned to Rome, priding himself chiefly upon the brilliance of his achievements but also to some extent upon the decrees of the senate.  For they had decreed that offerings should be made for his victory during forty days, and they had granted him leave to celebrate the previously accorded triumph upon white horses and with such lictors as were then in his company, with as many others as he had employed in his first dictatorship, and all the rest, besides, that he had in his second.  Further, they elected him superintendent of every man’s conduct (for some such name was given him, as if the title of censor were not worthy of him), for three years, and dictator for ten in succession.  They moreover voted that he should sit in the senate upon the sella curulis with the acting consuls, and should always state his opinion first, that he should give the signal in all the horse-races, and that he should have the appointment of the officers and whatever else formerly the people were accustomed to assign.  And they resolved that a representation of his chariot be set on the Capitol opposite Jupiter, that upon an image of the inhabited world a bronze figure of Caesar be mounted, holding a written statement