Dio's Rome, Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 437 pages of information about Dio's Rome, Volume 2.

Dio's Rome, Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 437 pages of information about Dio's Rome, Volume 2.

[-24-] Still, it must be said he was blamed for the great number of those who were slain, on the ground that he had not himself become satiated with slaughter and was further exhibiting to the populace symbols of their own miseries; and much more so because he had expended on all that array countless sums.  A clamor in consequence was raised against him for two reasons,—­that he had collected most of the funds unjustly, and that he had used them up for such purposes.

And by mentioning one feature of his extravagance of that time I shall thereby give an inkling of all the rest.  In order that the sun might not annoy any of the spectators he had curtains stretched over them made of silk, according to some accounts.  Now this product of the loom is a device of barbarian luxury and from them has come down even to us to satisfy the excessive daintiness of veritable women.  The civilians perforce held their peace at such acts, but the soldiers raised an outcry, not because they cared about the money recklessly squandered but because they did not themselves get what was appropriated to those displays.  In fact they did not cease from confusion till Caesar suddenly coming upon them with his own hand seized one man and delivered him up to punishment.  This person was executed for the reasons stated, and two other men were slaughtered as a kind of piece of ritual.  The true cause I am unable to state, inasmuch as the Sibyl made no utterance and there was no other similar oracle, but at any rate they were sacrificed in the Campus Martius by the pontifices and the priest of Mars, and their heads were set up near the palace.

[-25-] While Caesar was thus engaged he was also enacting many laws, passing over most of which I shall mention only those most deserving attention.  The courts he entrusted to the senators and the knights alone so that the purest element of the population, so far as was possible, might always preside:  formerly some of the common people had also joined with them in rendering decisions.  The expenditures, moreover, of men of means which had been rendered enormous by their licentiousness he not only controlled by law but put a strong check upon them by practical measures.  There was, on account of the numbers of warriors that had perished, a dangerous scarcity of population, as was proved both from the censuses (which he attended to, among other things, as if he were censor) and from actual observation, consequently he offered prizes for large families of children.  Again, because he himself as a result of ruling the Gauls many years in succession had been attracted into a desire for dominion and had by it increased the equipment of his force, he limited by law the term of ex-praetors to one year, and that of ex-consuls to two consecutive years, and enacted in general that no one should be allowed to hold any office for a longer time.

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Dio's Rome, Volume 2 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.