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.
the wall, where he ambushed and destroyed them, and in this way captured the town, which was soon destitute of male defenders.  Next he acquired and levied money upon Munda and the other places, some that were unwilling with great slaughter and others of their own accord.  He did not even spare the offerings to Hercules, consecrated in Gades, and he detached special precincts from some towns and laid an added tribute upon others.  This was his course toward those who had opposed him; but to those who displayed any good-will toward him he granted lands and freedom from taxation, to some, moreover, citizenship, and to others the right to be considered Roman colonies; he did not, however, grant these favors for nothing.

[-40-] While Caesar was thus occupied, Pompey, who had escaped in the rout, reached the sea, intending to use the fleet that lay at anchor in Carteia, but found that it had espoused the victor’s cause.  He endeavored to embark in a boat, expecting to obtain safety thereby.  In the course of the attempt, however, he was roughly handled and in dejection came to land again, where, taking some men that had assembled, he set out for the interior.  Pompey himself met defeat at the hands, of Caesennius[100] Lento, with whom he fell in:  he took refuge in a wood, and was there killed.  Didius, ignorant of the event, while wandering about to join him met some other enemies and perished.

[-41-] Caesar, too, would doubtless have chosen to fall there, at the hands of those who were still resisting and in the glory of war, in preference to the fate he met not long after, to be cut down in his own land and in the senate, at the hands of his best friends.  For this was the last war he carried through successfully, and this the last victory that he won in spite of the fact that there was no project so great that he did not hope to accomplish it.  In this belief he was strengthened not only by other reasons but most of all because from a palm that stood on the site of the battle a shoot grew out immediately after the victory.

And I will not assert that this had no bearing in some direction; it was, however, no longer for him, but for his sister’s grandson, Octavius:  the latter made the expedition with him, and was destined to shine forth brightly from his toils and dangers.  As Caesar did not know this, hoping that many great additional successes would fall to his own lot he acted in no moderate fashion, but was filled with loftiness as if immortal. [-42-] Though it was no foreign nation he had conquered, but a great mass of citizens that he had destroyed, he not only personally directed the triumph, incidentally regaling the entire populace again, as if in honor of some common blessing, but also allowed Quintus Fabius and Quintus Pedius to hold a festival. [101] Yet they had merely been his lieutenants and had achieved no individual success.  Naturally some laughter was caused by this, as well as by the fact that he used wooden instead of ivory

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