Pompey passed the winter in Aspis, winning over the sections that were still resisting, and took Symphorion,[14] a fort which Stratonice betrayed to him.  She was the wife of Mithridates, and in anger toward him because she had been abandoned sent the garrison out pretendedly to collect supplies and let the Romans in, although her child was with ... [15] ...

[B.C. 65 (a.u. 689)]

[-8-] ... [not (?)] for this alone in his aedileship he (C.  Jul.  Caesar) received praise, but because he had also conducted both the Roman and the Megalesian games on the most expensive scale and had further arranged contests of gladiators in the most magnificent manner.  Of the sums expended on them a portion was raised by him in conjunction with his colleague Marcus Bibulus, but another portion by him privately; and his individual expenditure on the spectacles so much surpassed, that he appropriated to himself the glory for them, and was thought to have taken the whole cost on himself.  Even Bibulus joked about it saying that he had suffered the same fate as Pollux:  for, although that hero possessed a temple in common with his brother Castor, it was named only for the latter.

[-9-] All this contributed to the Romans’ joy, but they were quite disturbed at the portents of that year.  On the Capitol many statues were melted by thunderbolts, among other images one of Jupiter, set upon a pillar, and a likeness of the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus, mounted on a pedestal, fell down; also the letters of the tablets on which the laws were inscribed ran together and became indistinct.  Accordingly, on the advice of the soothsayers, they offered many expiatory sacrifices and voted that a larger statue of Jupiter should be set up, looking toward the east and the Forum, in order that the conspiracies by which they were distraught might dissolve.

Such were the occurrences of that year.  The censors also became involved in a dispute regarding the dwellers beyond the Po:  one thought it wise to admit them to citizenship, and another not; so they did not perform any of their duties, but resigned their office.  Their successors, too, did nothing in the following year, for the reason that the tribunes hindered them in regard to the list of the senate, in fear lest they themselves should be dropped from that assembly.  Meantime all those who were resident aliens in Rome, except those who dwelt in what is now Italy, were banished on the motion of one Gaius Papius, a tribune, because they were getting to be in the majority and were not thought fit persons to dwell among the citizens.

[B.C. 64(a.u. 690)]