LI.  After this, passing over to Italy he went up to Rome at the close of the year for which he had been chosen Dictator[558] the second time, though that office had never before been for a whole year; and he was elected consul for the following year.  He was much blamed about a mutiny[559] that broke out among the soldiers in which they killed two men of praetorian rank, Cosconius and Galba, because he reproved his men no further than by calling them citizens instead of soldiers, and he gave to each of them a thousand drachmae, and allotted to them much land in Italy.  He also bore the blame of the madness of Dolabella,[560] the covetousness of Amantius, and the drunkenness of Antonius, and the greedy tricks of Corfinius in getting the house of Pompeius, and his building it over again as if it were not fit for him; for the Romans were annoyed at these things.  But Caesar, in the present state of affairs, though he was not ignorant of these things, and did not approve of them, was compelled to employ such men in his service.

LII.  As Cato[561] and Scipio, after the battle near Pharsalus, had fled to Libya, and there, with the assistance of King Juba, got together a considerable force, Caesar determined to go against them; and about the winter solstice passing over to Sicily and wishing to cut off from the officers about him all hopes of delay and tarrying there, he placed his own tent on the margin of the waves,[562] and as soon as there was a wind he went on board and set sail with three thousand foot-soldiers and a few horsemen.  Having landed them unobserved he embarked again, for he was under some apprehension about the larger part of his force; and having fallen in with it on the sea, he conducted all to the camp.  Now there was with him in the army a man in other respects contemptible enough and of no note, but of the family of the Africani, and his name was Scipio Sallutio;[563] and as Caesar heard that the enemy relied on a certain old oracular answer, that it was always the privilege of the family of the Scipios to conquer in Libya, either to show his contempt of Scipio as a general by a kind of joke, or because he really wished to have the benefit of the omen himself (it is difficult to say which), he used to place this Sallutio in the front of the battles as if he were the leader of the army; for Caesar was often compelled to engage with the enemy and to seek a battle, there being neither sufficient supply of corn for the men nor fodder for the animals, but they were compelled to take the sea-weed after washing off the salt and mixing a little grass with it by way of sweetening it, and so to feed their horses.  For the Numidians, by continually showing themselves in great numbers and suddenly appearing, kept possession of the country; and on one occasion while the horsemen of Caesar were amusing themselves with a Libyan, who was exhibiting to them his skill in dancing and playing on a flute at the same time in a surprising manner,