Dio's Rome, Volume 2: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English FormCassius Dio Cocceianus
History
Dio's Rome, Volume 2: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
Rome -- History
abused the loser and proposed that everything in the world which they
could devise be given to Caesar. In the course of it all there was a
great rivalry among practically all of the foremost men who were eager
to outdo one another in fawning upon him and voting pleasing measures.
By their shouts and by their gestures all of them as if Caesar were
present and looking on showed the very greatest zeal and deemed that in
return for it they would get immediately,--as if they were doing it to
please him at all and not from necessity,--the one an office, another a
priesthood, and a third some pecuniary reward. I shall omit those honors
which had either been voted to some others previously,--images, crowns,
front seats, and things of that kind,--or were novel and proposed now
for the first time, which were not also confirmed by Caesar: for I fear
that I might become wearisome, were I to enumerate them all. This same
plan I shall adopt in my later narrations, adhering the more strictly to
it, as the honors proposed grew more in number and more universal. Only
such as had some special and extraordinary importance and were then
confirmed will be set down. [-20-] They granted him, then, permission to
do whatever he liked to those who had favored Pompey's cause; it could
not be said that he had not already received this right from himself,
but it was intended that he might seem to be acting with some show of
legal authority. They appointed him lord of wars and peace (using the
confederates in Africa as a Pretext) in regard to all mankind, even
though he should make no communication on the subject to the people or
the senate. This was also naturally in his power before, inasmuch as he
had so large a force; and the wars he had fought he had undertaken
himself in nearly every case: nevertheless, because they wished still to
appear to be free and independent citizens, they voted him these rights
and everything else which it was in his power to have even against their
will. He received the privilege of being consul for five consecutive
years and of being chosen dictator not for six months but for an entire
year, and could assume the tribunician authority practically for life.
He was enabled to sit with the tribunes upon the same benches and to be
reckoned with them for other purposes,--a right commonly accorded to no
one. All the elections except those of the people were put in his hands
and for this reason they were delayed till after his arrival and were
carried on only toward the close of the year.[75] The governorships in
subject territory the citizens themselves of course allotted to the
consuls, but they voted that Caesar might give them to the praetors
without the casting of lots: for they had gone back to consuls and
praetors again contrary to their decrees. And another practice which had
the sanction of custom, indeed, but in the corruption of the times might
justly be deemed a cause of hatred and resentment, formed the matter of
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