called for by the registered lists and everything else that was owing the government since before the period of the civil wars, abolished certain taxes, and refused to accept the priesthood of Lepidus, which was offered to him; for it was not lawful to take away the appointment from a man still alive. At this time they voted him many other distinctions. Some at once declared that this striking magnanimity of his at this time was due to the calumnies of Antony and of Lepidus and was intended to lay the blame of former unjust behavior upon them alone. Others said that since he was unable in any way to collect the debts he made of the people's impotency a favor that cost him nothing. In spite of this various talk that gained currency in different quarters they now resolved that a house be presented to him from the public treasury. He had made the place on the Palatine which he had bought to erect a structure public property, and had consecrated it to Apollo, because a thunderbolt descended upon it. Hence they voted him the house and protection from any insult by deed or word. Any one who committed such an offence was to be bound by the same penalties as prevailed in the case of a tribune. For he received permission to sit upon the same benches with them. [-16-] These were the gifts bestowed upon Caesar by the senate. As for him, he enrolled among the augurs above the proper number, Valerius Messala, whom he previously in the proscriptions condemned to death, made the people of Utica citizens, and gave orders that no one should wear purple clothing except senators and such as held public office. For it had been already appropriated by ordinary individuals in a few cases. In this same year there was no aedile owing to a lack of candidates, and the praetors and the tribunes performed the aediles' duties: also no praetor urbanus was appointed for the Feriae, but some of the regular praetors discharged his functions. Other matters in the city and in the rest of Italy were under the charge of one Gaius Maecenas, a knight, both then and for a long time afterward.