Dio's Rome, Volume 3: 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 3: 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
[-47-] Caesar while giving the soldiers the money also expressed to them
his fullest and sincerest thanks. He did not even venture to enter
the senate-chamber without a guard of them. To the senate he showed
gratitude, but it was all fictitious and pretended. For he was accepting
as if it were a favor received from willing hands what he had attained
by violence. And they actually took great credit to themselves for their
behavior, as if they had given him the office voluntarily; and moreover
they granted to him whom previously they had not even wished to choose
consul the right after his term expired to be honored, as often as he
should be in camp, above all those who were consuls at one time or
another. To him on whom they had threatened to inflict penalties, because
he had gathered forces on his own responsibility without the passing of
any vote, they assigned the duty of collecting others: and to the man for
whose disenfranchisement and overthrow they had ordered Decimus to
fight with Antony they added Decimus's legions. Finally he obtained the
guardianship of the city, so that he was able to do everything that he
wished according to law, and he was adopted into Caesar's family in the
regular way, as a consequence changing his name. He had, as some think,
been even before this accustomed to call himself Caesar, as soon as this
name was bequeathed to him together with the inheritance. He was not,
however, exact about his title, nor did he use the same one in dealing
with everybody until at this time he had ratified it in accordance with
ancestral custom, and was thus named, after his famous predecessor, Gaius
Julius Caesar Octavianus. For it is the custom when a person is adopted
for him to take most of his appellation from his adopter but to keep one
of his previous names slightly altered in form. This is the status of the
matter, but I shall call him not Octavianus but Caesar, because this name
has prevailed among all such as secure dominion over the Romans. He took
another one in addition, namely _Augustus_, and therefore the subsequent
emperors assume it. That one will be given when it comes up in the
history, but until then the title Caesar will be sufficient to show that
Octavianus is indicated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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