[-2-] Cæsar spent some of his private means upon the festivals, and when money was needed for the public treasury he borrowed it and supplied the want. For the management of this branch of the service he ordered two annual magistrates to be chosen from among the ex-prætors. To the populace he distributed a quadruple allowance of grain and made a present of money to some of the senators. For many of them had grown so poor as not to be willing to be even ædile on account of the great expenses. Moreover the courts which belonged to the ædileship were to be assigned to the prætors as had been the custom, the more important to the prætor urbanus and the others to the prætor peregrinus. Again, he himself appointed the prætor urbanus, as he often did subsequently. The pledges deposited with the public treasury before the battle of Actium he released, save any that involved house property, and burned the old acknowledgments of those who owed the State anything. Egyptian rites he did not admit within the pomerium, but paid great attention to the temples of Egyptian deities. Such as had been built by private individuals he ordered their children and descendants, if any survived, to repair, and the rest he restored himself. He did not, however, appropriate the credit for their building but allowed it to rest with those who had originally constructed them. And since very many unlawful and unjust ordinances had been passed during the internecine strifes and in the wars, and particularly in the dual reign of Antony and Lepidus, he abolished them all by one promulgation, setting his sixth consulship as the limit of their existence. As he obtained approbation and praise for this act he desired to exhibit another instance of magnanimity, that by such a policy he might be honored the more and that his supremacy might be voluntarily confirmed by the people, which would enable him to avoid the appearance of having forced them against their will. As a consequence, after apprising those senators with whom he was most intimate of his designs, he entered the senatorial body in his seventh consulship and read the following document. [B.C. 27 (_a. u._ 727)]