[-11-] Agrippa on being sent at this time, as described from Sicily to Rome, transacted whatever business was urgent and was later assigned to the Gauls. The inhabitants there were at war among themselves and were being harshly used by the Celtæ. After settling those troubles he went over to Spain. For the Cantabri, who had been captured alive in the war and had been sold, severally killed their masters, returned home, and united many for a revolt. With the aid of these accessions they occupied available sites, walled them about and concocted schemes against the Roman garrisons. It was against this tribe that Agrippa led an expedition, but he had some trouble also with the soldiers. Not a few of them were too old, exhausted by the succession of wars, and in fear of the Cantabri, whom they regarded as hard to subdue; and they consequently would not obey him. However, by admonition, exhortation, and the hopes that he held out[4] he soon made them yield obedience: in fighting the Cantabri, on the other hand, he met with many failures. They had the advantage of experience in affairs, since they had been slaves to the Romans, and of despair of ever gaining safety again in case of capture. Agrippa lost numbers of his soldiers and degraded numerous others because they had been defeated; among other actions he prohibited a whole division called the Augustan from being so named any longer; still, after a long time he destroyed nearly all of the enemy who were of age for warfare. He deprived the rest of their arms and made them go down from the heights to the flat lands. Yet he made no communication about them to the senate and did not accept the triumph although voted in accordance with instructions from Augustus. In these matters he showed moderation, as was his wont, and when asked once by the consul for an opinion in a case concerning his brother he would not give it. At his own expense he brought in the so-called Parthenian water-supply and named it the Augustan. In this the emperor took so great delight that once when a great scarcity of wine had arisen and persons were making a terrible to-do about it, he declared that Agrippa had carefully seen to it that they should never perish of thirst. [-12-]Such was the character of this man. Of the rest many both made a triumph their object and celebrated it, not for rendering these same services, but some for having arrested robbers and others for quieting cities that were in a state of turmoil. For Augustus, at first at least, bestowed these rewards lavishly upon some and honored a very great number with public burials. Those persons, then, gained splendor by these fêtes; but Agrippa was advanced by him to a position of comparative independence. Augustus saw that the public business required strict attention and feared that he might, as often happens in such cases, become the victim of plots. [B.C. 18 (a. u. 736)]