Whilst he now lay there in the chains of Armida, but not as Rinaldo, there arose in Italy a new misfortune which sprang from his love affair with Cleopatra. Octavian had led back his legions, and his veterans were about as insolent as in the times after the death of Commodus: it is surprising how for two centuries these wild beasts, in whose hands was the fate of the empire, still let themselves be kept under as subjects. Octavian had promised them the most flourishing municipal towns and colonies of Italy,—one cannot for certain make out which: in 710, the battle of Philippi took place; and in 711, the founding of the Julian colonies. (I trust that I shall one day ascertain these military colonies, with tolerable exactness.) Every one knows that Cremona, which had at first been a Latin colony, and afterwards since the _lex Julia_, a _municipium_, had become now—perhaps ever since the time of Sylla—a military colony: it was on this occasion that Virgil’s life was endangered. The allotments of those days far exceeded the old proportions: the fields around for many square miles were parcelled out, and a common soldier got from fifty to a hundred _jugera_, a centurion double, a tribune three times as much. If however, the territory of a place thus doomed would not suffice, there was cut off from a neighbouring district as much as was required to complete the assignments; for the soldier was everything. Thus when Cremona was allotted, a great part of Mantua was taken in, which otherwise would not have been divided; and Virgil moreover lived about three (Italian) miles from Mantua: from the distance between the two towns, one may learn what was the extent of such assignments. One can hardly form an idea of it! All the landed property was entirely taken away from the citizens, and given to the soldiers, from whom the countryman of course generally had his piece of ground again to farm; and perhaps he bought it all back, in the course of time, when the new possessor had lived too wastefully.