King Eumenes came to Rome, who had played a middle course in the Macedonian war. Lest he should seem either to be judged an enemy, if he were shut out, or to be cleared of the charge, if he were admitted, a law was passed in general terms that it should not be lawful for any king to come to Rome. Claudius Marcellus the consul subdued the Alpine Gauls, Gaius Sulpicius Gallus the consul the Ligurians. The envoys of King Prusias complained about Eumenes, that he was ravaging his borders, and said that he had conspired with Antiochus against the Roman people. An alliance was joined with the Rhodians at their entreaty. A lustrum was completed by the censors: there were registered 337,022 citizen heads. The princeps senatus was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, driven from his kingdom by his younger brother, was restored by legates sent to him. Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, having died, his son Ariarathes received the kingdom and renewed the friendship with the Roman people through legates. It contains besides affairs conducted against the Ligurians and the Corsicans and the Lusitanians with varying outcome, and the disturbances of Syria on the death of Antiochus, who had left a son Antiochus, quite a boy. This boy Antiochus, with Lysias his guardian, Demetrius son of Seleucus—who had been a hostage at Rome, and had escaped secretly from Rome because he was not being released—killed, and was himself received into the kingdom. Lucius Aemilius Paulus, who had conquered Perseus, died. His abstinence was so great that, although he had brought back immense wealth from Spain and from Macedonia, scarcely was there realized from the auction of his estate enough to pay back the dowry to his wife. The Pomptine marshes were drained by Cornelius Cethegus the consul, to whom that task had fallen, and farmland was made from them.

A fine was imposed on Gnaeus Tremellius the praetor, because he had contended injuriously with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus the pontifex maximus; and the right of the sacred office proved more powerful than that of the magistracies. A law on electoral bribery was passed. A lustrum was completed by the censors: there were registered 328,316 citizen heads. The princeps senatus, for the sixth time, was Aemilius Lepidus. Between the Ptolemy brothers, who were at variance, a treaty was struck, that the one should reign over Egypt, the other over Cyrene. Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, driven from his kingdom by the counsel and the forces of Demetrius king of Syria, was restored by the Senate. Men were sent by the Senate to judge between Masinissa and the Carthaginians about land. Gaius Marcius the consul fought against the Dalmatians at first with little success, afterward successfully. The cause of warring with them was that they had ravaged the Illyrians, allies of the Roman people; and Cornelius Nasica the consul subdued the same nation. Quintus Opimius the consul subdued the Transalpine Ligurians, who were ravaging the Massiliot towns Antipolis and Nicaea. It contains besides affairs conducted in Spain by several commanders with little success. The consuls, in the five hundred and ninety-eighth year from the founding of the city, began to enter their magistracy on the Kalends of January; the cause of changing the elections was that the Spaniards were in rebellion. The legates sent to arbitrate between the Carthaginians and Masinissa announced that they had detected a quantity of naval timber at Carthage. Several praetors, accused on the charge of avarice in their provinces, were condemned.

A lustrum was completed by the censors: there were registered 324,000 citizen heads. The seeds of the third Punic war are reported. When in the territory of the Carthaginians a huge army of Numidians under the leader Ariobarzanes, grandson of Syphax, was said to be, Marcus Porcius Cato urged that war be declared on the Carthaginians, who held within their borders an army summoned ostensibly against Masinissa, in fact against the Romans. Publius Cornelius Nasica speaking against it, it was resolved to send legates to Carthage to spy out what was being done. The Senate of the Carthaginians having been chastised because, against the treaty, they had both an army and naval timber, the legates wished to make peace between them and Masinissa, Masinissa yielding the land about which was the dispute. But Gisgo son of Hamilcar, a seditious man who was then in office, when the Senate had said it would abide by the judgment, so stirred up the people by urging war against the Romans that the legates barely escaped violence by flight. Reporting this, they made the Senate, already hostile, more bitter still toward the Carthaginians. Marcus Porcius Cato made the funeral of his son, who had died in his praetorship, with the slenderest expense he could—for he was poor. Andriscus, who with vast asseveration falsely claimed to be the son of Perseus, once king of Macedonia, was sent to Rome. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who had been chosen princeps senatus now by six pairs of censors, before he died charged his sons to carry him out on a strewn bed, without linens, without purple, and to spend on the rest of the funeral no more than a trifling sum of bronze: the funerals of great men, he said, were wont to be ennobled by the show of ancestral masks, not by expense. An inquiry was made about poisonings. Publilia and Licinia, noble women, who were charged with having killed their consular husbands, the case heard, when they had given sureties to the praetor, were put to death by the decree of their kinsmen. Gulussa, son of Masinissa, announced that levies were being held at Carthage, a fleet prepared, and without doubt war contrived. When Cato urged that war be declared on them, Publius Cornelius Nasica saying that nothing should be done rashly, it was resolved to send ten legates to investigate. Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Aulus Postumius Albinus the consuls, when they held the levy strictly and dismissed no one through favor, were thrown into prison by the tribunes of the plebs, who could not obtain exemption for their friends. When the Spanish war, conducted several times with little success, had so confounded the Roman state that not even men could be found who would either take up the tribunate or be willing to go as legates, Publius Cornelius Aemilianus came forward and professed that he would undertake whatever kind of military service was commanded; by which example he roused all to a zeal for soldiering. Lucullus the consul, when Claudius Marcellus, whom he had succeeded, seemed to have pacified all the peoples of Celtiberia, subdued the Vaccaei and the Cantabri and other nations hitherto unknown in Spain. There Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, son of Lucius Paulus, grandson of Africanus but by adoption, as a military tribune killed a barbarian challenger, and in the storming of the city Intercatia incurred a still greater peril: for he was the first over the wall. Servius Sulpicius Galba the praetor fought badly against the Lusitanians. When the legates from Africa returned with the spokesmen of the Carthaginians and Gulussa son of Masinissa, and said that they had detected both an army and a fleet at Carthage, it was resolved to take a poll of opinions. Cato and other chiefs of the Senate urging that the army be at once transported into Africa, since Cornelius Nasica said that there did not yet seem to him a just cause of war, it was resolved that they abstain from war if the Carthaginians burned their fleet and dismissed their army; if not, the next consuls should refer about the Punic war. When a theater, let out by the censors, was being built, on the authority of Publius Cornelius Nasica—as useless and likely to harm public morals—it was destroyed by decree of the Senate, and the people for some while watched the games standing. The Carthaginians, when, against the treaty, they had made war on Masinissa—conquered by him, then ninety-two years old and accustomed to chew dry bread without any relish—earned besides a Roman war. It reports besides the disturbances of Syria and the wars waged between the kings; among which disturbances Demetrius, king of Syria, was killed.

The third Punic war began in the six hundred and second year from the founding of the city, [and was] completed within the fifth year from its beginning. Between Marcus Porcius Cato and Scipio Nasica—of whom the one was held the wisest man in the state, the other had even been judged the best man by the Senate—it was contended with opposite opinions, Cato urging war and that Carthage be removed and destroyed, Nasica dissuading. It was resolved, however—because they had ships against the treaty, because they had led an army outside their borders, because they had borne arms against Masinissa, an ally and friend of the Roman people, because they had not received his son Gulussa, who was with the Roman legates, into their town—that war be declared on them. Before any forces were put aboard the ships, the envoys of Utica came to Rome, surrendering themselves and all their goods. That embassy, like an omen, was welcome to the fathers, bitter to the Carthaginians. Games to Father Dis were held at Tarentum, according to the prescription of the books, which had been held a hundred years before, in the first Punic war, in the five hundred and second year from the founding of the city. Thirty legates came to Rome, through whom the Carthaginians surrendered themselves. Cato’s opinion prevailed, that they persist in the decree, and that the consuls set out for the war at the earliest time. When these had crossed into Africa, the three hundred hostages they had demanded received, and all the arms and engines of war that were at Carthage, when by the authority of the fathers they ordered them to build their town in another place, provided it were removed not less than ten miles from the sea, by the indignity of the thing they drove the Carthaginians to war. Carthage began to be besieged and assaulted by Lucius Marcius and Manius Manilius the consuls. In which assault, when two tribunes had rashly burst in with their cohorts at one part where the walls were neglected, and were being heavily cut down by the townsmen, they were extricated by Scipio; through whom too a Roman fort, which the enemy were storming by night, was relieved with the help of a few horsemen, and, the camp relieved which the Carthaginians, gone out from the city with all their forces, were storming, he himself bore the chief glory of it. Moreover, when the consul—for the other had gone to Rome for the elections—was leading his army from the fruitless assault of Carthage against Hasdrubal, who with an ample band had occupied an unfavorable pass, he advised the consul at first not to fight in so unfavorable a place; then, overcome by the opinions of several who envied both his prudence and his valor, he himself too entered the pass. When, as he had foretold, the Roman army had been routed and put to flight, and two cohorts were being besieged by the enemy, with a few squadrons of horse, returning into the pass, he freed them and brought them back unharmed. Which valor of his even Cato, a man of a tongue readier to blame, so followed up in the Senate that he said the rest who served in Africa were flitting shades, but Scipio was vigorous; and the Roman people embraced him with such favor that at the elections very many tribes wrote him down as consul, though this was not lawful for his age. When Lucius Scribonius the tribune of the plebs had promulgated a bill that the Lusitanians—who, having surrendered to the good faith of the Roman people, had been sold by Servius Galba in Gaul—be restored to liberty, Marcus Cato most fiercely urged it; the speech is extant, included in his own Annals. Quintus Fulvius Nobilior, often torn at by him in the Senate, answered for Galba. Galba himself too, when he saw that he was being condemned, embracing his two sons in their bordered togas and the son of Sulpicius Galus, whose guardian he was, spoke so pitiably for himself that the bill was rejected. Three of his speeches are extant: two delivered against Libo the tribune of the plebs and his bill about the Lusitanians, one against Lucius Cornelius Cethegus, in which he confesses that the Lusitanians who had their camp near him were cut down, because he had ascertained that—a horse and a man sacrificed after their custom—they had it in mind, under the appearance of peace, to attack his army.

A certain Andriscus, a man of the lowest lot, claiming to be the son of King Perseus and, his name changed, called Philippus, when he had secretly fled from the city of Rome—whither Demetrius king of Syria had sent him for this very lie—with many flocking to his false tale as if to a true one, an army gathered, occupied all Macedonia, either by the will of the inhabitants or by arms. He had moreover invented such a tale: that he was sprung from a concubine and King Perseus, and handed over to a certain Cretan to be reared, so that in the chances of the war which Perseus was waging with the Romans some seed, as it were, of the royal stock might survive; that he had been reared at Adramyttium up to the twelfth year of his age, believing that man to be his father by whom he was reared, ignorant of his own descent; then, that man failing, when he was near the last end of his life, his origin was at length disclosed to him, and a document given to his false mother, sealed with the seal of King Perseus, which she should hand to him when he came to manhood, with last solemn charges added that the matter be kept secret until that time; that to him, come to puberty, the document was handed, in which two treasures were said to have been left to him by his father; then, to him knowing that the woman was a substitute and ignorant of his true stock, she revealed his descent and solemnly charged him that, before the matter should leak to Eumenes, an enemy of Perseus, he depart from those places, lest he be killed. Terrified at this, and at the same time hoping for some aid from Demetrius, he betook himself into Syria, and there first dared openly to declare who he was.

Thessaly, when the Pseudo-Philip wished to invade and occupy it too by arms, was defended, through the legates of the Romans, by the auxiliaries of the Achaeans. Prusias, king of Bithynia, a man of all the basest vices, was killed by his son Nicomedes, with the help of Attalus king of Pergamum. He had another son, who is said to have had, in place of the upper row of teeth, one continuous bone grown there. When three legates were sent by the Romans to make peace between Nicomedes and Prusias, since one of these had a head scarred with many scars, another was lame in the feet, the third was reckoned dull of wit, Marcus Cato said that this embassy had neither head nor feet nor heart. In Syria, which at that time had a king equal to the king of the Macedonians in stock of descent, [but] like Prusias in sloth and inertia—lying in cookshops and brothels—Hammonius reigned, through whom all the king’s friends and Queen Laodice and Antigonus son of Demetrius were killed. Masinissa, king of Numidia, more than ninety years old, died, a remarkable man. Among other youthful feats which he performed to the last, he so flourished even in the use of love in old age that after his eighty-sixth year he begot a son. Among his three children (the eldest by birth Micipsa, [then] Gulussa, [and] Mastanabal, who was also learned in Greek letters), Publius Scipio Aemilianus—since their father had left the kingdom common to them and had ordered them to divide it with Scipio as arbiter—divided the parts of administering the kingdom. Likewise he persuaded Phameas Himilco, the prefect of the Carthaginian cavalry, a brave man whose chief service the Carthaginians made use of, to cross over to the Romans with his cavalry. Of the three legates who had been sent to Masinissa, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, a storm having arisen, was overwhelmed by the waves. The Carthaginians killed Hasdrubal, grandson of Masinissa, whom they had as their general, a man suspected of treason, in the Senate house; which suspicion arose from this, that he was a kinsman of Gulussa, who was aiding the Roman auxiliaries. Publius Scipio Aemilianus, when he was seeking the aedileship, was named consul by the people. Since by reason of his years it was not lawful for him to be made consul, with great contention of the plebs voting for him and the fathers opposing him for some while, he was released from the laws and created consul. Manius Manilius stormed several towns set around Carthage. The Pseudo-Philip in Macedonia, Publius Iuventius the praetor cut down with his army, was conquered and captured by Quintus Caecilius, and Macedonia was recovered.

Carthage, lying in a circuit of twenty-three miles, was besieged with great toil and taken part by part: first by Mancinus the legate, then by Scipio the consul, to whom outside the lot Africa had been given as his province. The Carthaginians, a new harbor made (because the old had been blocked by Scipio) and an ample fleet secretly assembled in a short time, fought unsuccessfully in a naval battle. The camp too of Hasdrubal, their leader, set near the town Nepheris in a difficult place, was destroyed with its army by Scipio, who at last stormed [the city] in the seven hundredth year from its founding; the greater part of the spoils was returned to the Sicilians from whom they had been taken. At the final destruction of the city, when Hasdrubal had surrendered to Scipio, his wife—who a few days before had not been able to obtain from her husband that they desert to the victor—threw herself, with her two children, from the citadel into the midst of the blazing fire of the burning city. Scipio, after the example of his father Aemilius Paulus, who had conquered Macedonia, held games and cast deserters and runaways to the beasts. The seeds of the Achaean war are reported—namely this: that the Roman legates were assaulted at Corinth by the Achaeans, [legates] sent to separate from the Achaean council those states which had been under the sway of Philip.

With the Achaeans, who had the Boeotians and the Chalcidians as auxiliaries, Quintus Caecilius Metellus joined battle at Thermopylae; these conquered, their leader Critolaus took his own life by poison. In his place Diaeus, the first author of the Achaean rising, created leader by the Achaeans, was conquered at the Isthmus by Lucius Mummius the consul. He, all Achaia received in surrender, destroyed Corinth by decree of the Senate, because the Roman legates had been violated there. Thebes too and Chalcis, which had been auxiliaries, were destroyed. Lucius Mummius himself acted the part of a most abstinent man, nor did anything from those works and ornaments which most-wealthy Corinth possessed come into his house. Quintus Caecilius Metellus triumphed over Andriscus, Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus over Carthage and Hasdrubal. Viriathus in Spain—first from a shepherd a hunter, from a hunter a brigand, soon made the leader even of a regular army—occupied all Lusitania, and, M. Vetilius the praetor’s army routed, captured the praetor; after whom C. Plautius the praetor conducted the matter no more happily; and that enemy brought such great terror that against him there was need both of a consular leader and a consular army. It reports besides the disturbances of Syria and the wars waged between the kings. Alexander, a man unknown and of uncertain stock, Demetrius the king having been killed (as was said before), reigned in Syria. Him Demetrius son of Demetrius—who had once been sent away by his father to Cnidus on account of the uncertain chances of war—despising his sloth and inertia, with the help of Ptolemy king of Egypt, whose daughter Cleopatra he had taken in marriage, killed in war. Ptolemy, gravely wounded in the head, during the treatment, while the physicians tried to trephine the bones, expired; and in his place his younger brother Ptolemy, who reigned at Cyrene, succeeded. Demetrius, on account of the cruelty which he exercised on his own people through tortures, conquered in war by a certain Diodotus—one of his subjects, who claimed the kingdom for the son of Alexander, [a boy] of two years old—fled to Seleucea. Lucius Mummius triumphed over the Achaeans; he carried in the triumph bronze and marble statues and painted tablets.

Appius Claudius the consul subdued the Salassi, an Alpine nation. Another Pseudo-Philip in Macedonia was cut down with his army by Lucius Tremellius the quaestor. Quintus Caecilius Metellus the proconsul cut down the Celtiberians, and by Quintus Fabius the proconsul a great part of Lusitania was recovered, several cities stormed. Acilius the senator writes Roman history in Greek.

Quintus Pompeius the consul in Spain subdued the Termestini. With the same and with the Numantines he made a peace [later] invalidated by the Roman people. A lustrum was completed by the censors: there were registered 328,442 citizen heads. When the Macedonian legates had come to complain about Decimus Iunius Silanus the praetor, that, monies received, he had despoiled the province, and the Senate wished to take cognizance of their complaints, Titus Manlius Torquatus, the father of Silanus, asked and obtained that the cognizance be entrusted to himself; and, the case heard at home, he condemned his son and disowned him. And he was not even present at his funeral, when the son had ended his life by hanging, but, sitting at home, gave audience to those consulting him, after his custom. Quintus Fabius the proconsul put a stain upon his prosperous affairs in Spain by making peace with Viriathus on equal terms. Viriathus was killed by traitors at the instigation of Servilius Caepio, and was much lamented by his army and nobly buried—a great man and leader, who through the fourteen years in which he waged war with the Romans was more often the superior.

Publius Cornelius Nasica—whose surname was Serapio, imposed by the mocking tribune of the plebs Curiatius—and Decimus Iunius Brutus the consuls, holding the levy, a deed of most wholesome example was done in the sight of the recruits. For Gaius Matienius was accused before the tribunes of the plebs of having deserted the army from Spain, and, condemned, was long beaten with rods under the fork and sold for a single sesterce. The tribunes of the plebs, because they could not obtain leave to exempt ten soldiers each, whom they wished, ordered the consuls to be led to prison. Iunius Brutus the consul in Spain gave land and a town to those who had served under Viriathus, which was called Valentia. Marcus Popilius, by the Numantines—with whom the peace made the Senate had voted to be invalid—was routed and put to flight with his army. To Gaius Hostilius Mancinus the consul, as he sacrificed, the chickens flew out of the cage; then, as he was boarding ship to set out for Spain, the voice fell upon his ear, “Stay, Mancinus”: which auspices were proved sad by the event. For, conquered by the Numantines and stripped of his camp, when there was no hope of saving the army, he made an ignominious peace with them, which the Senate forbade to be ratified. Forty thousand Romans had been conquered by four thousand Numantines. Decimus Iunius subdued Lusitania by the storming of cities as far as the Ocean; and when the soldiers were unwilling to cross the river Oblivion, the standard snatched from the standard-bearer, he himself carried it across and so persuaded them to cross. Alexander’s son, king of Syria, scarcely ten years old, was killed through treachery by Diodotus, surnamed Tryphon, his guardian, the physicians being bribed, who, falsely reporting to the people that he was being consumed by the pain of the stone, killed him while they cut.

Decimus Iunius Brutus in Farther Spain fought successfully against the Gallaeci. With a different outcome Marcus Aemilius Lepidus the proconsul conducted the matter against the Vaccaei and suffered a disaster like that at Numantia. For the freeing of the people from the religious obligation of the Numantine treaty, Mancinus, since he had been its author, was handed over to the Numantines, [but] not received. A lustrum was completed by the censors: there were registered 317,933 citizen heads. Fulvius Flaccus the consul subdued the Vardaei in Illyricum. Marcus Cosconius the praetor in Thrace fought successfully with the Scordisci. When the Numantine war, by the fault of the leaders, was lasting on, not without public shame, the consulship was conferred unsought upon Scipio Africanus by the Senate and the Roman people; and since it was not lawful for him to take it, on account of the law which forbade anyone to be made consul a second time, he was, as in his former consulship, released from the laws. A slave war that had arisen in Sicily, when it could not be suppressed by the praetors, was entrusted to Gaius Fulvius the consul. The beginning of this war was Eunus, a slave, by nation a Syrian, who, a band of rustic slaves gathered and the workhouses broken open, filled out the number of a regular army. Cleon too, another slave, gathered up to seventy thousand slaves; and, their forces joined, they often waged war against the Roman army.

Scipio Africanus besieged Numantia and recalled the army, corrupted by license and luxury, to the strictest military discipline. He cut away all the instruments of pleasure; he cast two thousand harlots out of the camp; he kept the soldier daily at work and made him carry thirty days’ grain and seven stakes. To one walking with difficulty under the burden he said: “When you have learned to fence yourself with the sword, leave off carrying the stake.” To another bearing his shield not handily enough, [he said] that he carried a shield larger than was right, and that he did not blame him for it, since he used the shield better than the sword. The soldier whom he caught out of his rank, if he were a Roman, he beat with vine-rods, if a foreigner, with rods. He sold all the pack-animals, lest they should unburden the soldier. Often he fought successfully against the enemy’s sallies. The Vaccaei, besieged, their children and wives slaughtered, killed themselves. Scipio said that he would accept on the tribunal the most ample gifts sent to him by Antiochus king of Syria—whereas it had been the custom for other commanders to conceal the gifts of kings—and ordered the quaestor to enter them all in the public records: out of these he would give rewards to brave men. When he had shut up Numantia on all sides with a siege and saw the besieged hard pressed by famine, he forbade the enemy who had gone out to forage to be killed, because, he said, they would the more quickly consume the grain they had, if they were the more.

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus the tribune of the plebs, when he brought an agrarian law against the will of the Senate and the equestrian order—that no one should possess more than a thousand iugera of public land—blazed into such madness that he stripped Marcus Octavius his colleague, who defended the cause of the opposite party, of his office by a law passed, and created himself and his brother Gaius Gracchus and Appius Claudius his father-in-law triumvirs for dividing the land. He promulgated another agrarian law too, by which he might open up land more widely for himself, [namely] that the same triumvirs should judge what was public land, what private. Then, when there was less land than could be divided without offense even to the plebs—since he had incited them to a cupidity of hoping for an ample measure—he showed that he would promulgate a law that to those who ought to receive land under the Sempronian law the money which had been King Attalus’s should be divided. Now Attalus, king of Pergamum, son of Eumenes, had left the Roman people his heir. The Senate was gravely moved by so many indignities, before all Titus Annius the consular, who, when he had spoken against Gracchus in the Senate, [was] dragged by him to the people and handed over to the plebs, [and] again harangued against him before the rostra. When Gracchus wished to be created tribune of the plebs a second time, on the authority of Publius Cornelius Nasica he was killed on the Capitol by the optimates, struck first with the fragments of a bench, and, among others who had been killed in the same sedition, thrown unburied into the river. It contains besides affairs conducted in Sicily, with various outcome, against the runaways.

The Numantines, compelled by famine, slaughtered one another by turns, surrendering themselves; the captured city Scipio Africanus destroyed and triumphed over it, in the fourteenth year after Carthage was destroyed. Publius Rupilius the consul in Sicily made an end of the war with the runaways. Aristonicus, son of King Eumenes, occupied Asia, although by the testament of King Attalus the things bequeathed to the Roman people ought to be free. Against him Publius Licinius Crassus the consul—when he was also pontifex maximus, which had never before been done, and so set out beyond Italy—was conquered in battle and killed. Marcus Perperna the consul received the conquered Aristonicus in surrender. Quintus Pompeius and Quintus Metellus—then for the first time both made censors from the plebs—completed a lustrum: there were registered 318,823 citizen heads, besides male and female wards and widows. Quintus Metellus the censor proposed that all be compelled to take wives for the sake of begetting children. His speech is extant, which Augustus Caesar, when he was treating of the marrying of the orders, recited in the Senate as though written for these very times. Gaius Atinius Labeo the tribune of the plebs ordered Quintus Metellus the censor—by whom, in the choosing of the Senate, he had been passed over—to be cast from the rock; which, that it should not be done, the other tribunes of the plebs gave aid. When Carbo the tribune of the plebs had brought a bill that it be lawful to create the same man tribune of the plebs as often as one wished, Publius Africanus dissuaded his bill in a most weighty speech, in which he said that the killing of Tiberius Gracchus seemed lawful. Gaius Gracchus urged the bill on the contrary, but Scipio prevailed. Wars waged between Antiochus of Syria and Phrahates king of the Parthians, and the no more quiet affairs of Egypt, are reported. Ptolemy, surnamed Euergetes, hateful to his own people for excessive cruelty, the palace set on fire by the people, secretly fled to Cyprus; and when the kingdom had been given by the people to his sister Cleopatra—whom, his own daughter, a virgin, having ravished by force and taken in marriage, he had repudiated—incensed, he killed the son whom he had by her in Cyprus, and sent his head and hands and feet to the mother. Seditions were stirred up by the triumvirs Fulvius Flaccus and Gaius Gracchus and Gaius Papirius Carbo, created for dividing the land; and when Publius Scipio Africanus opposed these, and, hale and strong, had betaken himself home the day before, he was found dead in his bedchamber. Sempronia his wife was suspected, as though she had given him poison—chiefly because she was the sister of the Gracchi, with whom Africanus had a feud. About his death, however, no inquiry was held. He being dead, the triumviral seditions blazed more sharply. Gaius Sempronius the consul against the Iapydes at first conducted the matter badly; soon by a victory he amended the disaster received, through the valor of Decimus Iunius Brutus, the same who had subdued Lusitania.

Lucius Aurelius the consul subdued the rebelling Sardinians. Marcus Fulvius Flaccus first subdued the Transalpine Ligurians in war, sent to the aid of the Massiliots against the Salluvian Gauls, who were ravaging the borders of the Massiliots. Lucius Opimius the praetor received in surrender the Fregellani, who had revolted, and destroyed Fregellae. A pestilence in Africa, from a huge multitude of locusts and then from the heap of the slain locusts, is reported to have arisen. A lustrum was completed by the censors: there were registered 394,736 citizen heads. Gaius Gracchus, brother of Tiberius, tribune of the plebs, more eloquent than his brother, brought several pernicious laws, among them a grain law, that grain be given to the plebs at six and a third asses; a second, an agrarian law, which his brother too had brought; a third, by which he might corrupt the equestrian order, then in agreement with the Senate, [namely] that six hundred from the equites be enrolled into the Senate-house, and, since at those times there were only three hundred senators, that six hundred equites be mingled with three hundred senators—that is, that the equestrian order should have twice as much strength in the Senate. And, his tribunate continued into a second year, agrarian laws passed, he brought it about that several colonies be founded in Italy, and one on the soil of destroyed Carthage; whither, himself created triumvir, he led a colony. It contains besides affairs conducted by Quintus Metellus the consul against the Baleares, whom the Greeks call Gymnesii, because they spend the summer naked. The Baleares are named from the casting of a missile, or from Balius, a companion of Hercules left there when Hercules sailed to Geryon. The disturbances too of Syria are reported, in which Cleopatra killed Demetrius her husband and Seleucus her son—indignant because, his father killed, he had taken the diadem without her order.

Gaius Sextius the proconsul, the nation of the Salluvii conquered, founded the colony Aquae Sextiae, so called both from the abundance of water from its hot and cold springs and from his own name. Gnaeus Domitius the proconsul fought successfully against the Allobroges at the town Vindalium. The cause of making war on them was that they had received Toutomotulus king of the Salluvii in his flight and aided him with all help, and that they had ravaged the fields of the Aedui, allies of the Roman people. Gaius Gracchus, his seditious tribunate ended, when he had occupied the Aventine too with an armed multitude, was driven out and killed by Lucius Opimius the consul, the people called to arms by decree of the Senate; and with him Fulvius Flaccus the consular, partner of the same madness. Quintus Fabius Maximus the consul, grandson of Paulus, fought successfully against the Allobroges and Bituitus king of the Arverni. Of Bituitus’s army 120,000 were killed; he himself, when he had set out for Rome to give satisfaction to the Senate, was given to Alba to be guarded, because it seemed against the peace that he be sent back into Gaul; it was also decreed that Congonnetiacus his son, arrested, be sent to Rome. The Allobroges were received in surrender. Lucius Opimius, accused before the people by Quintus Decius the tribune of the plebs because he had thrown uncondemned citizens into prison, was acquitted.

Quintus Marcius the consul stormed the Styni, an Alpine nation. Micipsa king of Numidia died, leaving the kingdom to three sons: Adherbal, Hiempsal, [and] Jugurtha, the son of his brother, whom he had adopted. Lucius Caecilius Metellus subdued the Dalmatians. Jugurtha attacked his brother Hiempsal in war, who, conquered, was killed. He expelled Adherbal from the kingdom; [Adherbal] was restored by the Senate. Lucius Caecilius Metellus and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus the censors removed thirty-two from the Senate. It contains besides the disturbances of Syria and of the kings.

Gaius Porcius the consul in Thrace fought badly against the Scordisci. A lustrum was completed by the censors: there were registered 394,336 citizen heads. Aemilia, Licinia, and Marcia, Vestal virgins, were condemned of unchastity, and how that unchastity was both committed and detected and punished is reported. The Cimbri, a wandering people, came plundering into Illyricum: by these Papirius Carbo the consul was routed with his army. Livius Drusus the consul fought successfully against the Scordisci, a nation sprung from the Gauls, in Thrace.

Adherbal, attacked in war by Jugurtha and besieged in the town Cirta, against the warning of the Senate, was killed by him; and on account of this, war was declared on Jugurtha, and Calpurnius Bestia the consul, ordered to wage it, made peace with Jugurtha without the order of the people and the Senate. Jugurtha, summoned under public safe-conduct to point out the authors of his plans—because he was said to have corrupted many in the Senate with money—came to Rome; and on account of the murder committed upon a certain princeling named Massiva, who, while Jugurtha was hateful to the Roman people, was aspiring to his kingdom and was killed at Rome, when he was in peril of pleading a capital cause, he secretly fled, and, leaving the city, is reported to have said: “O venal city, and soon to perish, if it find a buyer!” Aulus Postumius the legate, an unsuccessful battle fought against Jugurtha, added too an ignominious peace, which the Senate voted should not be kept.

Quintus Caecilius Metellus the consul routed Jugurtha in two battles and ravaged all Numidia. Marcus Iunius Silanus the consul fought unsuccessfully against the Cimbri. To the legates of the Cimbri demanding a seat and lands in which to settle, the Senate refused. Marcus Minucius the proconsul fought successfully against the Thracians. Lucius Cassius the consul was cut down with his army by the Tigurine Gauls—a canton of the Helvetii who had seceded from their state—in the borders of the Nitiobroges. The soldiers who had survived that slaughter, hostages given and half of all their goods, made terms with the enemy that they might be dismissed unharmed.

Jugurtha, driven from Numidia by Gaius Marius—when he had been aided by the help of Bocchus king of the Moors, and the forces of Bocchus too had been cut down in battle—Bocchus being unwilling to sustain longer a war unsuccessfully undertaken, was bound by him and handed over to Marius; in which matter the chief service was that of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the quaestor of Gaius Marius.

Marcus Aurelius Scaurus, the consul’s legate, his army routed by the Cimbri, was captured; and when, summoned by them to their council, he deterred them from crossing the Alps to make for Italy—because, he said, the Romans could not be conquered—he was killed by Boiorix, a fierce young man. By the same enemies Gnaeus Manlius the consul and Quintus Servilius Caepio the proconsul, conquered in battle, were stripped of both their camps; eighty thousand soldiers were killed, and forty thousand camp-followers and sutlers, according to Antias, at Arausio. Of Caepio, by whose rashness the disaster had been incurred, the goods were confiscated—the first since King Tarquinius—and his command was abrogated. In the triumph of Gaius Marius, Jugurtha was led before his chariot with his two sons, and killed in prison. Marius came into the Senate in his triumphal robe, which no one had done before him; and, on account of fear of the Cimbric war, his consulship was continued for several years: a second and a third time he was created consul in his absence, and he attained a fourth consulship by seeking it under dissimulation. Gnaeus Domitius was created pontifex maximus by the people’s vote. The Cimbri, all that is between the Rhone and the Pyrenees being ravaged, crossed over through a pass into Spain; and there, having ravaged many places, they were put to flight by the Celtiberians, and, returning into Gaul, joined themselves to the Teutones among the Veliocasses.

Marcus Antonius the praetor pursued the sea-robbers—that is, the pirates—into Cilicia. Gaius Marius the consul defended his camp, assaulted with the utmost force by the Teutones and the Ambrones; then in two battles around Aquae Sextiae he destroyed the same enemies, in which two hundred thousand of the enemy are reported to have been killed, ninety thousand captured. Marius, absent, was created consul a fifth time. The triumph offered, he put it off until he should conquer the Cimbri too. The Cimbri, having repulsed from the Alps and put to flight Quintus Catulus the proconsul, who was holding the jaws of the Alps—who, [though] he abandoned a fort set on high which he had occupied by the river Atesis, was yet, by his own valor, extricated, and followed the fleeing proconsul and his army—had crossed over into Italy; and, the armies of the same Catulus and of Gaius Marius joined, they were conquered in battle, in which a hundred and forty thousand of the enemy are reported to have been killed, sixty thousand captured. Marius, received by the consent of the whole state, was content with one triumph instead of the two which were offered. The chiefs of the state, who for some while had envied him as a new man raised to such great honors, confessed that the commonwealth had been saved by him. Publicius Malleolus, his mother killed, was the first to be sewn up in a sack and cast into the sea. The sacred shields are reported to have moved with a noise before the Cimbric war was finished. It contains besides wars waged between the kings of Syria.

Lucius Apuleius Saturninus, with the help of Gaius Marius and with his competitor Aulus Nunnius killed by the soldiers, created tribune of the plebs by violence, conducted his tribunate no less violently than he had sought it; and when he had carried an agrarian law by violence, he named a day for trial for Metellus Numidicus, because he had not sworn to it. He, when he was defended by good citizens, lest he be a cause of contests, set out into voluntary exile to Rhodes, and there, by hearing and reading great men, found distraction. After his departure Gaius Marius—the author of the sedition, who had bought his sixth consulship by money scattered through the tribes—interdicted him from water and fire. The same Apuleius Saturninus, tribune of the plebs, killed Gaius Memmius, candidate for the consulship, because he feared him as an adversary to his proceedings. By which things the Senate being roused—into whose cause Gaius Marius too, a man of a various and changeable disposition and counsel, always according to fortune, had crossed over—he was overwhelmed by arms, with Glaucia the praetor and other partners of the same madness, and killed in a kind of war. Quintus Caecilius Metellus was brought back from exile with the vast favor of the whole state. Manius Aquilius the proconsul in Sicily finished a slave war that had been stirred up.

When Manius Aquilius pleaded a cause of extortion, he himself was unwilling to entreat the judges; Marcus Antonius, who was speaking for him, tore the tunic from his breast, to show the honorable scars. He was acquitted beyond doubt. Cicero is the sole authority for this matter. Titus Didius the proconsul fought successfully against the Celtiberians. Ptolemy king of Cyrene, whose surname was Apion, died, leaving the Roman people his heir, and the Senate ordered the states of that kingdom to be free. Ariobarzanes was restored to the kingdom of Cappadocia by Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The legates of the Parthians, sent by king Arsaces, came to Sulla to seek the friendship of the Roman people. Publius Rutilius, a man of the highest innocence, because as legate of Gaius Mucius the proconsul he had defended Asia from the injuries of the publicans, hateful to the equestrian order—in whose hands the courts were—condemned of extortion, was sent into exile. Gaius Sentius the praetor fought unsuccessfully against the Thracians. The Senate, unwilling to bear the unchecked power of the equestrian order in exercising the courts, began to strive with all force to transfer the courts to itself, Marcus Livius Drusus the tribune of the plebs sustaining its cause; who, that he might acquire strength for himself, roused the plebs by the pernicious hope of largesses. It contains besides the disturbances of Syria and of the kings.

Marcus Livius Drusus the tribune of the plebs, that he might protect with greater strength the cause undertaken by the Senate, solicited the allies and the Italian peoples by the hope of Roman citizenship; and with their help, by violence agrarian and grain laws passed, he carried a judiciary law too, that the courts be in equal part in the hands of the Senate and the equestrian order. Then, when the citizenship promised to the allies could not be made good, the Italians, angered, began to plot defection. Their meetings and conspiracies and speeches in the councils of their chiefs are reported. On account of these things Livius Drusus, made hateful even to the Senate as the author, as it were, of a social war, was killed at home—by whom is uncertain.

The Italian peoples revolted: the Picentes, the Vestini, the Marsi, the Paeligni, the Marrucini, the Samnites, the Lucani. The war begun by the Picentes, Quintus Servilius the proconsul, in the town Asculum, with all the Roman citizens who were in that town, was killed. The people put on the military cloak. Servius Galba, seized by the Lucanians, was rescued from captivity by the help of a single woman at whose house he was lodging. Aesernia and Alba, colonies, were besieged by the Italians. Then the auxiliaries of the Latin name and of foreign nations sent to the Roman people, and the expeditions and stormings of cities on either side, are reported.

Lucius Iulius Caesar the consul fought badly against the Samnites. The colony Nola came into the power of the Samnites, with Lucius Postumius the praetor, who was killed by them. Several peoples defected to the enemy. When Publius Rutilius the consul had fought with little success against the Marsi and had fallen in that battle, Gaius Marius his legate joined battle with the enemy with a better outcome. Servius Sulpicius routed the Paeligni in battle. Quintus Caepio, Rutilius’s legate, when, besieged, he had successfully burst out upon the enemy, and on account of that success his command had been made equal to that of Gaius Marius, becoming rash and surrounded by an ambush, his army routed, fell. Lucius Iulius Caesar the consul fought successfully against the Samnites. On account of that victory the military cloaks were laid aside at Rome. And, that the fortune of war might be various, the colony Aesernia, with Marcus Marcellus, came into the power of the Samnites. But Gaius Marius too routed the Marsi in battle, Herius Asinius, praetor of the Marrucini, being killed. Gaius Caecilius in Transalpine Gaul conquered the rebelling Salluvii.

Gnaeus Pompeius routed the Picentes in battle and besieged them; on account of which victory the bordered togas and the other insignia of the magistracies were taken up again at Rome. Gaius Marius fought with the Marsi with a doubtful outcome. Freedmen then for the first time began to serve as soldiers. Aulus Plotius the legate conquered the Umbrians in battle, Lucius Porcius the praetor the Etruscans, when each people had defected. Nicomedes was restored to the kingdom of Bithynia, Ariobarzanes to that of Cappadocia. Gnaeus Pompeius the consul conquered the Marsi in the field. When the state was oppressed by debt, Aulus Sempronius Asellio the praetor, because he was giving judgment in favor of the debtors, was killed in the forum by those who practiced usury. It contains besides the incursions of the Thracians into Macedonia and their ravagings.

Aulus Postumius Albinus the legate, when he was in command of the fleet, infamous on a charge of treason, was killed by his own army. Lucius Cornelius Sulla the legate conquered the Samnites in battle and stormed two of their camps. Gnaeus Pompeius received the Vestini in surrender. Lucius Porcius the consul, his affairs prosperously conducted and the Marsi several times routed, while he stormed their camp, fell. That event gave the enemy the victory of that battle. Cosconius and Lucceius conquered the Samnites in the field, killed Marius Egnatius, the most noble of the enemy’s leaders, and received several of their towns in surrender. Lucius Sulla subdued the Hirpini, routed the Samnites in several battles, recovered several peoples, and—with such exploits as scarcely any other ever achieved before his consulship—set out for Rome to seek the consulship.

Aulus Gabinius the legate, his affairs prosperously conducted against the Lucanians and very many towns stormed, fell in the siege of the enemy’s camp. Sulpicius the legate cut down the Marrucini and recovered that whole region. Gnaeus Pompeius the proconsul received the Vestini and the Paeligni in surrender. The Marsi too, broken in several battles by Lucius Cinna and Caecilius Pius the legates, began to seek peace. Asculum was captured by Gnaeus Pompeius. The Italians cut down too by Mamercus Aemilius the legate, Silo Poppaedius, leader of the Marsi, the author of that affair, fell in battle. Ariobarzanes was driven from the kingdom of Cappadocia, Nicomedes from that of Bithynia, by Mithridates king of Pontus. It contains besides the incursions of the Thracians into Macedonia and their ravagings.

When Publius Sulpicius the tribune of the plebs, on the authority of Gaius Marius, had promulgated pernicious laws—that the exiles be recalled, and the new citizens and the freedmen be distributed among the thirty-five tribes, and that Gaius Marius be created leader against Mithridates king of Pontus—and had done violence to the consuls Quintus Pompeius and Lucius Sulla who opposed it, Quintus Pompeius the son of Quintus Pompeius the consul, son-in-law of Sulla, being killed, Lucius Sulla the consul came with his army into the city and fought against the faction of Sulpicius and Marius in the city itself, and drove it out. Of which faction twelve were judged enemies by the Senate, among them Gaius Marius father and son. Publius Sulpicius, when he lay hid in a certain villa, dragged forth by the information of his slave, was killed. The slave, that he might have the reward promised to an informer, was freed, and, for the crime of betraying his master, cast from the rock. Gaius Marius the son crossed over into Africa. Gaius Marius the father, when he lay hid in the marshes of Minturnae, was dragged out by the townsmen; and when the slave, by nation a Gaul, sent to kill him, terrified by the majesty of so great a man, had drawn back, he was put aboard a ship at public expense and carried into Africa. Lucius Sulla ordered the constitution of the state, then led out colonies. Quintus Pompeius the consul, having set out to take over the army from Gnaeus Pompeius the proconsul, was killed by his contrivance. Mithridates, king of Pontus, Bithynia and Cappadocia occupied and Aquilius the legate driven out, entered Phrygia, a province of the Roman people, with a huge army.

Mithridates occupied Asia; he threw Quintus Oppius the proconsul, and likewise Aquilius the legate, into chains; and by his order whatever Roman citizens were in Asia were slaughtered in one day. The city Rhodes, which alone had remained in the loyalty of the Roman people, he assaulted, and, conquered in several naval battles, withdrew. Archelaus the king’s prefect came into Greece with an army [and] occupied Athens. It contains besides the alarm of the cities and the islands, some drawing their states to Mithridates, others to the Roman people.

Lucius Cornelius Cinna the consul, when he was carrying pernicious laws by violence and arms, driven from the city by Gnaeus Octavius his colleague, with six tribunes of the plebs, and his command abrogated, brought the corrupted army of Appius Claudius into his own power and made war upon the city, Gaius Marius summoned from Africa with the other exiles. In which war two brothers, the one from Pompey’s army, the other from Cinna’s, unknowing met in combat; and when the victor was despoiling the slain, his brother recognized, a lamentation of his ill fortune raised, a pyre built for him, he ran himself through above the pyre and was consumed in the same fire. And though it could have been suppressed in its beginnings, through the treachery of Gnaeus Pompeius—who, by favoring each side, gave strength to Cinna and brought no aid until the cause of the optimates was ruined—and through the sloth of the consul, Cinna and Marius, strengthened, with four armies (of which two were given to Quintus Sertorius and to Carbo), besieged the city. Marius stormed the colony Ostia and cruelly plundered it.

Citizenship was given by the Senate to the Italian peoples. The Samnites, who alone were taking up arms again, joined themselves to Cinna and Marius. By these Plautius the legate was cut down with his army. Cinna and Marius, with Carbo and Sertorius, assaulted the Janiculum, and, put to flight by Octavius the consul, withdrew. Marius stormed the colonies Antium and Aricia and Lanuvium. When there was no hope for the optimates of resisting, on account of the sloth and treachery both of the leaders and of the soldiers—who, corrupted, either would not fight or crossed over to the opposite side—Cinna and Marius were received into the city; who, as though it had been captured, laid it waste with slaughters and plunderings, Gnaeus Octavius the consul killed and all the nobles of the opposite party slaughtered, among them Marcus Antonius, a most eloquent man, [and] Gaius and Lucius Caesar, whose heads were set up on the rostra. Crassus the son was killed by the horsemen of Fimbria. Crassus the father, lest he suffer anything unworthy of his valor, ran himself through with a sword. And, without any elections, they declared themselves consuls for the following year; and on the same day on which they entered their magistracy, Marius ordered Sextus Licinius the senator to be cast from the rock, and, very many crimes committed, died on the Ides of January—a man of whom, if his vices be weighed against his virtues, it would not be easy to say whether he was better in war or more pernicious in peace. So much so that the commonwealth which, in arms, he saved, he afterward, first in the toga by every kind of fraud, at the last in arms, overthrew in the manner of an enemy.

Lucius Sulla, besieging Athens—which Archelaus the prefect of Mithridates had occupied—and storming it with great toil, restored to the city its liberty and what it had possessed. Magnesia, which alone of the states in Asia had remained in loyalty, was defended against Mithridates with the utmost valor. It contains besides the incursions of the Thracians into Macedonia.

Sulla conquered in battle the king’s forces, which, Macedonia occupied, had come into Thessaly, a hundred thousand of the enemy killed and the camp too stormed. Then, the war renewed, he again routed and destroyed the king’s army. Archelaus, with the royal fleet, surrendered himself to Sulla. Lucius Valerius Flaccus the consul, the colleague of Cinna, sent to succeed Sulla, hateful to his own army for avarice, was killed by Gaius Fimbria his own legate, a man of the utmost audacity, and the command transferred to Fimbria. It contains besides the cities in Asia stormed by Mithridates, and the province cruelly plundered, [and] the incursions of the Thracians into Macedonia.

Flavius Fimbria in Asia, several prefects of Mithridates routed in battle, took the city Pergamum, and was not far from capturing the besieged king. The city Ilium, which was reserving itself for the power of Sulla, he stormed and destroyed, and recovered a great part of Asia. Sulla cut down the Thracians in several battles. When Lucius Cinna and Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, consuls created by themselves for two years, were preparing war against Sulla, it was brought about—through Lucius Valerius Flaccus the princeps senatus, who delivered a speech in the Senate, and through those who were zealous for concord—that legates be sent to Sulla about peace. Cinna was killed by his own army, which he was unwillingly compelling to board ship and set out against Sulla. Carbo conducted the consulship alone. Sulla, when he had crossed into Asia, made peace with Mithridates on these terms: that he yield these provinces—Asia, Bithynia, Cappadocia. Fimbria, deserted by his army, which had crossed over to Sulla, struck himself, and obtained from his slave, offering his neck, that he kill him.

Sulla answered the legates who had been sent by the Senate that he would be in the power of the Senate, if the citizens who, driven out by Cinna, had fled to him were restored. When that condition seemed just to the Senate, through Carbo and his faction—to whom war seemed more useful—it was brought about that no agreement be reached. The same Carbo, when he wished to exact hostages from all the towns and colonies of Italy, to bind their loyalty against Sulla, was prevented by the consensus of the Senate. The suffrage was given to the new citizens by decree of the Senate. Quintus Metellus Pius, who had followed the party of the optimates, when he was attempting war in Africa, was driven out by Gaius Fabius the praetor; and a decree of the Senate was made, through the faction of Carbo and the Marian party, that all armies everywhere be disbanded. The freedmen were distributed among the thirty-five tribes. It contains besides the preparation of the war which was being roused against Sulla.

Sulla crossed over into Italy with his army; and, legates sent to treat of peace and violated by the consul Gaius Norbanus, he conquered the same Norbanus in battle. And when he was about to assault the camp of Lucius Scipio, the other consul—with whom he had done everything to join peace, and had not been able—the whole army of the consul, solicited by soldiers sent out by Sulla, transferred its standards to Sulla. Scipio, though he could have been killed, was let go. Gnaeus Pompeius, son of that Gnaeus Pompeius who had taken Asculum, an army of volunteers enrolled, had come to Sulla with three legions—to whom all the nobility betook itself, so that, the city deserted, men came to the camp. It contains besides the expeditions through all Italy of the leaders of both parties.

When Gaius Marius, son of Gaius Marius, had been created consul by violence twenty years before [the lawful age], Gaius Fabius in Africa, on account of his cruelty and avarice, was burned alive in his own headquarters. Lucius Philippus, Sulla’s legate, occupied Sardinia, Quintus Antonius the praetor driven out and killed. Sulla struck a treaty with the Italian peoples, lest he be feared by them as one about to snatch away the citizenship and the right of suffrage lately given. Likewise, from confidence of a victory now certain, he ordered litigants, by whom he was approached, to bring their recognizances to Rome, although the city was still held by the opposite party. Lucius Damasippus the praetor, by the will of Gaius Marius the consul, when he had assembled the Senate, slaughtered all the nobility that was in the city. Of whose number Quintus Mucius Scaevola, pontifex maximus, fleeing, was killed in the vestibule of the temple of Vesta. It contains besides the war renewed by Lucius Murena against Mithridates in Asia.

Sulla besieged Gaius Marius—his army routed and destroyed at Sacriportus—in the town Praeneste, and recovered the city of Rome from the hands of his enemies. He repulsed Marius attempting to break out. It contains besides affairs conducted by his legates everywhere, with the same fortune of the parties.

Sulla, Carbo’s army cut down at Clusium, at Faventia, and at Fidentia, drove Carbo out of Italy; with the Samnites, who alone of the Italian peoples had not yet laid down their arms, he fought it out near the city of Rome before the Colline Gate; and, the commonwealth recovered, he stained a most beautiful victory with cruelty such as was in no man. He slaughtered eight thousand who had surrendered in the Villa Publica; he set up a tablet of proscription; he filled the city and all Italy with slaughters, among which he ordered all the Praenestines, unarmed, to be cut down, and killed Marius, a man of the senatorial order—his legs and arms broken, his ears cut off and his eyes gouged out. Gaius Marius, besieged at Praeneste by Lucretius Afella, a man of the Sullan party, when through a tunnel he tried to escape the army that hemmed him in, took his own life. (That is: in the tunnel itself, when he perceived that he could not escape, he ran together in combat with Telesinus, the companion of his flight, drawn swords on both sides; and when he had killed him, himself wounded, he obtained from a slave that he kill him.)

Marcus Brutus, sent by Gnaeus Papirius Carbo—who had put in at Cossyra—in a fishing boat to Lilybaeum, to spy out whether Pompey was already there, and surrounded by the ships which Pompey had sent, the point turned upon himself, leaning against the thwart of the ship, fell upon it by the weight of his body. Gnaeus Pompeius, sent into Sicily with command by the Senate, killed Gnaeus Carbo captured, who bore his death with womanish weeping. Sulla, made dictator—which no one had ever done—came forth with twenty-four fasces. By new laws he strengthened the constitution of the commonwealth, diminished the power of the tribunes of the plebs, and took from them all right of bringing laws. He enlarged the college of pontiffs and augurs, that they be fifteen; he filled up the Senate from the equestrian order; he took from the children of the proscribed the right of seeking offices, and sold their goods, of which he seized very much. There was realized three hundred and fifty million sesterces. He ordered Quintus Lucretius Afella—who had dared to seek the consulship against his will—to be killed in the forum; and when the Roman people took this ill, an assembly called, he said that he had ordered it. Gnaeus Pompeius in Africa killed Gnaeus Domitius the proscribed and Hierta, king of Numidia, who were attempting war, conquered; and, twenty-four years old, still a Roman knight—which had fallen to no one—he triumphed from Africa. Gaius Norbanus the consular, proscribed, when he was being arrested in the city of Rhodes, killed himself. Mutilus, one of the proscribed, when secretly, his head covered, he had come to the back doors of Bastia his wife, was not admitted, because she said he was proscribed; and so he ran himself through and spattered his wife’s doors with his blood. Sulla recovered Aesernia in Samnium. He settled forty-seven legions on captured lands and divided them among them. He received in surrender the besieged Volaterrae, a town still in arms. Mytilene too in Asia, the only city which after Mithridates was conquered retained its arms, was stormed and destroyed.

Sulla died, and an honor was paid him by the Senate, that he be buried in the Campus Martius. Marcus Lepidus, when he tried to rescind the acts of Sulla, roused a war. Driven from Italy by Quintus Catulus his colleague, and having attempted war in vain in Sardinia, he perished. Marcus Brutus, who held Cisalpine Gaul, was killed by Gnaeus Pompeius. Quintus Sertorius the proscribed roused a huge war in Farther Spain. Lucius Manlius the proconsul and Marcus Domitius the legate were conquered in battle by Hirtuleius the quaestor. It contains besides affairs conducted by Publius Servilius the proconsul against the Cilicians.

Gnaeus Pompeius, when he was still a Roman knight, was sent with consular command against Sertorius. Sertorius stormed several cities and reduced very many states into his power. Appius Claudius the proconsul conquered the Thracians in several battles. Quintus Metellus the proconsul cut down Lucius Hirtuleius, the quaestor of Sertorius, with his army.

Gnaeus Pompeius fought with Sertorius with a doubtful outcome, in such a way that the single wing on either side conquered. Quintus Metellus routed Sertorius and Perperna with two armies in battle; and Pompey, desiring to bear a part of that victory, fought with little success. Then, besieged at Clunia, Sertorius by continual sallies inflicted no lighter losses on the besiegers. It contains besides affairs conducted by Curio the proconsul in Thrace against the Dardani, and many cruel deeds of Quintus Sertorius against his own men, who killed very many of his friends and of those proscribed with him, charged with the crime of treason.

Publius Servilius the proconsul in Cilicia subdued the Isaurians and stormed several cities of the pirates. Nicomedes king of Bithynia made the Roman people his heir, and his kingdom was reduced into the form of a province. Mithridates, a treaty struck with Sertorius, made war on the Roman people. Then the preparation of the royal forces, foot and naval; and, Bithynia occupied, Marcus Aurelius Cotta the consul conquered in battle by the king at Chalcedon; and the affairs of Pompey and Metellus against Sertorius were equal in all the arts of war and soldiering, and they forced [Sertorius’s men], driven from the siege of the town Calagurris, to make for different regions, Metellus Farther Spain, Pompey Gaul.

Lucius Licinius Lucullus the consul fought successfully against Mithridates in cavalry battles and made several prosperous expeditions, and restrained from sedition his soldiers demanding battle. Deiotarus, tetrarch of Gallograecia, cut down the prefects of Mithridates who were making war in Phrygia. It contains besides affairs conducted by Gnaeus Pompeius in Spain against Sertorius.

Gaius Curio the proconsul subdued the Dardani in Thrace. Seventy-four gladiators fled from the school of Lentulus at Capua, and, a multitude of slaves and workhouse-men gathered, with Crixus and Spartacus as leaders, a war stirred up, they conquered in battle Claudius Pulcher the legate and Publius Varenus the praetor. Lucius Lucullus the proconsul, at the city Cyzicus, destroyed the army of Mithridates by famine and the sword; and the king, driven from Bithynia, broken by various chances of war and of shipwrecks, he forced to flee into Pontus.

Quintus Arrius the praetor cut down Crixus, leader of the runaways, with twenty thousand men. Gnaeus Lentulus the consul fought badly against Spartacus. By the same [Spartacus] Lucius Gellius the consul and Quintus Arrius the praetor were conquered in the field. Sertorius was killed by Marcus Perperna and Manius Antonius and other conspirators at a banquet, in the eighth year of his leadership—a great leader, and against two commanders, Pompey and Metellus, more often than not the victor; at the last both cruel and prodigal. The command of the party was transferred to Marcus [Perperna], whom Gnaeus Pompeius, conquered and captured, killed, and recovered the Spains in about the tenth year from when the war had begun. Gaius Cassius the proconsul and Gnaeus Manlius the praetor fought badly against Spartacus, and that war was entrusted to Marcus Crassus the praetor.

Marcus Crassus the praetor first fought successfully against a part of the runaways, which consisted of Gauls and Germans, thirty-five thousand of the enemy killed and their leaders Castus and Gannicus. Then he fought it out with Spartacus, sixty thousand killed with him. Marcus Antonius the praetor, a war against the Cretans undertaken with little success, ended it by his death. Marcus Lucullus the proconsul subdued the Thracians. Lucius Lucullus in Pontus fought successfully against Mithridates, more than sixty thousand of the enemy killed. Marcus Crassus and Gnaeus Pompeius, made consuls (Pompey by decree of the Senate, before he held the quaestorship, from a Roman knight), restored the tribunician power. The courts too were transferred to the Roman knights through Marcus Aurelius Cotta the praetor. Mithridates, compelled by despair of his affairs, fled to Tigranes king of Armenia.

Machares, son of Mithridates, king of the Bosporus, was received into friendship by Lucius Lucullus. Gnaeus Lentulus and Lucius Gellius the censors conducted a harsh censorship, sixty-four moved from the Senate. By these, a lustrum completed, there were registered 900,000 citizen heads. Lucius Metellus the praetor in Sicily conducted the matter prosperously against the pirates. The temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, which had been consumed by fire and rebuilt, was dedicated by Quintus Catulus. Lucius Lucullus in Armenia routed Mithridates and Tigranes and the huge forces of both kings in several battles. Quintus Metellus the proconsul, the war against the Cretans entrusted to him, besieged the city Cydonia. Gaius Triarius, Lucullus’s legate, fought with little success against Mithridates. A sedition of the soldiers held Lucullus back from pursuing Mithridates and Tigranes and setting the crown upon the victory, because they would not follow. (That is, the two Valerian legions, who, saying that their terms of service were complete, abandoned Lucullus.)

Quintus Metellus the proconsul stormed Cnossos and Lyctus and Cydonia and very many other cities. Lucius Roscius the tribune of the plebs brought a law that the fourteen nearest rows in the theater be assigned to the Roman knights. Gnaeus Pompeius, a law brought to the people, ordered to pursue the pirates—who had cut off the commerce of the grain-supply—drove them from the whole sea within the fortieth day; and, the war with them in Cilicia finished, the pirates received in surrender, he gave them lands and cities. It contains besides affairs conducted by Quintus Metellus against the Cretans, and the letters of Metellus and Gnaeus Pompeius sent to each other. Quintus Metellus complains that the glory of the things done by him is snatched away by Pompey, who has sent his own legate into Crete to receive the surrenders of the cities. Pompey gives the reason that he had to do this.

Gaius Manilius the tribune of the plebs, with great indignation of the nobility, brought a law that the Mithridatic war be entrusted to Pompey. His harangue was good. Quintus Metellus, the Cretans thoroughly subdued, gave laws to the island, free until that time. Gnaeus Pompeius, having set out to wage the war against Mithridates, renewed friendship with Phrahates king of the Parthians, and conquered Mithridates in a cavalry battle. It contains besides the war waged between Phrahates king of the Parthians and Tigranes of the Armenians, and then between the son Tigranes and his father.

Gnaeus Pompeius forced Mithridates, conquered in a night battle, to flee to the Bosporus. He received Tigranes in surrender and, Syria, Phoenice, and Cilicia taken away, restored to him the kingdom of Armenia. A conspiracy of those who had been condemned of bribery in seeking the consulship, [formed] for killing the consuls, was suppressed. Gnaeus Pompeius, while he pursued Mithridates, penetrated into the farthest and unknown nations; he conquered in battle the Iberi and the Albani, who did not grant him passage. It contains besides the flight of Mithridates through the Colchi and the Heniochi, and affairs conducted by him in the Bosporus.

Gnaeus Pompeius reduced Pontus into the form of a province. Pharnaces, son of Mithridates, made war on his father. Mithridates, besieged by him in the palace, when, poison taken, he had availed little toward death, was killed by a soldier, a Gaul named Bitocus, of whom he had asked that he help him. Gnaeus Pompeius subdued the Jews; their shrine Jerusalem, inviolate before that time, he took. Lucius Catilina, twice having suffered a repulse in seeking the consulship, conspired with Lentulus the praetor and Cethegus and several others about the slaughter of the consuls and the Senate, the burnings of the city, and the crushing of the commonwealth, an army too prepared in Etruria. That conspiracy was uncovered by the diligence of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Catilina driven from the city, punishment was taken on the rest of the conspirators.

Catilina was cut down with his army by Gaius Antonius the proconsul. Publius Clodius, accused because, in the garb of a woman, he had secretly entered the sacred place into which it is impious for a man to enter, and had debauched the wife of Metellus the pontifex, was acquitted. Gaius Pontinus the praetor subdued the Allobroges, who had rebelled, at Solo. Publius Clodius crossed over to the plebs. Gaius Caesar subdued the Lusitanians; and—he being a candidate for the consulship and seeking to invade the commonwealth—a conspiracy was made among the three chiefs of the state, Gnaeus Pompeius, Marcus Crassus, and Gaius Caesar. Agrarian laws were brought by Caesar the consul with great contention, the Senate unwilling and the other consul Marcus Bibulus opposed. Gaius Antonius the proconsul in Thrace conducted the matter with little success. Marcus Cicero, by a law brought by Publius Clodius the tribune of the plebs—because he had killed uncondemned citizens—was sent into exile. Caesar, having set out into the province of Gaul, subdued the Helvetii, a wandering people, who, seeking a seat, wished to make their way through Caesar’s Narbonese province. It contains besides the situation of the Gauls. Pompey triumphed over the children of Mithridates and over Tigranes son of Tigranes, and was hailed “the Great” by the whole assembly.

The first part of the book contains the situation and customs of Germany. Gaius Caesar, when he was leading an army against the Germans—who under the leader Ariovistus had crossed into Gaul—asked by the Aedui and the Sequani, whose land was being occupied, checked by an address to the army the trepidation of the soldiers that had arisen from fear of the new enemies, and, the Germans conquered in battle, drove them out of Gaul. Marcus Cicero, with Pompey among others exerting himself, and Titus Annius Milo the tribune of the plebs, with vast joy of the Senate and of all Italy, was brought back from exile. To Gnaeus Pompeius the care of the grain-supply was entrusted for five years. Caesar received in surrender the Ambiani, Suessiones, Viromandui, [and] Atrebates, peoples of the Belgae, of whom there was a huge multitude, conquered in battle; and then against the Nervii, one of these states, he fought at great risk and destroyed that nation, which waged war until, out of sixty thousand armed men, five hundred survived, and out of six hundred senators only three escaped. A law brought about reducing Cyprus into the form of a province and confiscating the royal money, the administration of that matter was entrusted to Marcus Cato. Ptolemy king of Egypt, on account of the injuries which he suffered from his own people, leaving his kingdom, came to Rome. Gaius Caesar conquered the Veneti, a nation joined to the Ocean, in a naval battle. It contains besides affairs conducted by his legates with the same fortune.

When, by the vetoes of Gaius Cato the tribune of the plebs, the elections were being abolished, the Senate changed its dress. Marcus Cato, in seeking the praetorship, Vatinius being preferred, suffered a repulse. The same, when he hindered the law by which provinces for five years were being given to the consuls—to Pompey the Spains, to Crassus Syria and the Parthian war—was led to prison by Gaius Trebonius the tribune of the plebs, the author of the law. Aulus Gabinius the proconsul brought Ptolemy back into the kingdom of Egypt, Archelaus cast out, whom they had adopted as king for themselves. The Germans conquered in Gaul, Caesar crossed the Rhine and subdued the nearest part of Germany; and then by the Ocean he crossed into Britain, at first with little success, the storms being adverse, a second time more happily; and, a great multitude of the enemy killed, he reduced some part of the island into his power.

Julia, daughter of Caesar, wife of Pompey, died, and an honor was paid her by the people, that she be buried in the Campus Martius. Several peoples of the Gauls revolted, with Ambiorix as leader, king of the Eburones; by whom Cotta and Titurius, Caesar’s legates, surrounded by an ambush with the army they commanded, were cut down. And when the camps of the other legions too, assaulted, had been defended with great toil—among them that over which, among the Treveri, Quintus Cicero commanded—the enemy were routed in battle by Caesar himself. Marcus Crassus, about to make war on the Parthians, crossed the river Euphrates; and, conquered in a battle in which his son too fell, when he had withdrawn the remnants of his army to a hill, summoned to a conference by the enemy, who pretended they would treat of peace—whose leader was Surenas—and seized, and, resisting lest he suffer anything alive, was killed.

Gaius Caesar, the Treveri conquered in Gaul, crossed again into Germany; and, no enemy found there, returning into Gaul, conquered the Eburones and the other states which had conspired, and pursued Ambiorix in his flight. The body of Publius Clodius—killed by Titus Annius Milo, candidate for the consulship, on the Appian Way at Bovillae—the plebs burned in the Senate house. When there were seditions among the candidates for the consulship, Hypsaeus, Scipio, and Milo, who contended with arms and violence, to suppress them Gnaeus Pompeius was made consul for the third time, in his absence and alone, which had never [happened] to any other. A court being decreed about the death of Publius Clodius, Milo, condemned by judgment, was driven into exile. A law was brought that account be taken of the absent Caesar in seeking the consulship, Marcus Cato unwilling and speaking against it. It contains besides affairs conducted by Gaius Caesar against the Gauls—who, almost all, with Vercingetorix the Arvernian as leader, revolted—and the laborious sieges of cities, among them Avaricum of the Bituriges and Gergovia of the Arverni.

Gaius Caesar conquered the Gauls at Alesia and received in surrender all the states of Gaul which had been in arms. Gaius Cassius, quaestor of Marcus Crassus, cut down the Parthians, who had crossed into Syria. In seeking the consulship Marcus Cato suffered a repulse, Servius Sulpicius and Marcus Marcellus being created consuls. Gaius Caesar subdued the Bellovaci with other peoples of the Gauls. It contains besides the contentions among the consuls about sending a successor to Gaius Caesar, Marcus Marcellus the consul moving in the Senate that Caesar come [in person] to seek the consulship, when, a law having been brought, he ought for that time to hold the provinces with a view to the consulship; and affairs conducted by Marcus Bibulus in Syria.

The causes of the civil arms and their beginnings are reported, and the contentions about sending a successor to Gaius Caesar, when he said he would not dismiss his armies unless they were dismissed by Pompey too. And it contains the proceedings of Gaius Curio the tribune of the plebs, first against Caesar, then for Caesar. When a decree of the Senate had been made that a successor be sent to Caesar, Marcus Antonius and Quintus Cassius the tribunes of the plebs—since by their vetoes they were hindering that decree of the Senate—being driven from the city, it was entrusted by the Senate to the consuls and to Gnaeus Pompeius that they see to it that the commonwealth take no harm. Gaius Caesar, about to pursue his enemies in war, came with his army into Italy, took Corfinium with Lucius Domitius and Publius Lentulus and dismissed them, [and] drove Gnaeus Pompeius and the rest of his party out of Italy.

Gaius Caesar besieged Massilia, which had closed its gates; and, his legates Gaius Trebonius and Decimus Brutus left in the siege of that city, having set out into Spain, he received in surrender Lucius Afranius and Marcus Petreius, Gnaeus Pompeius’s legates, with seven legions, at Ilerda, and dismissed them all unharmed, Varro too, Pompey’s legate, with his army reduced into his power. He gave citizenship to the Gaditani. The Massiliots, conquered in two naval battles, after a long siege surrendered themselves to the power of Caesar. Gaius Antonius, Caesar’s legate, his affairs conducted badly against the Pompeians in Illyricum, was captured; in which war the Opitergini of Transpadane Gaul, Caesar’s auxiliaries, their raft shut in by the enemy’s ships, rather than come into the power of the enemy, ran together among themselves and fell. Gaius Curio, Caesar’s legate in Africa, when he had fought successfully against Varus, leader of the Pompeian party, was cut down with his army by Juba king of Mauretania. Gaius Caesar crossed over into Greece.

Marcus Caelius Rufus the praetor, when he was stirring up seditions in the city, the plebs solicited by the hope of new account-books, his magistracy abrogated and himself driven from the city, joined himself to Milo the exile, who had gathered an army of runaways. Both, when they were attempting war, were killed. Cleopatra queen of Egypt was driven from her kingdom by Ptolemy her brother. On account of the avarice and cruelty of Quintus Cassius the praetor, the people of Corduba in Spain, with two Varronian legions, defected from the party of Caesar. Gnaeus Pompeius, besieged at Dyrrachium by Caesar, and—his garrisons stormed, with great disaster to the opposite party—freed from the siege, the war transferred into Thessaly, was conquered in battle at Pharsalus. Cicero remained in the camp, a man nothing less than born for wars. And all of the opposite party who had committed themselves to the power of the victor, Caesar pardoned.

The trepidation of the conquered party into the various parts of the world, and its flight, are reported. Gnaeus Pompeius, when he had made for Egypt, by the order of Ptolemy the king, his ward—on the advice of Theodotus the tutor, whose authority with the king was great, and of Pothinus—was killed by Achillas, to whom that crime had been delegated, in a little boat, before he went out onto land. Cornelia his wife and Sextus Pompeius his son fled to Cyprus. Caesar, pursuing after the third day, when Theodotus had offered him the head and the ring of Pompey, was angered and wept; he entered tumultuous Alexandria without peril. Caesar, created dictator, brought Cleopatra back into the kingdom of Egypt, and, with great risk to himself, overcame Ptolemy making war on him—on the advice of the same men by whom he had killed Pompey. Ptolemy, while he fled, sank in the Nile in a little boat. It contains besides the laborious march of Marcus Cato in Africa through the deserts with his legions, and the war waged by Gnaeus Domitius against Pharnaces with little success.

The Pompeian party confirmed in Africa, the command of it was conferred on Publius Scipio, Cato—to whom the command was offered on equal terms—yielding. And when there was deliberation about destroying the city Utica, on account of the favor of that state toward Caesar, and Marcus Cato had held it back, that this not be done, Juba urging that it be destroyed, the guardianship and custody of it was entrusted to Cato. Gnaeus Pompeius, son of Magnus, in Spain, forces gathered—the leadership of which neither Afranius nor Petreius wished to undertake—renewed the war against Caesar. Pharnaces, son of Mithridates, king of Pontus, was conquered without any delay of war. When seditions had been stirred up at Rome by Publius Dolabella the tribune of the plebs, bringing a law about new account-books, and on that account the plebs was in tumult, soldiers led into the city by Marcus Antonius the master of horse, eight hundred of the plebs were cut down. Caesar gave their discharge to the veterans, who demanded it in a sedition; and when he had crossed over into Africa, he fought against the forces of King Juba with great risk.

A war in Syria Caecilius Bassus, a Roman knight of the Pompeian party, stirred up, Sextus Caesar abandoned by the legion which had crossed over to Bassus, and killed. Caesar conquered Scipio the praetor and Juba at Thapsus, their camp stormed. Cato, the matter heard, when he had struck himself at Utica and was being treated, his son intervening, during the very treatment, the wound torn open, expired, in the forty-eighth year of his age. Petreius killed Juba and himself. Publius Scipio, surrounded in a ship, added to an honorable death this word too: for when the enemy asked for the commander, he said, “The commander is well.” Faustus and Afranius were killed. Pardon was given to Cato’s son. Brutus, Caesar’s legate in Gaul, conquered the rebelling Bellovaci in battle.

Caesar led four triumphs—over Gaul, over Egypt, over Pontus, over Africa—and gave a banquet and spectacles of every kind. To Marcus Marcellus, a consular, the Senate asking, he granted return; which benefit of his Marcellus could not enjoy, killed at Athens by Gnaeus Magius his client. He held a census, by which there were registered 150,000 citizen heads. Having set out into Spain against Gnaeus Pompeius, many expeditions made on both sides and several cities stormed, he attained the supreme victory, with great risk, at the city Munda. Pompeius—Sextus—escaped.

Caesar led a fifth triumph, over Spain. And when very many and very great honors had been decreed him by the Senate—among them that he be called Parent of the Fatherland, and be sacrosanct and dictator in perpetuity—they furnished a cause of ill-will against him, because, to the Senate offering these honors, when he was sitting before the temple of Venus Genetrix, he did not rise; and because, when by Marcus Antonius the consul, his colleague, running among the Luperci, a diadem had been placed upon his head, he laid it back upon the seat of state; and because Epidius Marullus and Caesetius Flavus, tribunes of the plebs, making ill-will against him as though aspiring to kingship, were deprived of their office. For these causes a conspiracy being made against him, the heads of which were Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius and, of Caesar’s own party, Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius, he was killed in the Senate house of Pompey with twenty-three wounds, and the Capitol seized by his slayers. Then, oblivion of his slaying being decreed by the Senate, and hostages received from Antony and Lepidus of their children, the conspirators came down from the Capitol. By Caesar’s testament Gaius Octavius, his sister’s grandson, was instituted heir to half the estate, and adopted into his name. Caesar’s body, when it was being carried into the Campus Martius, was burned by the plebs before the rostra. The honor of the dictatorship was abolished forever. Chamates, a man of the humblest lot, who gave himself out as the son of Gaius Marius, when he was stirring up seditions among the credulous plebs, was killed.

Gaius Octavius came to Rome from Epirus (for thither Caesar, about to wage war in Macedonia, had sent him ahead), and, received with prosperous omens, took the name of Caesar. In the confusion of affairs and the tumult, Marcus Lepidus intercepted the office of pontifex maximus. And when Marcus Antonius the consul was lording it without restraint, and had carried by violence a law about the exchange of provinces, and had afflicted Caesar too—who sought that Antony aid him against the murderers of his uncle—with great injuries, Caesar, about to prepare strength both for himself and for the commonwealth against him, roused up the veterans settled in the colonies. The legions too, the Fourth and the Martian, carried their standards from Antony to Caesar. Then several others, through the savagery of Marcus Antonius—who slaughtered here and there in his own camp those who were suspect to him—defected to Caesar. Decimus Brutus, to resist Antony seeking Cisalpine Gaul, occupied Mutina with an army. It contains besides the running-about of the men of both parties to take over the provinces, and the preparation of war.

Marcus Brutus in Greece, under the pretext of the commonwealth and of war undertaken against Marcus Antonius, reduced into his power the army over which Publius Vatinius was in command, along with the province. To Gaius Caesar, who as a private man had taken up arms for the commonwealth, command was given by the Senate as propraetor, with the consular ornaments, and it was added that he be a senator. Marcus Antonius besieged Decimus Brutus at Mutina; and legates sent to him by the Senate about peace availed little to compose it. The Roman people put on the military cloak. Marcus Brutus in Epirus subdued to his power Gaius Antonius the praetor with his army.

Gaius Trebonius in Asia was killed by the treachery of Publius Dolabella. For which crime Dolabella was judged an enemy by the Senate. When Pansa the consul had fought badly against Antony, Aulus Hirtius the consul, coming up with his army, the forces of Marcus Antonius routed, equaled the fortune of both parties. Then, conquered by Hirtius and Caesar, Antony fled into Gaul and joined to himself Marcus Lepidus with the legions which were under him; and he was judged an enemy by the Senate, with all who were within his garrisons. Aulus Hirtius, who after the victory had fallen in the very camp of the enemy, and Gaius Pansa, dead of a wound which he had received in an unsuccessful battle, were buried in the Campus Martius. Toward Gaius Caesar, who alone of the three leaders survived, the Senate was too little grateful, which, Decimus Brutus freed from the siege of Mutina by Caesar and the honor of a triumph decreed [to Brutus], held the mention of Caesar and his soldiers as too little welcome. On which account Gaius Caesar, favor reconciled through Marcus Lepidus with Marcus Antonius, came to Rome with his army; and, those who were unfair to him being struck by his arrival, when he was nineteen years old, he was created consul.

Gaius Caesar the consul brought a law about holding an inquiry into those by whose work his father had been killed; and, accused under that law, Marcus Brutus, Gaius Cassius, [and] Decimus Brutus were condemned in their absence. When Asinius Pollio too and Munatius Plancus, joined with their armies, had enlarged the forces of Marcus Antonius, Decimus Brutus—whom the Senate had ordered to pursue Antony—abandoned by his legions, by order of Antony, into whose power he had come in his flight, was killed by Capenus the Sequanian. Gaius Caesar made peace with Antony and Lepidus, on these terms: that they be triumvirs for ordering the commonwealth for five years—himself and Lepidus and Antony—and that each proscribe his own enemies. In which proscription there were very many Roman knights, the names of a hundred and thirty senators, and among them Lucius Paulus, brother of Marcus Lepidus, and Lucius Caesar, uncle of Antony, and Marcus Cicero. His head too—killed by Popillius a legionary soldier when he was sixty-three years old—with the right hand, was set up on the rostra. It contains besides affairs conducted by Marcus Brutus in Greece.

Gaius Cassius, to whom it had been entrusted by the Senate to pursue in war Dolabella, judged an enemy, aided by the authority of the commonwealth, reduced into his power Syria with the three armies which were in the same province, and forced Dolabella, besieged in the city Laodicea, to die. By the order of Marcus Brutus too, Gaius Antonius, captured, was killed.

Marcus Brutus conducted the matter against the Thracians with little success; and, all the transmarine provinces and armies reduced into the power of him and Gaius Cassius, both met at Smyrna to arrange the plans of the future war. They pardoned, by common counsel, Publicola the brother of Marcus Messala, [held] bound.

Sextus Pompeius, son of Magnus, the proscribed and the fugitives gathered from Epirus, with an army, having long plundered at sea without the possession of any place, occupied first the town Messana in Sicily, then the whole province; and, Pompeius Bithynicus the praetor killed, he conquered Quintus Salvidienus, Caesar’s legate, in a naval battle. Caesar and Antony crossed over with their armies into Greece, about to wage war against Brutus and Cassius. Quintus Cornificius in Africa conquered Titus Sextius, leader of the Cassian party, in battle.

Gaius Caesar and Antony fought at Philippi against Brutus and Cassius with a varying outcome, in such a way that the right wing of each conquered, and the camp too, on each side, was stormed by those who had conquered. But the death of Cassius made the fortune of the parties unequal: he, since he had been on that wing which had been routed, thinking the whole army routed, took his own life. Then on the second day Marcus Brutus, conquered, himself too ended his life, having entreated Strato, the companion of his flight, to drive the sword into him. He was about forty years old. Among them Quintus Hortensius was killed.

Caesar, Antony left across the sea (the provinces situated in that part of the empire had fallen to him), returning into Italy, divided lands among the veterans. He checked, with grave peril, the seditions of his army, which the soldiers, corrupted by Fulvia the wife of Marcus Antonius, had stirred up against their commander. Lucius Antonius the consul, brother of Marcus Antonius, with the same Fulvia counseling, made war on Caesar; and, the peoples whose lands had been assigned to the veterans received into his party, and Marcus Lepidus—who was in charge of the guard of the city with an army—routed, he burst into the city in hostile fashion.

Caesar, when he was twenty-three years old, forced Lucius Antonius, besieged in the town Perusia and several times having tried to break out and repulsed, by famine to come to surrender, and pardoned both him and all his soldiers, but destroyed Perusia. And, all the armies of the opposite party reduced into his power, he finished the war without any bloodshed.

The Parthians, with Labienus—who had been of the Pompeian party—as leader, burst into Syria, and, Decidius Saxa Marcus Antonius’s legate conquered, occupied that whole province. Marcus Antonius—when, to wage war against Caesar, his wife Fulvia had died, lest she stand in the way of the concord of the leaders—peace made with Caesar, took his sister Octavia in marriage. He dragged forth, by his own information, Quintus Salvidienus, who had plotted wicked counsels against Caesar; and he, condemned, took his own life. Publius Ventidius, Antony’s legate, drove the Parthians, conquered in battle, out of Syria, Labienus their leader killed. When Sextus Pompeius, an enemy neighboring Italy, held Sicily and hindered the commerce of the grain-supply, Caesar and Antony made with him the peace he demanded, on these terms, that he hold Sicily as his province. It contains besides the disturbances of Africa and the wars waged there.

When Sextus Pompeius again made the sea unsafe by his brigandage, and did not keep the peace which he had accepted, Caesar, a war undertaken against him of necessity, fought in two naval battles with a doubtful outcome. Publius Ventidius, Marcus Antonius’s legate, conquered the Parthians in Syria in battle and killed their king. The Jews too were subdued by Antony’s legates. It contains besides the preparation of the Sicilian war.

Against Sextus Pompeius it was fought in naval battles with a varying outcome, in such a way that, of Caesar’s two fleets, the one, over which Agrippa was in command, conquered, while the other, which Caesar had led, being destroyed, the soldiers landed on shore were in great peril. Then Pompeius, conquered, fled into Sicily. Marcus Lepidus—who had crossed over from Africa as though to a partnership of the war to be waged by Caesar against Sextus Pompeius—when he made war on Caesar too, abandoned by his army, the honor of the triumvirate abrogated, obtained [only] his life. Marcus Agrippa was presented by Caesar with a naval crown, an honor which had been paid to no one before him.

Marcus Antonius, while he reveled with Cleopatra, having slowly entered Media, made war on the Parthians with eighteen legions and sixteen thousand cavalry; and when, two legions lost, nothing going prosperously, he was retreating back, the Parthians pressing him continually, with vast trepidation and great peril of his whole army he returned into Armenia, having traversed in flight three hundred miles in twenty-one days. About eight thousand men he lost to storms. Storms too, hostile, on top of the Parthian war so unhappily undertaken, he suffered by his own fault, because he was unwilling to winter in Armenia while he hastened to Cleopatra.

Sextus Pompeius, when he came into the good faith of Marcus Antonius, attempting war against him in Asia, was overcome by his legates and killed. Caesar checked a sedition of the veterans, stirred up with great destruction, and subdued the Iapydes and the Dalmatians and the Pannonians. Antony ordered Artavasdes, king of Armenia, brought to him under a pledge given, to be thrown into chains, and gave the kingdom of Armenia to his own son born of Cleopatra—whom, long since captured by love of her, he had begun to hold in the place of a wife.

Caesar in Illyricum subdued the Dalmatians. When Marcus Antonius, on account of his love of Cleopatra—by whom he had two sons, Philadelphus and Alexander—would neither come into the city nor, the time of the triumvirate finished, lay down his command, and was attempting a war which he might bring upon the city and Italy, huge forces both naval and land gathered for this, and a repudiation sent to Octavia, Caesar’s sister, Caesar crossed over into Epirus with an army. Then the naval battles and cavalry engagements, favorable to Caesar, are reported.

Marcus Antonius, conquered at Actium by [Caesar’s] fleet, fled to Alexandria; and, besieged by Caesar, in the utmost despair of his affairs, driven especially by a false rumor of Cleopatra slain, killed himself. Caesar, Alexandria reduced into his power, Cleopatra—lest she come into the arbitrament of the victor—being dead by a voluntary death, returning into the city, led three triumphs: one over Illyricum, the second over the Actian victory, the third over Cleopatra, an end set to the civil wars in the twenty-second year. Marcus Lepidus, son of the Lepidus who had been triumvir, attempting war, a conspiracy made against Caesar, was suppressed and killed.

Gaius Caesar, affairs composed and all the provinces reduced into a fixed form, was surnamed Augustus too; and the month Sextilis was named in his honor. When he held an assembly at Narbo, a census was conducted of the three Gauls, which Caesar his father had conquered. Wars against the Bastarnae and the Moesi and other nations, waged by Marcus Crassus, are reported.

A war waged by Marcus Crassus against the Thracians, and by Caesar against the Spaniards, is reported, and the Salassi, an Alpine nation, thoroughly subdued.

[The summary is lost.]

[The summary is lost.]

The Raeti were subdued by Tiberius Nero and Drusus, Caesar’s stepsons. Agrippa, Caesar’s son-in-law, died. A census was conducted by Drusus.

The states of Germany, set on this side of the Rhine and across the Rhine, are assaulted by Drusus, and the tumult which had arisen in Gaul on account of the census is composed; the altar of the deified Caesar was dedicated at the confluence of the Arar and the Rhone, Gaius Iulius Vercondaridubnus the Aeduan being created its priest.

The Thracians subdued by Lucius Piso, likewise the Cherusci, Tencteri, Chauci, and other nations of the Germans across the Rhine subdued by Drusus, are reported. Octavia, sister of Augustus, died, having before lost her son Marcellus, whose memorials are the theater and the portico dedicated in his name.

A war waged against the nations across the Rhine by Drusus is reported, in which among the foremost fought Chumstinctus and Avectius, tribunes from the state of the Nervii. The Dalmatians and the Pannonians Nero, brother of Drusus, subdued. Peace was made with the Parthians, the standards which had been captured under Crassus and afterward under Antony being returned by their king.

A war waged against the states of the Germans across the Rhine by Drusus is reported. He himself, from a fracture—his horse having collapsed upon his leg—died on the thirtieth day after it had happened. His body was carried to Rome by his brother Nero—who, summoned by news of his illness, had hurried headlong to him—and laid in the tomb of Gaius Iulius. He was eulogized by Caesar Augustus his stepfather, and at his obsequies many honors were paid him.