Fabius Maximus, who had been left to blockade Munda, finally took the town. The historian's narrative is not intelligible; but he means, as I understand, that the town was captured with fourteen thousand in it: whether fourteen thousand soldiers or fourteen thousand persons, the author does not say. Urso was next attacked: it was naturally strong, and also defended by the walls. There was no water near, and no timber within six miles, for Pompeius had cut down all the trees and carried them into the town, so that the besiegers were under the necessity of bringing timber from Munda; if there was any there.

Caesar was at Gades during the sieges of Munda and Urso. Dion charges him with exacting a great deal of money from Southern Spain and especially with robbing the temple of Hercules at Gades of the valuable things which were dedicated in it. When Caesar returned to Hispalis, he addressed the people he said "that in his quaestorship he had particularly favoured the province; in his praetorship he had relieved it of the taxes imposed by Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius," introduced to the Roman Senate deputations from the province, and also had made himself many enemies in Rome by defending the interests of the province and of individuals; in his consulship also, though he was not then in Spain, he had done for the people all that he could: they had however forgotten these services and shown themselves ungrateful to him and to the Roman people." The historian then reports the rest of Caesar's speech in direct words: "Though you know the common usages of nations and of the Romans (jure gentium etc.), you have acted like barbarians and you have done violence more than once to the sacrosanct magistrates of Rome, and in open day in the middle of the Forum you wickedly attempted to kill Cassius (p. 281). You have been such foes to peace, that it has always been necessary to keep Roman legions in the province. You look on benefits as if they were wrongs, and on wrongs as benefits: and so you have never been able in time of peace to maintain concord nor in time of war to act like brave men. When Cn. Pompeius the son, a fugitive and

• Metellus was in the south of Spain, probably in B.C. 74. Vol. ii. p. 472, and vol. iii. p. 392.

merely a private person came among you, seized the fasces and assumed command, he put to death many citizens and got together a force to resist the Roman people; at your instigation he wasted the fields and the province. And what did you expect to gain by this? If I was destroyed, did you not know that the Roman people had legions enough not only to resist you, but even to pull down the heavens." Here the historian abruptly ends the rest of his work is lost. Caesar never uttered such words as those with which the speech terminates. Drumann conjectures that as in other like cases Caesar concluded with imposing a fine and rewarding those who had been faithful (Dion, 43. c. 39). Caesar left Spain without troubling himself about Sextus Pompeius, but as Sextus soon collected a great force and was joined by those who had served under his father and brother, Caesar sent C. Carrinas against him, and as Carrinas was not successful, he was superseded by Asinius Pollio, shortly before Caesar's death (Appian, B. C. iv. 83).

The Spanish War contains the fourteenth and the last of Caesar's campaigns after his consulship. Ten books of campaigns were written by himself. The eighth of the Gallic War is generally attributed to Hirtius. Suetonius (Caesar, c. 56) says that it is uncertain who wrote the Alexandrine, African, and Spanish Wars: some think Oppius, others suppose Hirtius, who also wrote the last book of the Gallic War, which is incomplete, as a supplement to the seven books; if that is the meaning of Suetonius. Hirtius certainly did not write the Spanish War. Though he was not a good writer, he could not have written so had a book. Parts of it look like extracts from some hard-fisted centurion's journal, who recorded small events of the day, and was unable to describe military operations. But the author, or he who revised the work, whoever he was, if he used contemporary evidence, or a soldier's journal, was a man who affected to be a writer with some education. He twice quotes Ennius; and he had a little. taste for rhetorical ornamentation, for he compares a single combat to the meeting of Achilles and Memnon (c. 25). The 7 The last words are, "Quarum laudibus et virtute. . ." "Desunt reliqua," Oudendorp adds. See his note.

author often writes barbarous Latin. The text is most corrupt; and sometimes it is not intelligible even where it may not be corrupt. The editors have worked hard to mend the text and to explain it, but with little success. The best of them were Davis and S. Clarke.

Hirtius (Ad Attic. xii. 37, 4) wrote to Cicero on the 18th of April from Narbo, and informed him that Sextus Pompeius had escaped from Corduba into Hispania Citerior, and that Cnaeus had fled nobody knew where; "nor do I care," Cicero adds. Cicero corresponded with Caesar during the Spanish War (Ad Fam. vi. 18). He gave to Apollonius, a freedman of Caesar's friend and legatus P. Crassus, a letter of recommendation to Caesar which Apollonius carried to Spain. The Greek wished to write the history of Caesar's campaigns, and Cicero thinks that he can do it. (Ad Fam. xiii. 16.) Cicero received from Caesar, who was then at Hispalis, a letter dated the 30th of April, in which he consoled Cicero on the death of his daughter Tullia (Ad Attic. xiii. 20). This letter is not extant, but one written for the same purpose by Cicero's friend Servius Sulpicius is preserved (Ad Fam. iv. 5). Tullia was already divorced from her third and unworthy husband P. Dolabella when she gave birth to a child, and she died soon after (B.C. 45).

8 There is another letter written to Caesar in Spain (Ad Fam. xiii. 15), also a letter of recommendation, stuffed with quotations from Homer and one from Euripides. Cicero says to Caesar that the father of the young man, whom he recommends, "was one of those who used to ridicule and blame me for not uniting myself to you, especially when you most honourably invited me." Cicero's nephew Quintus was with Caesar in Spain, where he behaved very foolishly, and abused his uncle and his father; but the only thing that he said, which might be believed, was that his uncle and his father were most hostile to Caesar, that they ought not to be trusted, and that his uncle was a man against whom Caesar should be on his guard: "this," says Cicero, "might alarm me, if I did not see that the King (Caesar) knows that I have no spirit" (Ad Attic. xiii. 37).

CHAPTER XXXI.

ROME.

B.C. 46, 45.

THERE is no contemporary evidence for the events which took place at Rome after the battle of Munda to Caesar's death, except in the collection of Cicero's letters. The Greek compilers Dion Cassius and Appian have treated of this short period at some length; and with their assistance, and what is found in Plutarch and other writers the story may be made sufficiently complete.

There was quiet at Rome during the Spanish War. The sales of confiscated property went on, but Cicero in his joking fashion expressed a fear that the death of P. Sulla, whom he had once defended, might cause the business to become slack; for Sulla was a great purchaser. The Latinae Feriae or annual festival on the Alban hills was superintended by the Praefects of the city, and also the Apollinares Ludi in July, though the care of these games belonged to the Praetors; but none had been elected for the year 45. The people in the city heard the news of the battle of Munda on the evening of the day before the festival of the Palilia, which was the 21st of April, the birthday of Rome, and the day was dedicated to the celebration of Caesar's victory. The Senate ordered a "supplicatio" or thanksgiving for fifty days, which was more than ever had been done before. This servile body conferred this extraordinary honour on a Roman for a victory not over a foreign enemy, but over Roman citizens, who were supposed to be fighting for the liberties of Rome against a usurper.

But the adulation of the previous year was carried further: Caesar was now made the equal of the gods. It was decreed

that Caesar's ivory statue, and afterwards his chariot also, should appear in the Ludi Circenses in company with the statues of the gods. Another statue with the inscription "to the unconquered god," if we may believe Dion, was placed in the temple of Quirinus;' and a third in the Capitol by the side of the statues of the seven kings, among which was a bronze statue of Brutus with a drawn sword, the man who assisted in expelling the Tarquinii. Dion (43. c. 45) expresses his wonder at the strange circumstance of Caesar's statue being placed by the side of this Brutus; and he affirms that it was this fact particularly which moved M. Brutus to be one of Caesar's assassins, which we may refuse to believe.2

We may conjecture how odious such honours would appear to Caesar's enemies and to the party which he had crushed, but we know little about these men, except one who was never at rest, and has left his own thoughts and feelings recorded. Cicero spent the greater part of the year 45 in the country, for, as he tells Atticus, at Rome he would see men whom he could not bear. He was indeed in a wretched condition. He had divorced his wife Terentia, with whom he was dissatisfied for her alleged mismanagement of his affairs during his exile; but as he returned to Rome in B.c. 57, did not divorce her until B.c. 46, there may have been other reasons. We must suppose that Cicero, who passionately loved his daughter, had lost all affection for the mother; but we have no evidence for saying whether the husband or the wife was blamable in the matter of the divorce. According to Roman nsage Cicero was compelled to restore the marriage portion (dos) of Terentia, and this business caused much trouble

and

1 Cicero ad Atticum (xii. 45): “I had written to you about your neighbour Caesar, because I had heard of the matter by your letter. I would rather see him the sharer of the Temple of Quirinus than of the Temple of Salus." The house of Atticus was on the Quirinalis, where the Temple of Salus also stood. "Salus " contains the same element as " Saluus" (salvus), and means "sound health," "security," "life." The placing of Caesar's statue in the Temple of Quirinus might be interpreted as an honour paid to the second founder of Rome. It might also in Cicero's mind be considered as a reference to the violent death of Romulus, as Montgault supposes. The joke had a meaning, and Cicero's subsequent conduct explains it.

2 Cicero pro Deiotaro, c. 12, speaks of Caesar's statue being placed among the statues of the kings, but he does not mention the statue of the Liberator Brutus.