[-35-] It was later that they proved their sincerity. At this time he himself led the campaign against the Iapudes, assigning the rest of the tribes to others to subdue. Those that were on his side of the mountains, dwelling not far from the sea, he reduced with comparatively little trouble, but he overcame those on the heights and beyond them with no small hardship. They strengthened Metulum, the largest of their cities, and repulsed many assaults of the Romans, burned to the ground many engines and laid low Octavius himself as he was trying to step from a wooden tower upon the circuit of the wall. Later, when he still did not desist but kept sending for additional forces, they pretended to wish to negotiate terms and received members of garrisons into their citadel. Then by night they destroyed all of these and set fire to their houses, some killing themselves and some their wives and children in addition, so that nothing whatever remained for Caesar. For not only they but also such as were captured alive destroyed themselves voluntarily shortly afterward.
[-36-] When these had perished and the rest had been subdued without performing any exploit of note, he made a campaign against the Pannonians. He had no complaint to bring against them, not having been wronged by them in any way, but he wanted both to give his soldiers practice and to support them abroad: for he regarded every demonstration against a weaker party as just, when it pleased the man whom weapons made their superior. The Pannonians are settled near Dalmatia close along the Ister from Noricum to European Moesia and lead the most miserable existence of mankind. They are not well off in the matter of land or sky, they cultivate no olives or vines except to the slightest extent, and these wretched varieties, since the greater part of their days is passed in the midst of most rigorous winter, but they drink as well as eat barley and millet. They have been considered very brave, however, during all periods of which we have cognizance. For they are very quick to anger and ready to slay, inasmuch as they possess nothing which can give them a happy life. This I know not by hearsay or reading only, but I have learned it from actual experience as their governor. For after my term as ruler in Africa and in Dalmatia,—the latter position my father also held for a time,—I was appointed[55] to Upper Pannonia, so-called, and hence my record is founded on exact knowledge of all conditions among them. Their name is due to the fact that they cut up a kind of toga in a way peculiar to themselves into strips which they call panni, and then stitch these together into sleeved tunics for themselves.
They have been named so either for this or for some other reason; but certain of the Greeks who were ignorant of the truth have spoken of them as Paeones, which is an old word but does not belong there, but rather applies to Rhodope, close to the present Macedonia, as far as the sea. Wherefore I shall call the dwellers in the latter district Paeones, but the others Pannonians, just as they themselves and as the Romans do.
[-37-] It was against this people, then, that Caesar at that time conducted a campaign. At first he did not devastate or plunder at all, although they abandoned their villages in the plain. He hoped to make them his subjects of their free will. But when they harassed him as he advanced to Siscia, he became angry, burned their land, and took all the booty he could. When he drew near the city the natives for a moment listened to their rulers and made terms with him and gave hostages, but afterward shut their gates and accepted a state of siege. They possessed strong walls and were in general encouraged by the presence of two navigable rivers. The one named the Colops[56] flows past the very circuit of the wall and empties into the Savus not far distant: it has now encircled the entire city, for Tiberius gave it this shape by constructing a great canal through which it rejoins its ancient course. At that time between the Colops on the one hand, which flowed on past the very walls, and the Savus on the other, which flowed at a little distance, an empty space had been left which had been buttressed with palisades and ditches. Caesar secured boats made by the allies in that vicinity, and after towing them through the Ister into the Savus, and through that stream into the Colops, he assailed the enemy with infantry and ships together, and had some naval battles on the river. For the barbarians prepared in turn some boats made of one piece of wood with which they risked a conflict; and on the river they killed besides many others Menas the freedman of Sextus, and on the land they vigorously repulsed the invader until they ascertained that some of their allies had been ambushed and destroyed. Then in dejection they yielded. When they had thus been captured the remainder of Pannonian territory was induced to capitulate.
[-38-] After this he left Fufius Geminus there with a small force and himself returned to Rome. The triumph which had been voted to him he deferred, but granted Octavia and Livia images, the right of administering their own affairs without a supervisor, and freedom from fear and inviolability equally with the tribunes.
[B.C. 34 (a. u. 720)]
In emulation of his father he had started out to lead an expedition into Britain, and had already advanced into Gaul after the winter in which Antony for the second time and Lucius Libo were consuls, when some of the newly captured and Dalmatians with them rose in revolt. Geminus, although expelled from Siscia, recovered the Pannonians by a few battles; and Valerius Messala overthrew the Salassi and the rest who had joined them in rebellion. Against the Dalmatians first Agrippa and then Caesar also made campaigns. The most of them they subjugated after undergoing many terrible experiences themselves, such as Caesar's being wounded, barley being given to some of the soldiers instead of wheat, and others, who had deserted the standards, being decimated: with the remaining tribes[57] Statilius Taurus carried on war.
[-39-] Antony meanwhile resigned his office as soon as appointed, putting Lucius Sempronius Atratinus in his place; consequently some name the latter and not the former in the enumeration of the consuls. In the course of his efforts to take vengeance on the Armenian king with least trouble to himself, he asked the hand of his daughter, pretending to want to unite her in marriage to his son Alexander; he sent on this errand one Quintus Deillius, who had once been a favorite of his, and promised to give the monarch many gifts. Finally, at the beginning of spring, he came suddenly into Nicopolis (founded by Pompey) and sent for him, stating that he wanted to deliberate on and execute with his aid some measures against the Parthians. The king suspecting the plot did not come, so he sent Deillius to have another talk with him and marched with undiminished haste toward Artaxata. In this way, after a long time, partly by persuading him through friends, and partly by scaring him through his soldiers, and writing and acting toward him in every way as thoroughly friendly, he induced him to come into his camp. Thereupon the Roman arrested him and at first keeping the prince without bonds he led him around among the garrisons with whom his treasures were deposited, to see if he could win them without a struggle. He made a pretence of having arrested him for no other purpose than to collect tribute of the Armenians that would ensure both his preservation and his sovereignty. When, however, the guardians of the gold would have nothing to do with him and the troops under arms chose Artaxes, the eldest of his children, king in his stead, Antony bound him in silver chains. It seemed disgraceful, probably, for one who had been a king to be made fast in iron bonds. [-40-] After this, capturing some settlements peaceably and some by force, Antony occupied all of Armenia, for Artaxes after fighting an engagement and being worsted retired to the Parthian prince. After doing this he betrothed to his son the daughter of the Median king with the intention of making him still more his friend; then he left the legions in Armenia and went once more to Egypt, taking the great mass of booty and the Armenian with his wife and children. He sent them ahead with the other captives for a triumph held in Alexandria, and himself drove into the city upon a chariot, and among the other favors he granted to Cleopatra he brought before her the Armenian and his family in golden bonds. She was seated in the midst of the populace upon a platform plated with silver and upon a gilded chair. The barbarians would not be her suppliants nor do obeisance to her, though much coercion was brought to bear upon them and hopes were held out to persuade them, but they merely addressed her by name: this gave them a reputation for spirit, but they were subject to a great deal of ill usage on account of it.
[-41-] After this Antony gave an entertainment to the Alexandrians, and in the assemblage had Cleopatra and her children sit by his side: also in the course of a public address he enjoined that she be called Queen of Monarchs, and Ptolemy (whom he named Caesarion) King of Kings. He then made a different distribution by which he gave them Egypt and Cyprus. For he declared that one was the wife and the other the true son of the former Caesar and he made the plea that he was doing this as a mark of favor to the dead statesman,—his purpose being to cast reproach in this way upon Octavianus Caesar because he was only an adopted and not a real son of his. Besides making this assignment to them, he promised to give to his own children by Cleopatra the following lands,—to Ptolemy Syria and all the region west of the Euphrates as far as the Hellespont, to Cleopatra Libya about Cyrene, and to their brother Alexander Armenia and the rest of the districts across the Euphrates as far as the Indi. The latter he bestowed as if they were already his. Not only did he say this in Alexandria, but sent a despatch to Rome, in order that it might secure ratification also from the people there. Nothing of this, however, was read in public.
[B.C. 32 (a. u. 722)]