"Do not, then, allow the influential either to make unjust gains or to concern themselves with blackmail: and let no one be complained of for 'having influence', even if he is otherwise irreproachable. Defend the masses vigorously when they are wronged and do not attend too easily to accusations against them. Examine every deed on its merits, not being suspicious of every one who is prominent nor believing every one who is lower in the social scale. Those who are active and are the authors of any useful device you must honor, but the idle or such as busy themselves with petty foolishness you must hate. Thus your subjects will be inclined to the former conduct because of the benefits attached and will refrain from the latter on account of the penalties, and will become better as individuals and more serviceable for your employment in the public service.
"It is an excellent achievement also to render private disputes as few as possible and their settlement as rapid as may be. But it is best of all to cut short the impetuosity of communities, and, if under guise of some appeals to your sovereignty and safety and good fortune they undertake to use force upon anybody or to undertake exploits or expenditures that are beyond their power, not to permit it. You should abolish altogether their enmities and rivalries among themselves and not authorize them to create any empty titles or anything else which will breed differences between them. All will readily obey you both in this and in every other matter, private and public, if you never permit any one to transgress this rule. Non-enforcement of laws makes null and void even wisely framed precepts. Consequently you should not allow persons to ask for what you are not accustomed to give. Try to compel them to avoid diligently this very practice of petitioning for something prohibited. This is what I have to say on that subject.
[-38-] "I advise you never to make use of your authority against all the citizens at once nor to deem it in any way curtailed if you do not do absolutely everything that is within your power. But in proportion as you are able to carry out all your wishes, you must be anxious to wish only what is proper, make always a self-examination, to see whether what you are doing is right or not, what conduct will cause people to love you, and what not, in order that you may perform the one set of acts and avoid the other. Do not admit the thought that you will sufficiently escape the reputation of acting contrary to this rule, if only you hear no one censuring you; and do not look for any one to be so mad as to reproach you openly for anything. No one would do this, not even if he should be violently wronged. Quite the reverse,—many are compelled in public to praise their oppressors, and while engaged in opposition not to manifest their wrath. The ruler must infer the disposition of people not from what they say but from the way it is natural for them to feel.
[-39-] "This and a similar policy is the one I wish you to pursue. I pass over many matters because it is not feasible to speak of them all at one time and within present limits. One suggestion therefore I will make to sum up both previous remarks and whatever is lacking. If you yourself by your own motion do whatever you would wish some one else who ruled you to do, you will make no mistakes and will be always successful, and consequently your life will be most pleasant and free from danger. How can all fail to regard you and to love you as father and preserver, when they see you are orderly, leading a good life, good at warfare, but a man of peace: when you are not wanton, do not defraud: when you meet them on a footing of equality, and do not yourself grow rich while demanding money from others: are not yourself given to luxury while imposing hardships upon others: are not yourself unbridled while reproving others: when, instead, your life in every way without exception is precisely like theirs? Be of good cheer, for you have in your own hands a great safeguard by never wronging another. And believe me when I tell you that you will never be the object of hatred or plots. Since this is so, you must quite inevitably lead a pleasant life. What is pleasanter, what is more conducive to prosperity, than to enjoy in a rightful way all the blessings among men and to have the power of granting them to others?
[-40-] "With this in mind, together with all the rest that I have told you, heed my advice and let not that fortune slip which has chosen you out of all and set you at the head of all. If you would choose the substance of monarch but fear the name of 'kingdom' as accursed, then refrain from taking possession of the latter and be satisfied to employ merely the title of 'Cæsar.' If you need any further appellations, they will give you that of Imperator, as they gave it to your father. They will reverence you also by still another name, so that you may obtain all the advantages of a kingdom without the disfavor that attaches to the term itself."
[-41-] Mæcenas thus brought his speech to an end. Cæsar thanked them both heartily for their many ideas, the exhaustiveness of their exposition, and their frankness. He rather inclined, however, to the proposition of Mæcenas. Yet he did not immediately put into practice all of the other's suggestions, for fear that he might meet with some setback if he wanted to reform men in multitudes. So he made some changes for the better at once and others later. He left some things also for those who should come to the head of the State afterward to do, as might be found more opportune in the progress of time. Agrippa coöperated with him in all his projects quite zealously, in spite of having stated a contrary opinion, just as if he had been the one to propose the plan. Cæsar did this and what I have recorded earlier in the narrative in that year when he was consul for the seventh time, and added the title of Imperator. I do not refer to the title anciently granted some persons for victories,—this he received many times before and many times later for his deeds themselves, so that he had the name of imperator twenty-one times,—but to the other one which signifies supreme power, just as they had voted to his father Cæsar and to the children and descendants of the same.
[-42-] After this he entered upon a censorship with Agrippa and besides setting aright some other business he investigated the senate. Many knights and many foot-soldiers, too, who did not deserve it were in the senate as a result of the civil wars, so that the total of that body amounted to a thousand. These he wished to remove, but did not himself erase any of their names, urging them to become their own judges out of the consciousness of their family and their life. So first he persuaded fifty of them to retire voluntarily from the assemblage and then compelled one hundred and forty others to imitate their example. He disenfranchised none of them, but posted the names of the second division. In the case of the first, because they had not delayed but had straightway obeyed him, he remitted the reproach and their identity was not made public. These accordingly returned willingly to private life. He ousted Quintus Statilius, very much against the latter's will, from the tribuneship to which he had been appointed. Some others he made senators, and he counted among the ex-consuls two men of the senatorial class,—a certain Cluvius and Gaius Furnius,—because they had been appointed first, though certain others had taken possession of their offices so that they were unable to become consuls. He added to the class of patricians, the senate allowing him to do this because most of its members had perished. No element is exhausted so fast in civil wars as the nobility or is deemed to be so necessary for the continuance of ancestral customs. In addition to the above measures he forbade all persons in the senate to go outside of Italy, unless he himself should order or permit any one of them to do so. This custom is still kept up at the present day. Except that he may visit Sicily and Gallia Narbonensis no senator is allowed to go anywhere out of the country. As these regions are close at hand and the population is unarmed and peaceful, those who have any possessions there have been granted the right to take trips to them as often as they like, without asking leave.—Since also he saw that many of the senators and of the others who had been devoted to Antony still maintained an attitude of suspicion toward him, and as he was afraid they might cause some uprising, he announced that all the letters found in his rival's chest had been burned. Some of them as a matter of fact had perished, but the majority of them he took pains to preserve and did not even hesitate to use them later.
[-43-] Besides these acts related he also settled Carthage anew, because Lepidus had laid waste a part of it and for that reason he maintained that the colonists' rights of settlement had been abrogated. He summoned Antiochus of Commagene to appear before him because this prince had treacherously slain an envoy despatched to Rome by his brother, who was at variance with him. Cæsar brought him before the senate, where he was condemned and the sentence of death imposed. Capreæ was also obtained from the Neapolitans, to whom it had anciently belonged, in exchange for other land. It lies not far from the mainland opposite Surrentum and is good for nothing but has a name even now on account of Tiberius's sojourn there.—These were the events of that period.
[Footnote 1: Reading [Greek: anagchastae] (Boissevain)]
[Footnote 2: The same Strabo who is mentioned in the early part of chapter 28, Book Forty-four.]