ἱστορίαι Historiai
Suet. Jul. 75 The Deified Julius, Suetonius; served verbatim
He certainly showed admirable selfrestraint and mercy, both in his conduct of the civil war and in the hour of victory. While Pompey announced that he would treat as enemies those who did not take up arms for the government, Caesar gave out that those who were neutral and of neither party should be numbered with his friends. He freely allowed all those whom he had made centurions on Pompey’s recommendation to go over to his rival. When conditions of surrender were under discussion at Ilerda, and friendly intercourse between parties was the two constant, Afranius and Petreius, with a sudden change of purpose, put to death all of Caesar’s soldiers whom they found in their camp; but Caesar could not bring himself to retaliate in kind. At the battle of Pharsalus he cried out, “ Spare your fellow citizens,’’ and afterwards allowed each of his men to save any one man he pleased of the opposite party. And it will be found that no Pompeian lost his life except in battle, save only Afranius and Faustus, and the young Lucius Caesar; and it is believed that not even these men were slain by his wish, even though the two former had taken up arms again after being pardoned, while Caesar had not only cruelly put to death the dictator’s slaves and freedmen with fire and sword, but had even butchered the wild beasts which he had procured for the entertainment of the people. At last, in his later years, he went so far as to allow all those whom he had not yet pardoned to return to Italy, and to hold magistracies and the command of armies : and he actually set up the statues of Lucius Sulla and Pompey, which had been broken to pieces by the populace. After this, if any dangerous plots were formed against him, or slanders uttered, he preferred to quash rather than to punish them. Accordingly, he took no further notice of the conspiracies which were detected, and of meetings by night, than to make known by proclamation that he was aware of them; and he thought it enough to give public warning to those who spoke ill of him, not to persist in their conduct, bearing with good nature the attacks on his reputation made by the scurrilous volume of Aulus Caecina and the abusive lampoons of Pitholaus.

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

← Suet. Jul. 74 contents Suet. Jul. 76 →

Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass
battle of Pharsalus — a candidate entry Aulus — a candidate entry Caesar — a candidate entry Lucius — a candidate entry Pompey — a life

The Deified Julius, Suetonius — translated by J. C. Rolfe, 1913
Apparatus shelf — Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (J. C. Rolfe translation; Dover republication) · J. C. Rolfe, 1913 (preface dated Philadelphia, April 1913); Dover Publications republication, 2018
license: public-domain (US: the served text is Rolfe's 1913 translation, pre-1930 — verified from the scan's own copyright and preface pages; Dover-era apparatus [2018 arrangement, introductions, endnotes, index, the Lives of Illustrious Men part] is not extracted and not served)