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Notes Display Latin text | Julius Caesar, Chapter 54: Integrity. | Next chapter Return to index Previous chapter |
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Neither when in command of armies nor as a magistrate at Rome did he [Note 1] show a scrupulous integrity; for as certain men have declared in their memoirs, when he was proconsul in Hispania, he not only begged money from the allies, to help pay his debts, but also attacked and sacked some towns of the Lusitanians although they did not refuse his terms and opened their gates to him on his arrival. In Gallia he pillaged shrines and temples of the gods filled with offerings, and oftener sacked towns for the sake of plunder than for any fault. In consequence he had more gold than he knew what to do with, and offered it for sale throughout Italia and the provinces at the rate of three thousand sesterces the pound. In his first consulship he stole three thousand pounds of gold from the Capitol, replacing it with the same weight of gilded bronze. He made alliances and thrones a matter of barter, for he extorted from Ptolemy alone in his own name and that of Pompeius nearly six thousand talents, while later on he met the heavy expenses of the civil wars and of his triumphs and entertainments by the most bare-faced pillage and sacrilege. Note 1: he = Julius Caesar |