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It seems that Lepidus had attacked Messana and on being admitted to the town had proceeded to set fire to some of it and to pillage other portions. When Caesar, on ascertaining this, came up quickly and interfered with him, Lepidus was alarmed and slipped out of the city, and encamping on a strong hill, made complaints about his treatment; he detailed all the slights he considered that he was receiving

and demanded all the rights that had been conceded to him according to their first compact, and, further, laid claim to Sicily, on the ground that he had helped to subdue it. He sent some men to Caesar with these complaints and called upon him to submit to arbitration;

Caesar, however, made no answer to these demands, but feeling that he had justice all on his side as well as in his weapons, since he was stronger than Lepidus, he immediately set out against him with a few followers, expecting to alarm him by the suddenness of his move, as Lepidus was not at all energetic, and to win over his soldiers.

And he actually got inside their camp, because on account of the small number of the men who accompanied him they supposed he was on a peaceful errand; but when his words were not at all to their liking, they became angry and attacked him, even killing some of his men, though Caesar himself soon got reinforcements and got safely away.

After this he came against them once more with his entire army, shut them up within their entrenchments, and besieged them. This caused them to fear capture, and without making any general revolt, through their regard for Lepidus, they privately deserted him in groups as individuals and transferred their allegiance. In this way he, too, was compelled on his own initiative, arraying himself in mourning, to become a suppliant of Caesar.

As a result Lepidus was shorn of all authority and could not even live in Italy without a guard; and in the case of those who had been enlisted in the cause of Sextus, the members of the senatorial or equestrian classes were punished, save a few, while of the rank and file the free citizens were incorporated in the legions of Caesar, and those who had been slaves were given back to their masters for punishment, and in case no master could be found for any one of them, he was impaled.

As for the cities, some of them voluntarily came over to Caesar and received pardon, and others resisted him and were punished.

While Caesar was thus occupied his soldiers revolted. For they were emboldened by observing their own numbers, and moreover, when they stopped to think of the dangers they had encountered and the hopes they had built up on them, they became insatiable in their desire for rewards, and gathering by themselves they demanded whatever any one of them longed for.

And when their talk had no effect, inasmuch as Caesar, with no longer any enemy confronting him, paid no heed to them, they became clamorous; and setting before him all the hardships they had endured and throwing up to him whatever promises he had made them, they uttered many threats besides, and thought to make him their slave even in spite of himself.

But as they accomplished nothing, they demanded with much heat and no end of shouting that they be at least discharged from the service, claiming they were worn out. This was not because they really wished to be free from it, for most of them were in their prime, but because they had an inkling of the coming conflict between Caesar and Antony and for that reason set a high value upon themselves; for what they could not obtain by requests, they expected to secure by threatening to abandon him.

Not even this, however, served their purpose. For Caesar did not yield to them in the least, even though he knew perfectly well that the war was going to occur and though he clearly understood their intentions, because he thought that a commander should never do anything contrary to his own judgment under pressure from his soldiers, realizing that if he did, they would want to get the advantage of him again in some other matter.

These were later events, however; at the time Caesar arranged matters in Sicily and through Statilius Taurus won over both the Africas without a struggle and sent back to Antony ships equal in number to those which had been lost.

These were the honours which they granted him immediately after his victory. The victory had been announced first by one of the soldiers in the city at the time who had become possessed by some god on the very day of the victory (for after saying and doing many strange things he finally ran up to the temple on the Capitol and laid his sword at the feet of Jupiter, to signify that there would be no further use for it), and afterwards by the others who had been present at the victory and had been sent to Rome by Caesar.

And when Caesar himself arrived, he assembled the people according to ancient custom outside the pomerium, gave them an account of what he had done, declined some of the honours which had been voted to him, remitted the tribute called for in the registered lists and all the other debts owed to the state for the time previous to the civil war, abolished certain taxes, and refused to accept the priesthood of Lepidus, which was offered to him, as it was not lawful to take away the office from a man who was still alive. Thereupon they voted him many other distinctions.

Some people, to be sure, even spread the report abroad that these acts of magnanimity on Caesar’s part on that occasion were designed to bring reproach upon Antony and Lepidus and to enable him to shift the blame upon them alone for the acts of injustice formerly committed; and others alleged that, since he was unable in any way to collect the debts due to the state, he turned the people’s inability to pay into a favour from himself that cost him nothing.