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[102] It is said that money to the amount of 60,500 talents [of silver] was borne in the procession and 2822 crowns of gold weighing 20,414 pounds, from which wealth Cæsar made apportionments immediately after the triumph, paying the army all that he had promised and more. Each soldier received 5000 Attic drachmas, each centurion double, and each tribune of infantry and præfect of cavalry fourfold that sum. To each plebeian citizen also was given an Attic mina. He gave also various spectacles with horses and music, a combat of foot-soldiers, 1000 on each side, and a cavalry fight of 200 on each side. There was also another combat of horse and foot together. There was a combat of elephants, twenty against twenty, and a naval engagement of 4000 oarsmen, where 1000 fighting men contended on each side. He erected a temple to Venus, his ancestress, as he had vowed to do when he was about to begin the battle of Pharsalus, and he laid out ground around the temple which he intended to be a forum for the Roman people, not for buying and selling, but a meeting-place for the transaction of public business, like the public squares of the Persians, where the people assemble to seek justice or to learn the laws. He placed a beautiful image of Cleopatra by the side of the goddess, which stands there to this day. He caused an enumeration of the people to be made, and it is said that it was found to be only one-half of the number existing before this war.1 To such a degree had the rivalry of these two men reduced the city.
Y.R. 709

1 The corresponding passage in Plutarch (Life of Cœsar, 55) says: "After the games the census was taken and instead of the former 320,000 inhabitants the whole number amounted to 150,000." This seems incredible. A note on this passage in Langhorne's Plutarch says that Rualdus has not only proved by other testimony that this is erroneous but has shown how the error came to be made. He says that Plutarch, for want of a thorough knowledge of Latin, was misled by a passage in Suetonius which says that Cæsar "made a new census (recensum) not in the usual manner or place (in the Campus Martius), but street by street, by means of the chief men of the tenement-house districts (insularum), and reduced the number of those receiving corn from the public stores from 320,000 to 150,000." The recensus was taken for the purpose of determining the number of persons entitled to receive public corn. The Epitome of Livy (CXV.) says: " he took a new census (recensum) by which it was ascertained that the number of citizens (civium capita) was 150,000," meaning probably the number entitled to receive corn.

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  • Cross-references to this page (2):
    • A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), VENA´TIO
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), ROMA
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