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17And even if some persons did somehow escape this fate, yet they were brought into straits by the assessments, found themselves terribly short of ready money, and so, like the others, were deprived of practically everything. Moreover, the following device, distressing even to hear about, but most distressing in practice, was put into operation. 2Any one of the proscribed who wished to do so was permitted, if he would abandon all his property, to make requisition afterwards for one-third of it, which meant getting nothing and having trouble besides. For when they were being openly and violently despoiled of two-thirds, how were they to recover the other third, especially since their goods were being sold for an extremely low price? 3For, in the first place, a great deal of property was being offered at auction all at once and most people were without gold or silver and the rest did not dare to show by buying that they had money, lest they should lose that too, and consequently the prices were lowered; in the second place, anything would be sold to the soldiers far below its value. 4Hence none of the private citizens saved anything worth mentioning; for, over and above all the other exactions, they had to furnish slaves for the navy, buying them if they had none, and the senators had to repair the roads at their individual expense. Only those, indeed, who bore arms gained great wealth. 5For they were far from satisfied with their pay, though it was given in full, or with their outside perquisites, though these were very numerous, or with the prizes bestowed for the murders, though they were exceedingly large, or with the lands they acquired, though they were practically a free gift to them; but in addition some would ask for and receive all the property of those who died, and others would force their way into the families of the survivors who were old and childless. 6For they had reached such a degree of greed and shamelessness that one man actually asked Caesar himself for the property of Atia, his mother, who had died at that time and had been honoured with a public funeral.
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