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15Meanwhile the parts of Etruria which had been in rebellion had subsequently become quiet as soon as word came of his victory. The people of the capital unanimously bestowed upon him votes of praise, statues, the right to the front seat, an arch surmounted by trophies, and the privilege of riding into the city on horseback, of wearing the laurel crown on all occasions, and of holding a banquet with his wife and children in the temple of Capitoline Jupiter on the anniversary of the day on which he had won his victory, which was to be a perpetual day of thanksgiving. 2These 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. 3And 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. 4Some 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. 5But this was mere idle talk. The people at this time resolved that a house should be presented to Caesar at public expense; for he had made public property of the place on the Palatine which he had bought for the purpose of erecting a residence upon it, and had consecrated it to Apollo, after a thunderbolt had descended upon it. Hence they voted him the house and also protection from any insult by deed or word; 6any one who committed such an offence was to be liable to the same penalties as had been established in the case of a tribune. This was only logical, inasmuch as he received the privilege of sitting upon the same benches with the tribunes.
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