Book III

I.--Julius Caesar, holding the election as dictator, was himself
appointed consul with Publius Servilius; for this was the year in which
it was permitted by the laws that he should be chosen consul. This
business being ended, as credit was beginning to fail in Italy, and the
debts could not be paid, he determined that arbitrators should be
appointed: and that they should make an estimate of the possessions and
properties [of the debtors], how much they were worth before the war,
and that they should be handed over in payment to the creditors. This he
thought the most likely method to remove and abate the apprehension of
an abolition of debt, the usual consequence of civil wars and
dissensions, and to support the credit of the debtors. He likewise
restored to their former condition (the praetors and tribunes first
submitting the question to the people) some persons condemned for
bribery at the elections, by virtue of Pompey's law, at the time when
Pompey kept his legions quartered in the city (these trials were
finished in a single day, one judge hearing the merits, and another
pronouncing the sentences), because they had offered their service to
him in the beginning of the civil war, if he chose to accept them;
setting the same value on them as if he had accepted them, because they
had put themselves in his power. For he had determined that they ought
to be restored, rather by the judgment of the people, than appear
admitted to it by his bounty: that he might neither appear ungrateful in
repaying an obligation, nor arrogant in depriving the people of their
prerogative of exercising this bounty.

II.--In accomplishing these things, and celebrating the Latin festival,
and holding all the elections, he spent eleven days; and having resigned
the dictatorship, set out from the city, and went to Brundisium, where
he had ordered twelve legions and all his cavalry to meet him. But he
scarcely found as many ships as would be sufficient to transport fifteen
thousand legionary soldiers and five hundred horse. This [the scarcity
of shipping] was the only thing that prevented Caesar from putting a
speedy conclusion to the war. And even these troops embarked very short
of their number, because several had fallen in so many wars in Gaul, and
the long march from Spain had lessened their number very much, and a
severe autumn in Apulia and the district about Brundisium, after the
very wholesome countries of Spain and Gaul, had impaired the health of
the whole army.

III.--Pompey having got a year's respite to provide forces, during which
he was not engaged in war, nor employed by an enemy, had collected a
numerous fleet from Asia, and the Cyclades, from Corcyra, Athens,
Pontus, Bithynia, Syria, Cilicia, Phoenicia, and