Book 2
21
Caesar held a public meeting at Corduba and thanked all classes separately—the Roman citizens for their zeal in keeping the town under his control, the Spaniards for having cast out the garrisons, the Gaditanians for having crushed the attempts of his adversaries and having vindicated their own liberty, the military tribunes and centurions who had come there on garrison duty for having confirmed the resolutions of the others by their own valour. He remits the sums of money which the Roman citizens had promised to Varro for public purposes; he restores their property to those whom he understood to have been thus penalized for their freedom of speech. Having bestowed on certain communities public and private rewards, he fills the rest with good hope for the future, and after a stay of two days at Corduba sets out for Gades, where he orders the moneys and memorial offerings that had been brought from the shrine of Hercules to a private house to be restored to the temple, and sets Q. Cassius over the province, assigning him four legions. In a few days he arrives at Tarraco with the ships which M. Varro had built and those which the Gaditanians had built on Varro’s order. There embassies from nearly the whole of the hither province were awaiting Caesar’s arrival. Having in the same way conferred honours privately and publicly on certain communities, he leaves Tarraco and makes his way by land to Narbo and thence to Massilia. There he learns that a law had been passed about a dictator, and that he himself had been nominated dictator by the praetor M. Lepidus.
