Dio's Rome, Volume 3 - An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During - The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, - Elagabalus and Alexander Severus by Cassius Dio
page 94 of 276 (34%)
page 94 of 276 (34%)
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the property of Attia, Caesar's mother, who had died at the time and had
been honored by a public burial. [-18-] While these three men were behaving in this wise, they were also magnifying the former Caesar to the greatest degree. As they were all aiming at sole supremacy and were all striving for it, they vindictively pursued the remainder of the assassins, apparently in the idea that they were preparing from afar immunity for themselves in what they were doing, and safety; and everything which tended to his honor they readily took up, in expectation of some day being themselves deemed worthy of similar distinctions: for this reason they glorified him by the decrees which had been passed, and by others which they now added to them. On the first day of the year they themselves took an oath and made others swear that they would consider binding all his acts; this action is still taken in the case of all officials who successively hold power, or again of those who lived in his era, and have not been dishonored. They also laid the foundation of a hero-shrine in the Forum, on the spot where he had been burned, and escorted a kind of image of him at the horse-races together with a second statue of Venus. In case news of a victory came from anywhere they assigned the honor of a thanksgiving to the victor by himself and to Caesar, though dead, by himself. They compelled everybody to celebrate his birthday wearing laurel and in good spirits, passing a law that all others, neglected it, were accursed before Jupiter and before him while any senators or their sons should forfeit twenty-five myriads of denarii. Now it happened that the Ludi Apollinares fell on the same day, and they therefore voted that his natal feast should be held on the previous day,[28] because (they said) there was an oracle of the Sibyl forbidding a festival to be celebrated during that twenty-four hours to any god except Apollo. [-19-] Besides granting him these privileges they regarded the day on which he had been murdered (on which |
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