whether of great or small importance, public or private, were laid before
the senate. Taxes and monopolies, the erecting or repairing edifices,
levying and disbanding soldiers, the disposal of the legions and
auxiliary forces in the provinces, the appointment of generals for the
management of extraordinary wars, and the answers to letters from foreign
princes, were all submitted to the senate. He compelled the commander of
a troop of horse, who was accused of robbery attended with violence, to
plead his cause before the senate. He never entered the senate-house but
unattended; and being once brought thither in a litter, because he was
indisposed, he dismissed his attendants at the door.

XXXI. When some decrees were made contrary to his opinion, he did not
even make any complaint. And though he thought that no magistrates after
their nomination should be allowed to absent themselves from the city,
but reside in it constantly, to receive their honours in person, a
praetor-elect obtained liberty to depart under the honorary title of a
legate at large. Again, when he proposed to the senate, that the
Trebians might have leave granted them to divert some money which had
been left them by will for the purpose of building a new theatre, to that
of making a road, he could not prevail to have the will of the testator
set aside. And when, upon a division of the house, he went over to the
minority, nobody followed him. All other things of a public nature were
likewise transacted by the magistrates, and in the usual forms; the
authority of the consuls remaining so great, that some ambassadors from
Africa applied to them, and complained, that they could not have their
business dispatched by Caesar, to whom they had been sent. And no
wonder; since it was observed that he used to rise up as the consuls
approached, and give them the way.

(213) XXXII. He reprimanded some persons of consular rank in command of