55

55LV. Caesar, being now returned out of Africa, first of all made an oration to the people wherein he greatly praised and commended this his last victory, declaring unto them that he had conquered so many countries unto the empire of Rome, that he could furnish the commonwealth yearly with two hundred thousand bushels of wheat, and twenty hundred thousand pound weight of oil. Then he made three triumphs, the one for Egypt, the other for the kingdom of Pont, and the third for Africa: not because he had overcome Scipio there, but

king Juba. Whose son being likewise called Juba, being then a young boy, was led captive in the show of this triumph. But this his imprisonment fell out happily for him: for, where he was but a barbarous Numidian, by the study he fell unto when he was prisoner, he came afterwards to be reckoned one of the wisest historiographers of the Grecians. After these three triumphs ended, he very liberally rewarded his soldiers: and to curry favor with the people,

he made great feasts and common sports. For he feasted all the Romans at one time, at two and twenty thousand tables, and gave them the pleasure to see divers sword-players to fight at the sharp, and battles also by sea, for the remembrance of his daughter Julia, which was dead long before. Then after all these sports,

he made the people (as the manner was) to be mustered: and where there were, at the last musters before, three hundred and twenty thousand citizens, at this muster there were only but a hundred and fifty thousand. Such misery and destruction had this civil war brought unto the commonwealth of Rome, and had consumed such a number of Romans, not speaking at all of the mischiefs and calamities it had brought unto all the rest of Italy, and to the other provinces pertaining to Rome.