When his friends urged him
to have guards and many offered their services for this purpose, he
would not consent, and he said, that it was better to die at once than
to be always expecting death. But for the purpose of surrounding
himself with the affection of the Romans as the noblest and also the
securest protection, he again courted the people with banquets and
distribution of corn, and the soldiers with the foundation of
colonies, of which the most conspicuous were Carthage[581] and
Corinth, to both of which it happened that their former capture and
their present restoration occurred at once and at the same time.
LVIII. To some of the nobles he promised consulships and praetorships
for the future, and others he pacified with certain other offices and
honours, and he gave hopes to all, seeking to make it appear that he
ruled over them with their own consent, so that when Maximus[582] the
consul died, he appointed Caninius Revilius consul for the one day
that still remained of the term of office. When many persons were
going, as was usual, to salute the new consul and to form part of his
train Cicero said, "We must make haste, or the man will have gone out
of office." Caesar's great success did not divert his natural
inclination for great deeds and his ambition to the enjoyment of that
for which he had laboured, but serving as fuel and incentives to the
future bred in him designs of greater things and love of new glory, as
if he had used up what he had already acquired; and the passion was
nothing else than emulation of himself as if he were another person,
and a kind of rivalry between what he intended and what he had
accomplished; and his propositions and designs were to march against
the Parthians,[583] and after subduing them and marching through
Hyrkania and along the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, and so
encompassing the Euxine, to invade Scythia, and after having overrun
the countries bordering on the Germans and Germany itself to return
through Gaul to Italy, and so to complete his circle of the empire
which would be bounded on all sides by the ocean.
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