ry, and he feared they might
create a disturbance again. Hence he hastened before the least signs of
an uprising were manifested to discharge some entirely from the service
under arms and to scatter the great majority of the rest. As he was even
at this time suspicious of the freedmen, he remitted their one-quarter
contribution[68] which they were still owing of the money assessed upon
them. And they no longer bore him any malice for deprivations they had
endured, but rejoiced as if they had received as a gift what they had
not been obliged to contribute. The men still left in the rank and file
showed no disposition to rebel, partly because they were held in check
by their commanding officers, but mostly through hopes of the wealth of
Egypt. The men, however, who had helped Caesar to gain the victory and had
been dismissed from the service, were irritated at having obtained no
meed of valor, and not much later they began a revolutionary movement.
Caesar was suspicious of them, and fearing that they might despise
Maecenas, to whom at that time Rome and the remainder of Italy had been
entrusted, because he was a knight, he sent Agrippa to Italy as if on
some routine business. He also gave to Agrippa and to Maecenas so great
authority over everything that they might read beforehand the letters
which he often wrote to the senate and to various officials, and then
change whatever they wished in them. Therefore they received also from
him a ring, so that they should have the means of sealing the epistles.
He had had the seal which he used most at that time made double, with a
sphinx raised on both sides alike. Subsequently he had his own image made
in _intaglio_, and sealed everything with that. Later emperors likewise
employed it, except Galba. The latter gave his sanction with an ancestral
device which showed a dog bending forward from the prow of a ship. The
way that Octavius wrote both to these two magistrates and to the rest of
his intimate friends whenever there was need of forwarding information to
them secretly was to write in place of the proper letter in each word the
second one following.

[-4-] Octavius, with the idea that there would be no more danger from the
veterans, administered affairs in Greece and took part in the Mysteries
of the two goddesses. He then went over into Asia and settled matters
there, all the time keeping a sharp lookout for Antony's movements. For
he had not yet received any definite informa