The soldier, with difficulty attempting to cross after all
the rest, plunged into the muddy stream, and with great trouble and
the loss of his shield, sometimes swimming, sometimes walking, he got
safe over. While those who were about Caesar were admiring his conduct
and coming to receive him with congratulations and shouts, the
soldier, with the greatest marks of dejection and tears in his eyes,
fell down at Caesar's feet and begged pardon for the loss of his
shield. Again, in Libya, Scipio's party having taken one of Caesar's
ships in which was Granius Petro, who had been appointed quaestor, made
booty of all the rest, but offered to give the quaestor his life; but
he replying that it was the fashion with Caesar's soldiers to give and
not to accept mercy, killed himself with his own sword.

XVII. This courage and emulation Caesar cherished and created, in the
first place by distributing rewards and honours without stint, and
thus showing that he did not get wealth from the enemy for his own
enjoyment and pleasure, but that it was treasured up with him as the
common reward of courage, and that he was rich only in proportion as
he rewarded deserving soldiers; and in the next place by readily
undergoing every danger and never shrinking from any toil. Now they
did not so much admire Caesar's courage, knowing his love of glory; but
his endurance of labour beyond his body's apparent power of sustaining
it, was a matter of astonishment, for he was of a spare habit, and had
a white and soft skin, and was subject to complaints in the head and
to epileptic fits, which, as it is said, first attacked him at
Corduba;[482] notwithstanding all this, he did not make his feeble
health an excuse for indulgence, but he made military service the
means of his cure, by unwearied journeying, frugal diet, and by
constantly keeping in the open air and enduring fatigue, struggling
with his malady and keeping his body proof against its attacks. He
generally slept in chariots or in litters, making even his repose a
kind of action; and in the daytime he used to ride in a vehicle to the
garrisons, cities and camps, with a slave by his side, one of those
who were expert at taking down what was dictated on a journey, and a
single soldier behind him armed with a sword. He used to travel so
quick that on his first journey from Rome he reached the Rhodanus[483]
in eight days. From his boyhood he was a good horseman, for he had
been accustomed to place