Several officers,
who attempted to restrain the mutinous bands on the way, were slain.
It was a formidable danger. Caesar ordered the few soldiers
who were in the city to occupy the gates, with the view of warding off
the justly apprehended pillage at least at the first onset,
and suddenly appeared among the furious bands demanding to know
what they wanted. They exclaimed: "discharge." In a moment
the request was granted. Respecting the presents, Caesar added,
which he had promised to his soldiers at his triumph, as well as
respecting the lands which he had not promised to them
but had destined for them, they might apply to him on the day
when he and the other soldiers should triumph; in the triumph itself
they could not of course participate, as having been previously
discharged. The masses were not prepared for things taking this turn;
convinced that Caesar could not do without them for the African campaign,
they had demanded their discharge only in order that, if it were refused,
they might annex their own conditions to their service. Half unsettled
in their belief as to their own indispensableness; too awkward
to return to their object, and to bring the negotiation
which had missed its course back to the right channel; ashamed, as men,
by the fidelity with which the Imperator kept his word even to soldiers
who had forgotten their allegiance, and by his generosity
which even now granted far more than he had ever promised;
deeply affected, as soldiers, when the general presented to them
the prospect of their being necessarily mere civilian spectators
of the triumph of their comrades, and when he called them no longer
"comrades" but "burgesses,"--by this very form of address,
which from his mouth sounded so strangely, destroying as it were
with one blow the whole pride of their past soldierly career;
and, besides all this, under the spell of the man whose presence
had an irresistible power--the soldiers stood for a while mute
and lingering, till from all sides a cry arose that the general
would once more receive them into favour and again permit them
to be called Caesar's soldiers. Caesar, after having allowed himself
to be sufficiently entreated, granted the permission; but the ringleaders
in this mutiny had a third cut off from their triumphal presents.
History knows no greater psychological masterpiece, and none
that was more completely successful.

Caesar Proceeds to Africa
Conflict at Ruspina

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