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Having spoken to him thus courteously, he embraced him, and presented him with a war-horse and five hundred silver drachmas. XI. After this Bandius became the firmest partisan and ally of Marcellus, and a terrible denouncer and assailant of the opposite party. This was a numerous one; and their design was, when the Romans should march out of the town against the enemy, to attack their baggage.
There were tablets, also, with inscriptions, stating what moneys he gave Pompey for prosecuting the piratic war, what he delivered into the treasury, and what he gave to every soldier, which was nine hundred and fifty drachmas each. After all which he nobly feasted the city and adjoining villages, or vici.
They had collected the following information: A report was current in the army, that when Prince Ramses mounted the throne, he would begin a war with Assyria, which would assure great profit to those taking part in it. The lowest soldier, they said, would not return without a thousand drachmas, or perhaps a still larger sum.
Yet what was given to each soldier, out of so vast a destruction and utter ruin, amounted to no more than eleven drachmas; so that men could only shudder at the issue of a war, where the wealth of a whole nation, thus divided, turned to so little advantage and profit to each particular man.
He himself tells us that he never wore a garment worth more than a hundred drachmas, that when he was general and consul he still drank the same wine as his servants, that his dinner never cost him more than thirty ases in the market, and that he only indulged himself to this extent for the good of the state, that he might be strong and able to serve his country in the field.
So likewise in their way of living, and at their tables, Tiberius was frugal and plain, Caius, compared with other men temperate and even austere, but contrasting with his brother in a fondness for new fashions and rarities, as appears in Drusus's charge against him, that he had bought some silver dolphins, to the value of twelve hundred and fifty drachmas for every pound weight.
But Brutus, either pitying this poverty, or disdaining this meanness of spirit in Caesar, first, as the custom was, made a general muster and lustration of the army in the open field, and then distributed a great number of beasts for sacrifice to every regiment, and fifty drachmas to every soldier; so that in the love of his soldiers and their readiness to fight for him Brutus had much the advantage.
XXIX. The Theban generals invaded Thessaly, but through incompetence or misfortune effected nothing, and had to retreat in disgrace. The state fined them ten thousand drachmas, but sent Epameinondas with the army.
To the victor at the Isthmian games he appointed a reward of a hundred drachmas, and to the victor in the Olympian, five hundred. He gave five drachmas for every wolf that was killed, and one drachma for every wolf's whelp; and we are told by Demetrius of Phalerum that the first of these sums was the price of an ox, and the second that of a sheep.
He received no wound, whether it were that a special divine care rewarded his valor with an extraordinary protection, or whether his shape being so large and beautiful, and his dress so unusual, they thought him more than a man. The Ephors gave him a garland; but as soon as they had done so, they fined him a thousand drachmas, for going out to battle unarmed.
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