XIX
Ceterum (ceterum: cf. note in ch. 11.) animorum provinciae prudens, simulque doctus per aliena experimenta parum profici armis, si iniuriae sequerentur, causas bellorum statuit excidere. A se suisque orsus (a se suisque orsus: orsus, from dep. ordior, is passive in form but active in meaning; thus lit.: ‘beginning from himself and his associates…’) primum domum suam coercuit, quod plerisque haud minus arduum est quam provinciam regere. Nihil per libertos servosque publicae rei, (nihil…publicae rei: part. gen. after the neuter nihil, ‘nothing of public import’) non studiis privatis (studiis privatis: ‘from personal preferences’) nec ex commendatione aut precibus centurionem militesve adscire, (adscire: infinitive of narration, like most other infinitives down to mollire) sed optimum quemque fidissimum putare. Omnia scire, non omnia exsequi. Parvis peccatis veniam, magnis severitatem commodore; (parvis peccatis veniam… commodare: ‘he applied leniency to small crimes’.) nec poena semper, sed saepius paenitentia contentus esse; officiis et administrationibus (officiis et administrationibus: hendiadys) potius non peccaturos praeponere, quam damnare cum peccassent. Frumenti et tributorum exactionem aequalitate munerum mollire, circumcisis quae in quaestum reperta ipso tributo gravius tolerabantur. (circumcisis quae in questum repertae ipso tributo gravius tolerabantur: circumcisis is abl. abs. of neut. plur. circumcisa, ‘those things being eliminated which, invented for gain, were more painfully tolerated…’) Namque per ludibrium adsidere clausis horreis et emere ultro frumenta ac luere pretio cogebantur. (per ludibrium adsidere clausis horreis et emere ultro frumenta ac luere pretio cogebantur: the practice referred to, well-known perhaps to Roman readers, but unfamiliar to us, requires some enlargement on the Latin text in translation; a literal rendering would be as follows: ‘they were forced to sit through a degrading charade by closed granaries, to buy grain into the bargain, and to pay tribute with the price.’ There is no consensus among translators as to the exact sense of the passage.) Divortia itinerum et longinquitas regionum indicebatur, (indicebatur: ‘were officially proclaimed’; the verb agrees with the nearest subject, longiquitas.) ut civitates proximis hibernis in remota et avia deferrent, donec quod omnibus in promptu erat paucis lucrosum fieret. (donec …fieret: ‘until it became…’; the subjunctive used with donec is prospective: it denotes an outcome that may or may not have been anticipated.)