Page:The Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon.djvu/50

 outshone all other soldiers, so much did Caesar excel all other generals, nay, other men of all times. In the wars carried on under his command, 1,192,000 of the enemy were slain. How many were slain the civil wars he was reluctant to record. He fought fifty-two pitched battles; being the only general who exceeded Marcus Marcellinus, who fought thirty-nine. No one wrote more rapidly, no one read with greater facility; he was able to dictate four letters at one and the same time. So great was his excellence that those whom he conquered by his arms, he conquered yet more by his clemency."

Augustus, succeeding Julius Caesar, obtained the empire of the whole world: and received tribute from Britain as well as from his other dominions, as Virgil remarks:&mdash;


 * "Embroidered Britons lift the purple screen."

This he did in the forty-second year of his reign, when the true Light shone upon the world, and all kingdoms and islands, before over-shadowed with darkness, were taught that there is One only God, and saw the image of Him that created them. When Augustus had reigned fifty-five years and a half, he paid the debt of nature. Eutropius thus panegyrizes him: "Besides the civil wars, in which he was always victorius, Augustus subdued Armenia, Egypt, Galatia, Cantabria,