Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/41

 cut off his little Subsistance; but by a strange turn of Human Affairs, which ought to keep good Men from ever despairing; the loss of his Estate prov'd the effectual way of making his Fortune. The occasion of it was this; Octavius, as himself relates, when he was but Nineteen Years of Age, by a Masterly stroke of Policy, had gain'd the Veteran Legions into his Service, (and by that step, out-witted all the Republican Senate:) They grew now very clamorous for their Pay: The Treasury being Exhausted, he was forc'd to make Assignments upon Land, and none but in Italy it self would content them. He pitch'd upon Cremona as the most distant from Rome; but that not suffising, he afterwards threw in part of the State of Mantua. Cremona was a Rich and noble Colony, setled a little before the Invasion of Hanibal. During that Tedious and Bloody War, they had done several important Services to the Common-Wealth. And when Eighteen other Colonies, pleading Poverty and Rh