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So the friends of Octavian advised him not to go among them,but to keep out of the way of their mad career.But he went forward, thinking that their madness would be augmented if he did not come.When he saw the body of Nonius he turned aside.Then, assuming that the crime had been committed by a few,he chided them and advised them to exercise forbearance toward each other hereafter,and proceeded to divide the land.He allowed the meritorious ones to ask for rewards, and he gave to some who were not meritorious, contrary to their expectation. Finally the crowd were confounded; they repented and were ashamed of their importunity; they condemned themselves and asked him to search out and punish the slayers of Nonius. He replied that he knew them and would punish them only with their own guilty consciences and the condemnation of their comrades. The soldiers, thus honoured with pardon, rewards, and gifts, changed at once to joyful acclamations.Let these two instances out of many serve as examples of the prevailing insubordination. The cause was that the generals, for the most part, as is usually the case in civil wars, were not regularly chosen; that their armies were not drawn from the enrolment according to the custom of the fathers, nor for the benefit of their country; that they did not serve the public so much as they did the individuals who brought them together; and that they served these not by the force of law, but by reason of private promises; not against the common enemy, but against private foes; not against foreigners, but against fellow-citizens, their equals in rank. All these things impaired military discipline, and the soldiers thought that they were not so much serving in the army as lending assistance, by their own favor and judgment, to leaders who needed them for their own personal ends. Desertion, which had formerly been unpardonable, was now actually rewarded with gifts, and whole armies resorted to it, including some illustrious men, who did not consider it desertion to change to a like cause, for all parties were alike, since neither of them could be distinguished as battling against the common enemy.