Appian, The Civil Wars
Horace White, Ed.

---

[73] While they were doing so Cassius suddenly made his appearance in the midst of the city with a chosen band of soldiers, without any show of violence or use of ladders. Most people conjectured, as seemed the fact, that those of the citizens who were favorable to him had opened the small gates, being moved by pity for the town and the apprehension of famine. Thus was Rhodes captured; and Cassius took his seat on the tribunal and planted a spear by the side of it to indicate that he had taken the city by force. Laying strict commands upon his soldiers to remain quiet, and threatening with death any who should resort to violence or plunder, he summoned by name about fifty citizens, and punished with death those who were led before him. The others, who were not found, numbering about twenty-five, he ordered to be banished. All the money that was found, either gold or silver, in the temples and the public treasury, he seized, and he ordered private citizens who had any to bring it to him on a day named, proclaiming death to those who should conceal it, together with a reward of one-tenth to informers and freedom in addition in the case of slaves. At first many concealed what they had, hoping that in the end the threat would not be carried out, but when they saw the rewards paid and those who had been informed against punished, they became alarmed, and having procured the appointment of another day, some of them dug their money out of the ground, others drew it out of wells, and others brought it from tombs, in much larger amounts than the former collections.¹