Note 71 — Chapter III · OF IRRUMATION[60]
Reading edition
He was so glad to have won Transalpine Gaul that he could not help announcing some days after in the Senate, that he had reached the fulfillment of his wishes, in spite of the hatred and malice of his enemies, and that he defied them to their face. Somebody having said to him offensively that this could not so easily be done with a woman, he replied jokingly, that Semiramis had gained a kingdom, and the Amazons had occupied a great part of Asia (Suetonius, Caesar, ch. 22). Caesar employed the expression: “defying to the face” in the honest sense, while his adversary invested it with an obscene signification, in allusion to his infamous acts in Bithynia.