the Republic in view of all eventualities; and lastly, in order that I might guarantee their continuing as completely proof against all attempts to tamper with their loyalty, as they have been up to this time.

As yet we have kept everything here in statu quo. And this policy of ours, though I know how eager men are and with reason for a decisive victory, is yet, I hope, approved of by you. For if any disaster happens to these armies, the Republic has no great forces in reserve to resist any sudden attack or raid of the parricides. The amount of our forces I presume is known to you. In my camp there are three legions of veterans, one of recruits perhaps the finest of all: in the camp of Decimus Brutus there is one veteran legion, a second of two-years'-service men, eight of recruits. Therefore the whole force taken together is very strong in numbers, in stamina inferior. For how much it is safe to trust to raw levies in the field we have had too frequent experience. To the strength of these armies of ours, if there was added either the African army which consists of veterans, or that of Cæsar, we should hazard the safety of the Republic on a battle without any uneasiness. Now, as to Cæsar, we see that he is considerably the nearer of the two. I have therefore never ceased importuning him by letter, and he has uniformly replied that he is coming without delay while all the time I perceive that he has given up that idea and has taken up some other scheme. Nevertheless, I have sent our friend Furnius' to him with a message and a letter, in case he may be able to do some good. You know, my dear Cicero, that in regard to love for Cæsar you and I are partners, either because, being one of Iulius Cæsar's intimates, I was obliged-while he was alive-to look after the boy and shew him affection; or because he was himself, as far as I could make out, of a very orderly and kindly disposition; or because, after such a remarkable friendship as existed between me and Iulius Cæsar, it seems discreditable that I should not regard as a son one who was adopted into that position by his decision and by that of your house alike. Yet after all-and whatever I write

1 Gaius Furnius. See p. 311.

2 For the adoption of Octavian, see p. 21. By vestro Plancus seems

to you I write rather in sorrow than in anger-the fact that Antony is alive to-day, that Lepidus is with him, that they have far from contemptible armies, that they are hopeful and bold-for all these they may thank Cæsar. I will not go back to old matters, but from the moment that he gave out that he was coming to me, if he had chosen to come, the war would at once have either been put an end to, or, to their very great loss, have been thrust back into Spain, which is most hostile in sentiment to them. What idea or whose advice has withdrawn him from such great glory, which was at the same time required by his interests and needful for his safety, and has turned his attention to the thought of a two-months' consulship, entailing a great and general panic, and demanded in a peremptory and offensive manner-I cannot conjecture. It seems to me that in this matter his relations could exercise considerable influence both for his sake and for that of the Republic: most of all, as I think, could you also do so, since he is more obliged to you than anyone else is except myself— for I shall never forget that the obligations I owe you are exceedingly great and numerous. I commissioned Furnius to urge these considerations upon him. But if I prove to have as great an influence with him as I ought to have, I shall have done him a great service himself. Meanwhile we are maintaining the war at a disadvantage, because we do not think an engagement the safest solution of the difficulty, and yet will not allow the Republic to suffer greater loss by our retirement. But if either Cæsar has bethought himself, or the African legions have come promptly,' we will relieve you of anxiety on this side. I beg you to continue to honour me with your regard, and to believe that I am peculiarly at your service.

28 July, in camp.

to refer to the senate, which, though the curiate law for the formal adoption had not yet been passed, yet practically acknowledged the adoption of Octavian in his great-uncle's will by the wording of its decrees.

The African legions came from Cornificius, but they almost directly joined Octavian, which was the last blow to the hopes of Cicero and the senate (App. B. C. iii. 91, 92).

APPENDIX

CICERO TO OCTAVIAN1

IF your legions, which are most bitterly hostile to my name and to that of the Roman people, had left it possible for me to come into the senate and hold debate in the presence of the Republic, I would have done so, and not so much with pleasure as from necessity. For no remedies applied to wounds are so painful as those that are healing. But since, being hemmed round with armed cohorts, the senate cannot decree anything expressing its real sentiments except that it is in terror, since in the Capitol there are military standards, since in the city soldiers roam at will, since in the Campus Martius a camp is pitched, since the whole of Italy is distracted by legions enrolled to secure our freedom, but brought here to enslave us, and by the cavalry of foreign tribes-I will for the present yield you possession of the forum, the senate-house, and the most sacred temples of the immortal gods, in which, as liberty first revives and then is trampled out, the senate is consulted about nothing, has countless fears, and only passes decrees to flatter. Presently, when the state of things seems to demand it, I shall quit the city, which, once preserved as it was by me that it might be free, I shall never endure to see enslaved. I shall quit life which, although filled with anxiety, yet, if destined to profit the Republic, consoles me with a good hope of future fame. If that hope is taken from me, I shall fall without a moment's hesitation, and shall depart, though taking care to make it clear that in my judgment fortune and not courage has deserted me. But there is one thing I will not omit as a proof of my recent wrong, as a record of past outrage, and a declaration of the feeling of those that are away: since 1 am prevented from remonstrating with you face to face, I will do so in your absence in the defence of the Republic and in my own.

1 This rhetorical exercise was evidently composed by some one who knew the general facts of the last year of Cicero's life well. But it is not a successful imitation of his style, nor is there any conceivable juncture of affairs at which Cicero would have ventured to write thus to Octavian.

And I say" in my own defence," since my safety is either useful to the Republic or at least closely bound up with the public safety. For in the name of the immortal gods-unless by chance it is vain for me to appeal to those, whose ears and hearts are turned from us-and in the name of the fortune of the Roman people, which though hostile to us was once propitious, and, as I hope, will be so again-who is there so lost to all feelings of manhood, who is there so bitterly hostile to the name and dwelling-places of this city, as to be able to ignore what is happening, or not to grieve at it, or, if he can by no means remedy the public disasters, not to avoid his own danger by death?

For, to begin at the beginning and to trace events to the end, and to compare the last with the first, what morrow has dawned on the Roman people that was not more disastrous than the day before, and what hour that was not more calamitous than that which it succeeded? Marcus Antonius, a man of great courage -I only wish he had been wiser !--when Gaius Cæsar had by an act of the greatest resolution, though with no happy results, been removed from his despotic rule over the Republic, had conceived the ambition for a more regal primacy than a free state could tolerate. He was throwing away the public money, exhausting the treasury, reducing the revenues, presenting cities and whole tribes with immunity in virtue of Cæsar's memoranda. He was playing the part of dictator, imposing his laws upon us and while forbidding a dictator to be named, he himself assumed the authority of a king while he was still consul, and had set his heart on controlling all the provinces by himself. What had we to expect or look for from a man who thought the province of Macedonia, which Cæsar when victorious had taken as his own,' as too mean for him? You stood forward then as the champion of our liberty, the best that was possible at the time-and oh! that neither our opinion of you nor your own good faith had been forfeited!—and having hired veterans to form a body of soldiers, and having induced two legions to abandon the destruction of their country for its preservation, when the Republic was now in all but a desperate and utterly prostrate position, you suddenly raised it by your own resources What honours, before you demanded them, on a greater scale than you desired, more numerous than you hoped, did not the senate bestow upon you? It gave you the fasces that it might have a defender with full authority, not that he might by this imperium take arms against itself. It gave you the title of imperator, when the army of the enemy had been repulsed, by

2

1 After the battle of Pharsalia Cæsar seems to have ruled Macedonia and Greece by legates, first as a mere military occupation under Fufius, and then in a more regular way under Servius Sulpicius Rufus (vol. iii., p. 136). 2 The fourth and the Martian.

way of paying you a compliment, not that that fugitive army, shattered by the slaughter which it had itself incurred,1 might hail you imperator. It decreed you a statue in the forum, a place in the senate, the highest office before the legal age. If there is anything else that can be given, it will add it. What is there greater than this that you desire to take? But if on the other hand you have had every kind of honour bestowed on you before the legal age, beyond the ordinary usage, beyond even the reach of human nature, why do you curtail the authority of the senate as though it were ungrateful, or forgetful of your good services? Is it wanton cruelty or deliberate crime on your part? Whither have we sent you? From whom are you returning? Against whom have we armed you? On whom are you meditating war? From whom are you withdrawing an army? Against whom are you drawing out your line of battle? Why is the public enemy left untouched, and the citizen attacked as an enemy? Why in the very midst of your march is your camp pushed farther from the adversary and nearer the city? Their hope is perforce our terror. Oh, how unwise I have always been, and what an ill-grounded reputation has mine turned out to be! How greatly, oh people of Rome, have you been deceived in me! What an old age of disaster and ruin! Oh, what a disgrace to my grey hairs, when life is all but gone and dotage has set in! -I have led the senate to its bloody doom! I have deceived the Republic! I have forced the senate to lay violent hands upon itself, when I said that Iuno smiled on your birth, and that your mother had brought forth a golden age! In reality the fates were foretelling you to be the Paris of your country, destined to devastate the city with fire, Italy with war; to pitch your camp in the temples of the immortal gods; and to hold the senate in a camp. What a miserable upsetting of the constitutionhow sudden and rapid and complicated! Who is likely to arise with a genius capable of narrating these events so as to make them seem fact and not fiction? Who will there ever be of such quick intelligence as not to think that events which have been recorded with the most absolute truthfulness only resemble the incidents of a drama? For think of Antony declared a public enemy; of a consul-designate, and he too a father of the state, besieged by him; of you setting out to relieve the consul and crush the enemy; of the enemy being put to flight by you and the consul released from the siege; and 1 Sua cæde. Perhaps it should be tua, "by the slaughter you inflicted on it."

2

2 For Cicero's dream of a child let down from heaven by a gold chain, see Suet. Aug. 94; Dio, 45, 12; Plut. Cic. 44. This seems a confused reference to it.