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BOOK III

THE CIVIL WARS (CONTINUED)

CHAPTER I

Y.R.

710

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The City after Cæsar's Funeral - Antony puts the False Marius to Death He deceives the Senate-He falsifies Cæsar's Decrees Brutus and Cassius leave the City - Dolabella appointed Governor of Syria and Antony Governor of Macedonia

B. C.

I. THUS was Gaius Cæsar, who had been foremost in 44 extending the Roman sway, slain by his enemies and buried by the people. All of his murderers were brought to punishment. How the most distinguished of them were punished this book and the next one will show, and the other civil wars waged by the Romans will likewise be included in them.

2. The Senate blamed Antony for his funeral oration over Cæsar, by which, chiefly, the people were incited to disregard the decree of amnesty lately passed, and to scour the city in order to fire the houses of the murderers. But he changed it from bad to good feeling toward himself by one capital stroke of policy. There was a certain pseudoMarius in Rome named Amatius. He pretended to be a grandson of Marius, and for this reason was popular with the masses. Being, according to this pretence, a relative of Cæsar, he was pained beyond measure by the latter's death, and erected an altar on the site of his funeral pyre. He collected a band of reckless men and made himself a perpetual terror to the murderers. Some of these had fled from the city, and those who had accepted the command of provinces from Cæsar himself had gone away to take charge of the same, Decimus Brutus to Cisalpine Gaul, Trebonius to Asia adjoining Ionia, and Tillius Cimber to Bithynia. Cassius and Marcus Brutus, who were the special

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710 favorites of the Senate, had been chosen by Cæsar as gov- 44 ernors for the following year, the former of Syria, and the latter of Macedonia. Being still city prætors, they remained there necessarily, and in their official capacity they conciliated the colonists by various decrees, and among others by one enabling them to sell their allotments, the law hitherto forbidding the alienation of the land till the end of twenty years.

3. It was said that Amatius was only waiting an opportunity to entrap Brutus and Cassius. On the rumor of this plot, Antony, using his consular authority, arrested Amatius and boldly put him to death without a trial. The senators were astonished at this deed as an act of violence and contrary to law, but they enjoyed it exceedingly because they thought that the situation of Brutus and Cassius would never be safe without such boldness. The followers of Amatius, and the plebeians generally, missing Amatius and feeling indignation at the deed, and especially because it had been done by Antony, whom the people had honored, determined that they would not be scorned in that way. With shouts they took possession of the forum, exclaiming against Antony and called on the magistrates, in place of Amatius, to dedicate the altar and to offer the first sacrifices on it to Cæsar. Having been driven out of the forum by soldiers sent by Antony, they became still more indignant, and vociferated more loudly, and some of them showed places where Cæsar's statues had been torn from their pedestals. One man told them that he could show a shop where the statues had been broken up. The others followed, and having witnessed the fact, they set fire to the place. Finally, Antony sent more soldiers and some of those who resisted were killed, others were captured, and of these the slaves were crucified and the freemen thrown over the Tarpeian rock.2

τῆς ἐνέδρας ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐπιβαίνων. There is a curious resemblance in these words to our slang phrase "getting on to his game."

2 Cicero in the first Philippic refers to the killing of this impostor as the act of Antony and Dolabella in common, and says that the rest of the work was done by Dolabella alone; but he believes that if Antony had been present he would have coöperated with his colleague. Valerius Maximus says that the pseudo-Marius was a horse doctor (equarius

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B.C.

4. So this tumult was quieted. The extreme fondness 44 of the plebeians for Antony was turned into extreme hatred. The Senate was delighted, because it believed that Brutus and his associates could not rest secure otherwise.1 Antony also moved that Sextus Pompeius (the son of Pompey the Great, who was still much beloved by all) should be recalled from Spain, where he was still at war with Cæsar's lieutenants, and that he should be paid 50,000,000 of Attic drachmas 2 out of the public treasury for his father's confiscated property and be appointed commander of the sea, as his father had been, with charge of all the Roman ships, wherever situated, which were needed for immediate service. The astonished Senate accepted each of these decrees with alacrity and applauded Antony the whole day; for nobody, medicus) and that his real name was Herophilus. "He gave out that C. Marius was his grandfather, and so extolled himself that several colonies of veterans, and towns of the first class, and almost all the rural communities, adopted him as their patron. When Cæsar opened his gardens to the people after he had made an end of young Pompey in Spain, Herophilus, who was separated from Cæsar by only the space between two columns, was received by the crowd with almost as much enthusiasm as himself, so that unless the powers of the godlike Cæsar had put a stop to these shameful outbursts, the republic would have received the same hurt as in the case of Equitius (the pseudoGracchus)." (Val. Max. ix. 15. 2.)

1 As we have no dates in the text we are left in confusion as to the state of affairs in Rome at any particular time. The assassination took place on the 15th of March. Cassius and Marcus Brutus retired to Lanuvium as soon as it appeared that their lives were in danger in Rome. A letter written to them in the month of April by Decimus Brutus, who had not yet gone to Cisalpine Gaul, is preserved among the letters of Cicero. He says he has had an interview with Hirtius, who tells him that Antony did not consider Rome a safe place for any of them, because the soldiers and the plebeians were so incensed against them. "Do you ask me," he continues, "what I advise? Let us submit to fortune, withdraw from Italy, and retire to Rhodes, or some other part of the world. If better luck comes, we can return to Rome; if no change occurs, we can live in exile; if worst comes to worst, we can try our last resources." (Ad Fam. xi. 1.)

2 In the 13th Philippic of Cicero (5) the amount voted to Sextus Pompey in compensation for his father's confiscated estates is put at seven hundred millions of sesterces or $28,700,000 of our money. This was exactly the amount that was in the temple of Ops (the produce of confiscated estates) at the time of Cæsar's death (2d Philippic, 37). Fifty millions of Attic drachmas would have been equal to about $10,000,000.

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