Y.R. 711 B.C. 61. Thus did Piso defend Antony, reproaching his ene- 43 mies and alarming them. He was evidently the cause of their not voting Antony an enemy. Nevertheless, he did not succeed in securing for him the governorship of the Gallic province. The friends and relatives of the murderers prevented it, fearing lest, at the end of the war, Antony should join Octavius in avenging the murder, for which reason they meant to keep Octavius and Antony always at variance with each other. They voted to offer Antony Macedonia instead of the Gallic province, and they ordered, either heedlessly or designedly, that the other commands of the Senate be reduced to writing by Cicero and delivered to the ambassadors. Cicero altered the decree and wrote as follows: "Antony must raise the siege of Mutina forthwith, relinquish Cisalpine Gaul to Decimus, withdraw to the hither side of the river Rubicon (which forms the boundary between Italy and the province) before a specified day, and submit himself in all things to the Senate." Thus provokingly and falsely did Cicero write the orders of the Senate, not by reason of an underlying hostility, as it seems, but at the instigation of some evil spirit that was goading the republic to revolution and meditating destruction to Cicero himself. The remains a strong speech on the first of August on the republican side. In a letter to Cassius (Ad Fam. xii. 2) he says that Piso is one of three senators whose blood Antony is seeking, the other two being P. Servilius and Cicero himself. It must be said, however, that Piso was capable of changing at any moment, for a blacker character never was painted than that which Cicero gives him in his Orations De Provinciis Consularibus and In Pisonem. Dion Cassius (xlvi. 1-28) says that Quintus Fufius Calenus took the lead in defending Antony in this debate. In the eighth Philippic (4-6) Cicero addresses himself to Fufius and answers arguments which the latter had made in favor of Antony in some debate. At an earlier period Fufius had been tribune and had fixed the jury which acquitted Clodius when he was tried for profaning the mysteries of the Bona Dea. 1 The statement that Cicero falsified the message of the Senate to Antony is untrue. Cicero was vehemently opposed to sending ambassadors to Antony and in favor of an immediate declaration of war and the levying of troops against him. The terms of the message adopted by the Senate and sent by a special embassy are given in the sixth Philippic (2-3). They are in substance the same as those quoted above. Antony was ordered to recross the Rubicon, but not to come within 200 miles of Rome. Y.R. 711 of Trebonius having been lately brought home and the indignities visited upon them more carefully inquired into, the Senate with little opposition declared Dolabella a public enemy. 62. The ambassadors who had been sent to Antony, ashamed of the extraordinary character of the orders, said nothing, but simply delivered them to him. Antony in his wrath indulged in many invectives against the Senate and Cicero. "He was astonished," he said, "that they should consider Cæsar (the man who had contributed most to the Roman sway) a tyrant and a king, and did not so consider Cicero, whom Cæsar had captured in war and whose life he had spared, while Cicero in return now prefers Cæsar's assassins to his friends. He hated Decimus as long as the latter was the friend of Cæsar, but loves him now that he has become his murderer. He favors a man who took the province of Gaul after Cæsar's death without authority, and makes war on one who received it at the hands of the people. He gives rewards to those who deserted from the legions voted to me, and none to those who remain faithful, thus impairing military discipline not more to my disadvantage than to that of the state. He has given amnesty to the murderers, to which I have assented on account of two respectable men. He holds Antony and Dolabella as enemies because we keep what was given to us. That is the real reason. And if I but withdraw from Gaul, then I am neither enemy nor monarch! I declare that I will bring to naught the amnesty with which they are not satisfied." 63. After saying much more to the same purpose Antony wrote his reply to the decree, saying that he would obey the Senate in all respects as the voice of his country, but to Cicero, who wrote the orders, he would make the following answer: "The people gave me the province of Gaul by a law, and I shall prosecute Decimus for not obeying the law, and I shall visit punishment for the murder upon 1 Tap' ovdevds: "at the hands of nobody." In Secs. 49 and 50 we are told that Decimus held the province by the authority of the Senate, and in Sec. 124, Bk. I, that he had been designated as governor of the province by Cæsar himself, all of whose acts were subsequently, on Antony's motion, confirmed by the Senate. B.C. 43 Y.R. 711 B.C. him alone, as representative of them all, in order that the 43 Senate, which now participates in the wickedness by reason of Cicero's support of Decimus, may at last be purged of the shocking crime." These words Antony spoke and wrote in reply. The Senate immediately voted him an enemy and also the army under him if it should not abandon him. The government of Macedonia and Illyria, with the troops still remaining in both, was assigned to Marcus Brutus until the republic should be reëstablished. The latter already had an army of his own and had received some troops from Apuleius. He also had war-ships and ships of burden and about 16,000 talents in money and quantities of arms which he found in Demetrias, where they had been placed by Gaius Cæsar long before, all of which the Senate now voted that he should use for the advantage of the republic. They voted that Cassius should be governor of Syria and that he should make war against Dolabella, and that all other commanders of Roman provinces and soldiers between the Adriatic sea and the Orient should obey the orders of Cassius and Brutus in all things. 1 Antony's reply is quoted with a running comment in the eighth Philippic (8-9). It was a counter-proposition demanding money and lands for his troops; requiring that the edicts of himself and Dolabella relative to Cæsar's writings and note-books should not be questioned; that there should be no inquiry into the disposition made of the money left by Cæsar in the temple of Ops; that he (Antony) should have the province of Transalpine Gaul with six legions (to be filled up from the forces under command of Decimus) for at least five years, and as long as Marcus Brutus and Cassius should retain their provinces. 2 Apuleius was the quaestor of Asia. Plutarch, who gives him the name of Antistius, says that he was bringing some ships laden with money to Rome and that Brutus met him near Carystus (at the southern end of Euboea) and persuaded him to deliver the ships and contents to himself, and that the amount of money was 500,000 drachmas. Plutarch mentions also the store of arms at Demetrias, accumulated by Cæsar for the Parthian expedition. (Life of Brutus, 24-25.) Y.R. 711 CHAPTER IX Octavius alarmed by the Action of the Senate - Octavius, Hirtius, and Pansa march to the Relief of Decimus - Activity of Cicero in Rome Battle between Antony and the Consul Pansa Pansa wounded and his Men retire to their Camp - Hirtius comes to the Rescue and defeats Antony 1 64. Thus quickly did the Senate seize the opportunity B.C. to put the affairs of Cassius and his party in a brilliant 43 aspect. When Octavius learned what had been done he was troubled. He had considered the amnesty in the light of an act of humanity and of pity for the relatives and compeers of these men, and that the very small commands had been given them for their safety merely; finally, the confirming of the Gallic province to Decimus seemed to him to have been done by reason of the Senate's difference with Antony respecting the supreme power, on which ground also they were inciting him against Antony. But the voting of Dolabella an enemy because he had put one of the murderers to death, the changing of the commands of Brutus and Cassius to the largest provinces, the granting of great armies and large sums of money to them and putting them in command of all the governors beyond the Adriatic sea -all pointed plainly to the building up of the party of Pompey and the pulling down of that of Cæsar. He bethought himself of their artifice in treating him as a young man, in providing him a statue and a front seat, and giving him the title of proprætor, when in fact they were taking from him what army he did have, for a proprætor has no authority when consuls are serving with him. Then the rewards voted only to those of his soldiers who had deserted from Antony to him were an indignity to those who had enlisted under him. Finally the war would be nothing but a disgrace to him, for the Senate would simply make use of him against Antony till the latter was crushed. 1 Cyrenaica and Crete; see Sec. 8. In the eleventh Philippic (12) Cicero praises Brutus for anticipating the desires of the Senate and not going to his own province of Crete, but flying to Macedonia, although it had been assigned to another. It had been assigned to Gaius Antonius. Y.R. 711 B.C. 65. Meditating thus to himself he performed the, sacri- 43 fices appertaining to the command assigned to him, and said to his army: "I owe these honors of mine to you, fellow-soldiers, not now merely but from the time when you gave me the command; for the Senate conferred them upon me on account of you. Know, therefore, that my gratitude will be due to you for these things, and that it will be expressed to you abundantly if the gods grant success to our undertakings." In this way he conciliated the soldiers and attached them to himself. In the meantime, Pansa, one of the consuls, was collecting recruits throughout Italy, and the other one, Hirtius, shared the command of the forces with Octavius, and as he was secretly ordered to do it by the Senate he demanded as his share the two legions that had deserted from Antony, knowing that they were the most reliable in the army. Octavius yielded to him in everything and they shared with each other and went into winter quarters together. As winter advanced Decimus began to suffer from hunger, and Hirtius and Octavius advanced toward Mutina lest Antony should receive in surrender Decimus' army now weak with famine; but as Mutina was closely hemmed in by Antony, they did not venture to come to close quarters with him at once, but waited for Pansa. There were frequent cavalry engagements, as Antony had a much larger force of horse, but the difficulty of the ground, which was cut up by torrents, deprived him of the advantage of numbers. 66. Such was the course of events around Mutina. At Rome, in the absence of the consuls, Cicero took the lead by public speaking. He held frequent assemblies, procured arms by inducing the artificers to work without pay, collected money, and exacted heavy contributions from the Antonians. These paid without complaining in order to avoid calumny, until Publius Ventidius, who had served under Gaius Cæsar and was a friend of Antony, unable to endure the exactions of Cicero, betook himself to Cæsar's colonies, where he was well known, and raised two legions for Antony and hastened to Rome to seize Cicero. The consternation was extreme. They removed most of the women and children in a panic, and Cicero himself fled from the city. When Ventidius learned this he turned his |