officer of the Antonian army, while, under the title of a triumvirate for the establishment of the commonwealth, the three chiefs should reign together over the city, the consuls, and the laws. They claimed the consular power in common for five years, with the right of appointing to all the magistracies. Their decrees were to have the force of law, without requiring the confirmation of the Senate or the people. Finally, they apportioned to themselves the provinces around Italy. The two Gauls fell to Antonius; the Spains, with the Narbonensis, to Lepidus; Africa and the islands. to Octavius. Italy itself, with the seat of empire, they were to retain in common, while the Eastern provinces, now held by Brutus and Cassius, they left for future division, when the enemy should be expelled from them. Meanwhile Octavius and Antonius, with twenty legions each, charged themselves with the conduct of the war, and agreed to leave Lepidus to maintain their combined interests in the city. Ample gratuities were promised to the soldiers, and estates assigned them from the lands of eighteen cities in the peninsula. The troops were satisfied with their share in the compact, and insisted that Octavius should espouse a daughter of Fulvia as a pledge of its fulfilment.

The triumvirs now addressed an order to Pedius for the death of seventeen of their principal adversaries. The houses of the victims were attacked at night, and most of them slain before their condemnation was notified to the citizens. Pedius, a brave and honorable man, died from horror and disgust at the slaughter of which he was made the instrument. Octavius, Antonius, and Lepidus entered the city on three successive days, each accompanied by a single legion. The temples and towers were occupied by the troops; the banners of the conquerors waved in the Forum, and cast their ominous shadow over the heads of the assembled people. A plebiscitum gave the semblance of legality to a usurpation which scarcely condescended to demand it. On November 27 the Triumvirate was proclaimed. The triumvirs, about to quit Rome to combat the murderers of Cæsar in the East, would leave no enemies in their rear. They decreed, not a massacre like Sulla's, but a formal proscription. Sitting with a list of chief citizens before them, each picked out the names of the victims he personally required. Each purchased the right to proscribe a kinsman of his colleagues by surrendering one of his own. The fatal memorial was headed with the names of a brother of Lepidus, an uncle of Antonius, and a cousin of Octavius. Again were enacted the horrid scenes which closed the civil wars of the last generation. Centurions and soldiers were sent in quest of the most important victims. The pursuit was joined by mercenary cutthroats and private enemies. Slaves a

CHAP. XLVIII.

THE MURDER OF CICERO.

391

tacked their masters, and debtors their creditors. The heads of the proscribed were affixed to the rostra, but the triumvirs did not always pause to identify them.

Dreadful as these butcheries were, they seem at least to have fallen short in number of the exterminating massacres of Marius and Sulla. It is difficult to believe that the proscribed were in all cases hotly pursued. Cicero, one of the foremost on the list, travelled slowly from one of his villas to the other, and was not overtaken till a month later. Many crossed the sea to Macedonia, others to Africa; still more took refuge on board the vessels with which Sextus Pompeius was cruising off the coast of Italy. Some escaped by bribery when entreaty failed; and Octavius seems in some instances to have studiously contrasted his own leniency with the ferocity of his associates. But Antonius demanded the death of Cicero, and Octavius, to the horror of all time, consented. Marcus Cicero was with his brother Quintus at his Tusculan villa. On the first news of the proscription they gained Astura, another of his villas, on a little island off the coast near Antium. From thence they proposed to embark for Macedonia. Quintus, indeed, was promptly seized and slain; but the surviving fugitive gained the sca, set sail, again landed, again embarked, and landed once more at Formiæ, in anguish of mind and perhaps of body also. In vain was he warned of the danger of delay. "Let me die," he replied, "in my fatherland which I have so often saved." But his slaves now shut their ears to their master's moans, placed him in his litter, and hurried towards the coast. Scarcely had the house been quitted when an officer named Popilius-a client, it was said, whose life Cicero had saved-approached and thundered at the closed doors. A traitor indicated the direction the fugitive had taken, and Cicero had not yet reached the beach when he saw the pursuers gaining upon him. His party were the more numerous, and would have drawn in his defence, but he forbade them. He bade his slaves set down the litter, and, with his eyes fixed steadfastly on his murderers, offered his throat to the sword. Many covered their faces with their hands, and their agitated leader drew his blade thrice across it ere he could sever the head from the body. The bloody trophy was carried to Rome, and set up by Antonius in front of the rostra. He openly exulted in the spectacle, and rewarded the assassins with profuse liberality. Fulvia, it is said, pierced the tongue with her needle, in revenge for the sarcasms it had uttered against both her husbands.

Such were the melancholy circumstances with which the year closed. Lepidus and Plancus, who entered upon the consulship on January 1, commanded the people, still full of mourning and dismay, to celebrate the commencement of their reign B. c. 42.

U. O. 712.

with mirth and festivity. They demanded also the honors of a triumph for victories, about which history is silent, in Gaul and Spain. Both the one and the other had sacrificed their own brothers in the proscription, and when the fratricides passed along in their chariots the soldiers, it is said, with the usual camp license, sang as they followed, "The consuls triumph, not over the Gauls, but the Germans," i. e., their brothers. The massacres had now ended, but a reign of confiscation commenced. All the inhabitants of Rome and Italy were required to lend a tenth of their fortune, and to give the whole of one year's income. The consuls proposed an oath to the citizens to observe all Cæsar's enactments, and accorded him divine honors. The triumvirs followed his example in assigning all the chief magistrates for several years forward. Octavius undertook to drive Sextus out of Sicily, where he had established himself under the protection of a flotilla manned by pirates and adventurers, but the passage of the strait was too strongly guarded. Antonius crossed without delay to the coast of Epirus.

CHAPTER XLIX.

Brutus recruits his legions at Athens.-The poet Horace takes service with him.-Brutus and Cassius prepare for war, and plunder their own provinces for supplies. They encounter Antonius and Octavius in the two battles of Philippi in Macedonia.-Their defeat and death.-The triumvirs make a division of the empire.-Octavius returns to Rome to plant the veterans on Italian land.-Antonins repairs to the East, and falls into the snares of Cleopatra. The interview on the Cydnus.-Fulvia raises a revolt in Italy against Octavius.-War of Perusia.-Treaty of Brundisium between Octavius and Antonius.-Sextus obtains a share in the empire.—Octavius undertakes a maritime war against Sextus. Excellent services of M. Agrippa.-Victory off Naulochus.-Death of Sextus and disgrace of Lepidus. (B.c. 42-36.)

As soon as Cæsar had quitted Greece for Egypt, the cities which had opened their gates to him were ready-such was their real indifference to the quarrels of their masters-to hail with equal loyalty the next claimant. Brutus on arriving in his province found the population outwardly republican. When he presented himself at Athens the citizens erected his statue by the side of Harmodius and Aristogiton. Athens was at this time a sort of university, at which many youthful patricians were attending the lectures of the philosophers. Associated with them, or dependent upon them, were other Italians of humbler pretensions, such as the

CHAP. XLIX. BRUTUS AND CASSIUS IN THE EAST.

393

future poet Horace, the son of a fiscal agent in Apulia. Many of these lads naturally joined the standard of the patriot, and were promoted perhaps to command in his ranks. Horace himself was made a tribune, of which officers there were properly six to each legion. We must suppose that the title was now conferred as an honorary distinction upon some striplings whom it would have been impossible to invest with any real authority. But the summons of Brutus was responded to by many tried veterans. The remnant of the Pompeian legions, dispersed through the country after Pharsalia, flocked around him. One agent of the government brought him the proceeds of the taxes, another officer supplied him with a contingent of horsemen, and the arsenal of Demetrias provided him with arms. On assuming command in the province of Macedonia the kings and rulers all around came over to him, and he was enabled quickly to overpower the adherents of the triumvirs, among whom was a brother of Antonius.

Cassius, as we have seen, had previously repaired to his promised government in Syria, where the courage with which he had repelled the Parthians after the fall of Crassus had gained him favor and respect. He too had encountered and suppressed the attempts of the Cæsarians. Cicero, who had caused Brutus and Cassius to be confirmed in their commands by the Senate, had urgently invoked their aid for the defence of the capital. They were both at the head of large forces; neither had any opponent to impede his march. With all the resources of the East at their command, we can hardly suppose that they were pressed for money. Most strange it must always seem that at such a crisis the liberators should have wanted energy to advance boldly into Italy and confront the triumvirs at the gates of Rome. Possibly they were not masters of their own soldiers. The legionaries did not care, perhaps, to engage in a bloody and profitless campaign against other legionaries as poor as themselves, while the cities of the East offered them such abundant resources. They found or provoked petty enemies around them, and required their chiefs to lead them against the Lycians, the Rhodians, and the Cappadocians, while the republic itself was falling into the hands of the Cæsarians. Brutus devoted himself to plundering the people at Xanthus, who threw themselves in despair into the flames of their own city. Cassius attacked Rhodes, mulcted it of 8500 talents, and cut off the heads of fifty of its chief men. The whole of Asia was subjected to the severest exactions. At last Brutus himself, though hardly less guilty than his colleague, interfered to restrain this fatal cupidity. At Sardis, where the two proconsuls met to arrange the plan of the impending campaign, he sharply rebuked Cassins for bringing

odium on their common cause; but Cassius pleaded his inability to restrain his followers, and Brutus let the matter pass with a few unavailing murmurs.

Laden with the plunder of Asia, the armies were about to pass over into Macedonia. The legend says that Brutus, watching in his tent at night, beheld a terrible figure standing silent before him. Addressed and questioned, the phantom replied, "I am thy evil demon; thou shalt see me again at Philippi." At daybreak the stoic related his vision to Cassius the Epicurean, who explained to him the principles on which his master demonstrated the vanity of apparitions. Brutus appeared to be satisfied, but his mind continued perhaps to brood over a presentiment of evil. Cassius was troubled with no misgivings. His troops were numerous and well-appointed, amounting to 30,000 foot and 20,000 horse; and as they advanced they received further auxiliary support before they encountered the forces, still more numerous, but less well-supplied, of Antonius and Octavius, who had now joined his colleague. Brutus and Cassius were encamped on two eminences about twelve miles east of Philippi, their left covered by the sea, from which they drew their resources. Antonius posted himself opposite to Cassius; Octavius, on his left, faced the army of Brutus. Cassius, aware of the wants of the enemy, advised to refrain from action; but his associate, anxious and impatient to terminate at a blow the miseries of civil war, refused to listen to his counsels. The armies engaged at the same moment on either wing. Octavius was unwell and unable to take command of his division, which gave way under the shock of its opponents, and bore along its chief in its hurried flight. Brutus believed the battle won. But Antonius had charged with no less success on the right: Cassius had been driven from his camp, and had retired almost alone to a distance. Descrying from thence a body of horse advancing, he rashly concluded that the enemy was in pursuit, and threw himself on the sword of a freedThe scout of Brutus, sent to advertise him of his comrade's success, arrived a moment too late.

man.

The effect of this fatal deed was utterly disastrous. Cassius had at least controlled the turbulence of his soldiers, as one accustomed to command; but the mild student who now remained to soothe their shame and restore their confidence could neither restrain nor direct them. In vain did he scatter his treasures among them; in vain did he deliver his captives to their vindictive cruelty. Day by day they deserted his standards. Still the enemy, straitened for supplies, and conscious of having been half-defeated, was on the of becoming disorganized. Could Brutus have refrained from engagement, even yet a bloodless victory was in his hands. wn fretful impatience was stimulated by the eagerness of