of virtue and piety at the time. It was Popillius Laenas who killed
Marcus Cicero, in spite of the latter's having done him favors as his
advocate; and in order that he might depend not wholly on hearsay but
also on the sense of sight to establish himself as the murderer of the
orator, he set up an image of himself wearing a crown beside his victim's
head, with an inscription that gave his name and the service rendered. By
this act he pleased Antony so much that he secured more than the price
offered. Marcus Terentius Varro was a man who had given no offence, but
as his appellation was identical with that of one of the proscribed,
except for one name, he was afraid that, this might lead him to suffer
such a fate as did Cinna. Therefore he issued a statement making known
this fact; he was tribune at the time. For this he became the subject of
much idle amusement and laughter. The uncertainty of life, however, was
evidenced by the very fact that Lucius Philuscius, who had previously
been proscribed by Sulla and had escaped, had his name now inscribed
again on the tablet and perished, whereas Marcus Valerius Messala,
condemned to death by Antony, not only continued to live in safety but
was later appointed consul in place of Antony himself. Thus many survive
from inextricable difficulties and no fewer are ruined through a spirit
of confidence. Hence a man ought not to be alarmed to the point of
hopelessness by the calamities of the moment, nor to be elated to
heedlessness by temporary exultation, but by placing his hope of the
future half-way between both to make reliable calculations for either
event. [-12-] This is the way it befell at that time: very many of those
not proscribed were involved in the downfall of others on account of
spite or money, and very many whose names were proclaimed not only
survived but returned to their homes again, and some of them even held
offices. They had a refuge, of course, with Brutus and Cassius and
Sextus, and the majority directed their flight toward the last mentioned.
He had been chosen formerly to command the fleet and had held sway for
some time on the sea, so that he had surrounded himself with a force of
his own, though he was afterward deprived of his office by Caesar. He had
occupied Sicily, and then, when the order of proscription was passed
against him, too, a host of assassinations took place, he aided greatly
those who were in like condition. Anchoring near the coast of Italy he
sent word to Rome and to the other cities offering among other things to
those who saved anybody double the reward advertised for murdering the
same and promising to the men themselves a reception and assistance and
money and honors. [-13-] Therefore great numbers came to him. I have
not even now recorded the precise total of those who were proscribed or
slaughtered or who escaped, because many names originally inscribed on
the tablets were erased and many were later inscribed in their place, and
of these not a few were saved while many outside of these succumbed.
It was not even allowed anybody to mourn for the victims, but several
perished from this cause also. And finally, when the calamities broke
through all the pretence they could assume and no one even of the most
stout-hearted could any longer wear an air of indifference to them, but
in all their work and conversation their countenances were overcast and
they were not intending to celebrate the usual festival at the beginning
of the year, they were ordered by a public notice to appear in good
spirits, on pain of death if they should refuse to obey. So they were
forced to rejoice over the common evils as over blessings. Yet why need I
have mentioned it, when they voted to those men (the triumvirs, I mean)
civic crowns and other distinctions as to benefactors and saviors of
the State? They did not think of being held to blame because they were
killing a few, but wished to receive additional praise for not putting
more out of the way. And to the populace they once openly stated that
they had emulated neither the cruelty of Marius and Sulla so as to incur
hatred, nor the mildness of Caesar so as to be despised and as a result
become objects of a conspiracy.
[-14-] Such were the conditions of the murders; but many other unusual
proceedings took place in regard to the property of persons left alive.
They actually announced, as if they were just and humane rulers, that
they would give to the widows of the slain their dowries, to the male
children a tenth, and to the female children a twentieth of the property
of each one's father. This was not, however, granted save in a few
cases: of the rest all the possessions without exception were ruthlessly
plundered. In the first place they levied upon all the houses in the City
and those in the rest of Italy a yearly rent, which was the entire amount
from dwellings which people had let, and half from such as they occupied
themselves, with reference to the value of the domicile. Again, from
those who had lands they took away half of the proceeds. Besides, they
had the soldiers get their support free from the cities in which they
were wintering, and distributed them to various rural districts,
pretending that they were sent to take charge of confiscated territory
or that of persons who still opposed them. For this last class they had
termed likewise enemies because they had not changed their attitude
before the appointed day. So that the whole country outside the towns was
also pillaged. The autocrats allowed the soldiers to do this to the end
that, having their pay before the work, they might devote all their
energy to their commanders' interests, and promised to give them cities
and lands: And with this in view they further assigned to them persons to
divide the land and settle them. The mass of the soldiers was made loyal
by this course: of the more prominent they tempted some with the goods of
those that had been despatched by lowering the price on certain articles
and granting others to them free, and others they honored with the
offices and priesthoods of the victims. The commanders, to make sure that
they themselves should get the finest both of lands and buildings and
give their followers what they pleased, gave notice that no one else
should frequent the auction room unless he wanted to buy something:
whoever did so should die. And they handled bona fide purchasers in such
a way that the latter discovered nothing and paid the very highest price
for what they wanted, and consequently had no desire to buy again.
[-15-] This was the course followed in regard to possessions. As to the
offices and priesthoods of such as had been put to death they distributed
them not in the fashion prescribed by law but however it suited them.
Caesar resigned the office of consul, giving up willingly that which he
had so desired as to make war for it, and his colleague gave up his
place, whereupon they appointed Publius Ventidius, though praetor, and one
other; and to the former's praetorship they promoted one of the aediles.
Afterward they removed all the praetors (who held office five days longer
than Ventidius) and sent them to be governors of the provinces, while
they installed others in their places. Some laws were abolished and
others introduced instead.
And, in brief, they ordered everything else
just as seemed good to them. They did not, to be sure, lay claim to
titles which were offensive and had been therefore done away with, but
they managed matters according to their own wish and desire, so that
Caesar's sovereignty by comparison appeared all gold.
[B.C. 42 (_a. u_. 712)]
In addition to transacting that year the business mentioned, they voted a
temple to Serapis and Isis. [-16-] When Marcus Lepidus and Lucius Plancus
became consuls tablets were again exposed, not bringing death to any
one any longer, but defrauding the living of their property. They were
collecting funds because they were in need of more money, due to the fact
that they owed large sums to large numbers of soldiers, were expending
considerable on works undertaken by the latter, and thought they should
lay out far more still on wars in prospect. The fact that those taxes
which had been formerly abrogated were now again put in force or
established on a new basis, and the institution of joint contributions,
many of which kept being levied on the land and on the servants,
displeased people moderately, it can not be denied. But to have those who
were in the slightest degree still prosperous, not only of the senators
or knights but even among the freedmen, and men and women alike,
bulletined on the tablets and another tenth of their wealth confiscated
disturbed all beyond measure. For it was only nominally that a tenth of
his property was exacted from each one: in reality not so much as a tenth
was left. They were not ordered to contribute a stated amount according
to the value of their possessions, but they had the duty of estimating
their own goods and then, being accused of not having made a fair
estimate, they lost the rest besides.
[-17-] If any still escaped this somehow, yet they were brought into
straits by the assessments, and as they were terribly destitute of money
they too were in a way deprived of everything. Moreover, the following
device, distressing to hear but most distressing in practice, was put
into operation. Whoever of them wished was allowed by abandoning his
property afterward to make a requisition for one-third of it, which meant
getting nothing and also having trouble. For when they were being
openly and violently despoiled of two-thirds, how should they get back
one-third, especially since goods were being sold for an infinitesimal
price? In the first place, since many wares were being advertised for
sale at once and the majority of men were without gold or silver, and the
rest did not dare to buy because it would look as if they had something
and they would place in jeopardy the remnant of their wealth, the prices
were relaxed: in the second place, everything was sold to the soldiers
far below its value. Hence no one of the private citizens saved anything
worth mentioning. In addition to other drains they surrendered servants
for the fleet, buying them if they had none, and the senators repaired
the roads at their individual expense. Only those who wielded arms
enjoyed superlative wealth. _They_, to be sure, were not satisfied with
their pay, though it was in full, nor with their outside perquisites,
though of vast extent, nor with the very large prizes bestowed for the
murders, nor with the acquisition of lands, which was made almost without
cost to them. But in addition some would ask for and receive all the
property of the dying, and others still forced their way into the
families of such as were old and childless. To such an extent were they
filled with greed and shamelessness that one man asked from Caesar himself
the property of Attia, Caesar's mother, who had died at the time and had
been honored by a public burial.
[-18-] While these three men were behaving in this wise, they were also
magnifying the former Caesar to the greatest degree. As they were all
aiming at sole supremacy and were all striving for it, they vindictively
pursued the remainder of the assassins, apparently in the idea that they
were preparing from afar immunity for themselves in what they were doing,
and safety; and everything which tended to his honor they readily took
up, in expectation of some day being themselves deemed worthy of similar
distinctions: for this reason they glorified him by the decrees which had
been passed, and by others which they now added to them. On the first day
of the year they themselves took an oath and made others swear that they
would consider binding all his acts; this action is still taken in the
case of all officials who successively hold power, or again of those
who lived in his era, and have not been dishonored. They also laid the
foundation of a hero-shrine in the Forum, on the spot where he had been
burned, and escorted a kind of image of him at the horse-races together
with a second statue of Venus. In case news of a victory came from
anywhere they assigned the honor of a thanksgiving to the victor by
himself and to Caesar, though dead, by himself. They compelled everybody
to celebrate his birthday wearing laurel and in good spirits, passing
a law that all others, neglected it, were accursed before Jupiter and
before him while any senators or their sons should forfeit twenty-five
myriads of denarii. Now it happened that the Ludi Apollinares fell on the
same day, and they therefore voted that his natal feast should be held
on the previous day,[28] because (they said) there was an oracle of the
Sibyl forbidding a festival to be celebrated during that twenty-four
hours to any god except Apollo. [-19-] Besides granting him these
privileges they regarded the day on which he had been murdered (on which
there was always a regular meeting of the senate) as a dies nefas. The
room in which he had been murdered they closed immediately and later
transformed it into a privy. They also built the Curia Julia, called
after him, next to the so-named Comitium, as had been voted. Besides,
they forbade any likeness of him, because he was in very truth a god, to
be carried at the funerals of his relatives, which ancient custom was
still being observed. And they enacted that no one who took refuge in his
shrine to secure immunity should be banished or stripped of his goods,--a
right given to no one of the gods even, save to such as had a place in
the days of Romulus. Yet after men began to gather there the place had
inviolability in name without its effects; for it was so fenced about
that no one at all could any longer enter it.
In addition to those gifts to Caesar they allowed the vestal virgins to
employ one lictor each, because one of them had been insulted, owing to
not being recognized, while returning home from dinner toward evening.
The offices in the City they assigned for a greater number of years in
advance, thus at the same time giving honor through the expected offices
to those fitted for them and retaining a grasp on affairs for a longer
time by means of those who were to hold sway.
[-20-] When this had been accomplished, Lepidus remained there, as I have
said, to take up the administration of the City and of the rest of Italy,
and Caesar and Antony started on their campaign. Brutus and Cassius had at
first, after the compact made by them with Antony and the rest, gone
into the Forum and discharged the activities of praetorship with the same
diligence as before.
[B.C. 44 (_a. u._ 710)]
But when some began to be displeased at the killing of Caesar, they
withdrew, pretending to be in haste to reach the governorships abroad to
which they had been appointed. Cassius, who was praetor urbanus,[29] had
not yet finished his duties in connection with the Ludi Apollinares.
However, though absent he accomplished that task most brilliantly through
the medium of his fellow-praetor Antony, and did not himself sail away
from Italy at once, but lingered with Brutus in Campania, to watch the
course of events. And in their capacity as praetors they sent a certain
number of letters to Rome to the people, until such time as Caesar
Octavianus began to aspire to public position and to win the affections
of the populace. Then, in despair of the republic and fear of him, they
set sail. The Athenians gave them a splendid reception; for though they
were indeed honored by nearly everybody else for what they had done, the
inhabitants of this city voted them bronze images beside that of
Harmodius and that of Aristogeiton, as having emulated them. [-21-]
Meanwhile, learning that Caesar was making progress they neglected the
Cretans and Bithynians, to whom they were directing their course, for
among them they saw no aid forthcoming worthy the name: but they turned
to Syria and to Macedonia, which did not, to be sure, appertain to them
in the least, because they were teeming with money and troops for
the occasion. Cassius proceeded to the Syrian country, because its
inhabitants were acquainted with him and friendly as a result of his
campaign with Crassus, while Brutus united Greece and Macedonia. The
inhabitants would have followed him anywhere because of the glory of his
deeds and in the hope of similar achievements, and they were further
influenced by the fact that he had acquired numerous soldiers, some
survivors of the battle of Pharsalus, who were still at this time
wandering about in that region, and others who either by reason of
disease or because of want of discipline had been left behind from the
contingent that took the field with Dolabella. Money came to him, too,
from Trebonius in Asia. So without the least effort, perhaps because it
contained no force worth mentioning, he by this means gained the country
of Greece. He reached Macedonia at the time that Gaius Antonius had just
arrived and Quintus Hortensius, who had governed it previously, was about
to lay down his office. However, he experienced no trouble. The departing
official embraced his cause at once, and Antonius was weak, being
hindered by Caesar's supremacy in Rome from performing any of the duties
belonging to his office. The neighboring territory of Illyricum was
governed by Vatinius, who came thence to Dyrrachium and occupied it in
advance. He was a political adversary of Brutus, but could not injure him
at all, for his soldiers, who disliked him and furthermore despised him
by reason of a disease, went over to the other side.
[B.C. 43 (_a. u_. 711)]
Brutus, taking charge of these, led an expedition against Antonius, who
was in Apollonia: the latter came out to meet him, whereupon Brutus won
over his soldiers and confined him within the walls, whither he fled
before him. After this Antonius was by betrayal taken alive, but no harm
was done to him. [-22-] Close upon this success the victor acquired all
of Macedonia and Epirus, and then despatched a letter to the senate,
stating what had been accomplished, and placing himself, the provinces,
and the soldiers at its disposal. The senators, who by chance already
felt suspicious of Caesar, praised him strongly and bade him govern all
that region. When, then, he had confirmed his leadership by the decree,
he himself felt more encouraged and he found his subjects ready to
support him unreservedly. For a time he communicated with Caesar, when the
latter appeared to be hostile to Antony, urging him to resist his enemy
and be reconciled with him (Brutus), and he was making preparations to
sail to Italy because the senate summoned him. After Caesar, however,
had matters thoroughly in hand in Rome, and proceeded openly to take
vengeance on his father's slayers, Brutus remained where he was,
deliberating how he should successfully ward off the other's attack when
it occurred: and besides managing admirably the other districts as well
as Macedonia, he calmed the minds of his legions when they had been
thrown into a state of discontent by Antonius. [-23-] For the latter,
although his conqueror had not even deprived him of a praetor's
perquisites, did not enjoy keeping quiet in safety and honor, but
connived at a revolt among the soldiers of Brutus. Being discovered at
this work before he had done any great harm, he was stripped of his
praetor's insignia, and delivered to be guarded without confinement that
he might not cause an uprising. Yet not even then did he remain quiet,
but concocted more schemes of rebellion than ever, so that some of the
soldiers came to blows with one another and others started for Apollonia
after Antonius himself, in the intention of rescuing him. This, however,
they were unable to do: Brutus had learned in advance from some
intercepted letters what was to be done and by putting him into an
enclosed chair got him out of the way on the pretence that he was moving
a sick man. The soldiers, not being able to find the object of their
search, in fear of Brutus seized a point of high ground commanding the
city. Brutus induced them to come to an understanding, and by executing a
few of the most audacious and dismissing others from his service he set
matters in such a light that the men arrested and killed those sent away,
on the ground that they were most responsible for the sedition, and asked
for the surrender of the quaestor and the lieutenants of Antonius. [-24-]
Brutus did not give up any of the latter, but put them aboard boats with
the avowed intention of drowning them, and so conveyed them to safety.
Fearing, however, that when they should hear the next news of more
terrifying transactions in Rome they might change their attitude, he
delivered Antonius to a certain Gaius Clodius to guard, and left him at
Apollonia. Meanwhile Brutus himself took the largest and strongest part
of the army and retired into upper Macedonia, whence he later sailed to
Asia, to the end that he might remove his men as far as possible from
Italy and support them on the subject territory there. Among other allies
whom he won over at this time was Deiotarus, although he was of a great
age and had refused assistance to Cassius. While he was delaying here a
plot was formed against him by Gellius Poplicola, and Mark Antony sent
some men to attempt to rescue his brother. Clodius, accordingly, as
he could not guard his prisoner safely, killed him, either on his own
responsibility, or according to instructions from Brutus. For the story
is that at first the latter made his safety of supreme importance, but
later, learning that Decimus had perished, cared nothing more about it.
Gellius was detected, but suffered no punishment. Brutus released him
because he had always held him to be among his best friends and knew that
his brother, Marcus Messala, was on very close terms with Cassius. The
man had also attacked Cassius, but had suffered no evil in that case,
either. The reason was that his mother Polla learned of the plot in
advance, and being very fearful lest Cassius should be overtaken by his
fate (for she was very fond of him) and lest her son should be detected,
voluntarily informed Cassius of the plot herself beforehand, and received
the preservation of her son as a reward. His easy escapes, however, did
not improve him at all, and he deserted his benefactors to join Caesar
and Antony. [-25-] As soon as Brutus learned of the attempt of Mark
Antony and of the killing of his brother, he feared that some other
insurrection might take place in Macedonia during his absence, and
immediately hastened to Europe. On the way he took charge of the
territory which had belonged to Sadalus (who died childless and left it
to the Romans), and invaded the country of the Bessi, to see if he could
at the same time recompense them for the trouble they were causing and
surround himself with the name and reputation of imperator, which would
enable him to fight more easily against Caesar and Antony. Both projects
he accomplished, being chiefly aided by Rhascuporis, a certain prince.
After going thence into Macedonia and making himself master of everything
there, he withdrew again into Asia.
[B.C. 44 (_a. u_. 710)]
[-26-] Brutus besides doing this had stamped upon the coins which were
being minted his own likeness and a helmet and two daggers, indicating by
this and by the inscription that in company with Cassius he had liberated
his country. At that same period Cassius had crossed over to Trebonius in
Asia ahead of Dolabella, and after securing money from him and a number
of the cavalry whom Dolabella had sent before him into Syria attached
to his cause many others of the Asiatics and Cilicians. As a result he
brought Tarcondimotus[30] and the people of Tarsus into the alliance,
though they were reluctant. For the Tarsians were so devoted to the
former Caesar (and out of regard for him to the second also) that they
had changed the name of their city to Juliopolis after him. This done,
Cassius went to Syria, and without striking a blow assumed entire
direction of the nations and the legions.
[B.C. 43 (_a. u_. 710)]