THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARC ANTHONY

CHAPTER XII

Antony's Departure from Rome where Cicero was Delivering the Philippic Orations Against Him and his Failure to Wrest Cisalpine Gaul from Albinus.

44-43 BC.

On the following day Cicero, elegantly dressed, and with his grey hair carefully combed and scented, attended the Senate, having announced beforehand that he would deliver a speech in defence of his attitude and would make certain suggestions in regard to the future conduct of affairs—at which announcement Antony at once decided to absent himself, on a like plea of ill-health, in order to show as much contempt for Cicero’s proposals as the orator had yesterday displayed for his. The speech was afterwards published, as also were the thirteen others against Antony which Cicero delivered during the following weeks; and they are now known as the Philippics, a name given to them a few years later because of their similarity in form to the orations of Demosthenes against Philip.

In this the First Philippic Cicero, with his habitual vanity, began by telling the senators—and there must have been a pretty full House to hear him—that it was he himself who had laid the foundations of peace after the assassination by proposing the Act of Oblivion, though he admitted that Antony had played quite a distinguished part at first in promoting good will, as also had Dolabella. Then, had come the sad change, and the orator had gone away in disgust, only to return at once, however, when he heard that Brutus and Cassius, whom he said that he dearly loved, had obliged Antony by their firmness to be less truculent. But having returned he had found by the events of yesterday that Antony was hostile to him, and had made his, Cicero’s, quite excusable absence from the Senate a casus belli. Antony, he declared, had a right to be angry if he had said anything against his private morals, but not on account of his having expressed his political views. As a matter of fact, he said, he was quite prepared to allow all Cesar’s laws to stand, and even to wink at Antony’s use of the dead Dictator’s memoranda, since the dividing line between what was Caesar’s and what was Antony’s could not be drawn. “Men have been recalled from exile”, he smiled, “by a dead man; the freedom of the city has been conferred not only on individuals but on entire nations and provinces by a dead man; our revenues have been diminished by the granting of countless exemptions by a dead man. Nevertheless I will uphold these measures which have been brought from Caesar’s house on the authority of a single individual—a very excellent individual, I admit”. Cicero saw, in fact, that the rejection of any part of Caesar’s arrangements would mean also the repudiation of his assignment of provinces to some of the conspirators—Cisalpine Gaul to Decimus Brutus Albinus, for example—and he had no wish to upset these or any other of the measures which were of advantage to his party.

He then went on to admonish both Antony and Dolabella for what he considered their high-handedness, and to warn them that people were saying they were only anxious for their own enrichment. Of course, he added with the unctuousness of a politician, “I myself cannot be induced to suspect that Antony has been caught by the desire to acquire money. Every one may say what he pleases, but we are not bound to believe such a thing; for I never saw anything sordid or anything mean in him. I know his uprightness, and I only wish that he had been able to escape all such suspicion”.

Next, growing more bold, he warned Antony against the use of armed force, but remarked that it was hardly necessary to emphasize the point. “If the fate of Caesar”, he said, does not influence him to prefer to be loved than to be feared, no speech of mine will have any effect on him. No one can be happy who behaves in such a way that he may be assassinated not only with impunity but even to the great glory of his slayer”.

Having uttered this thinly veiled threat that if Antony did not compromise with the conspirators he would be murdered, Cicero wound up by saying that he himself was not afraid to die. “I have lived long enough for the course of human life” he declared”, and for my own glory. Yet, if any further years are granted to me, they shall be given to the service of the Senate and of the Republic”.

This speech, with its rather brutal hint of murder, was reported to Antony, whose opposition was thereby stiffened towards the conspirators and towards their pernicious doctrine of assassination as a cure for supposed political ills. He could not abide Cicero, regarding him as treacherous in the extreme; and the orator’s eloquence, with its plausible expression of high-principle, nauseated him. During the next week or two he refused to speak to Cicero when they met; and when he heard that Octavian, on the contrary, was showing friendliness towards the orator, flattering him and calling him Father of his country, he broke off all relations with that young man also. He was not surprised, therefore, when he was told that Octavian was plotting against his life; and though he could obtain no absolute proof of the truth of the report, he was sufficiently assured of its correctness to denounce him, and Cicero also, in a speech, now lost, which he delivered before the Senate on September 19th.

The sensation it caused was immense; and Atia, Octavian’s mother, implored the boy to leave Rome, but without success. Death was in the air: its dark shadow was menacing the lives alike of Octavian, Antony and Cicero; but all three were keyed up to deeds of daring at this time, and not one of them had any intention now of running away. Dolabella, however, took the opportunity to set out for his new province of Syria while Antony still had the power to support his claim upon it: the problems in Rome were too difficult for him, and he was eager to seek his fortune in Parthia.

At this time some of the legions in Macedonia were about to sail back to Italy, having been ordered by Antony to come over so as to be ready to accompany him to Cisalpine Gaul at the close of his Consulship; but he was not aware that Octavian, who had made friends with many of their officers while he was in Apollonia, had just sent them a secret message, telling them of his troubles in Rome, and begging them to give their support to him as Caesar’s rightful heir and not to his rival. Antony, whose thoughts were usually those of a soldier, felt that he would be much more comfortable with these legions at his back; and he therefore decided to go down to Brundusium (Brindisi) to meet them on their arrival, and to march them to the capital before the conspirators who were scattered about southern Italy could tamper with them.

In the second week in October, at the close of the senatorial sessions, he and his wife, Fulvia, set out for the south; and shortly afterwards both Octavian and Cicero left Rome—Octavian for the purpose of gathering some more of Caesar’s ex-soldiers as a sort of bodyguard in “case of trouble with Antony”, and Cicero only for the purpose of obtaining an interval of quiet after the excitements of the previous weeks, so that he might get on with his literary work. But when Antony had reached Brundusium and had presented himself to the troops on their disembarkation he was surprised to find that the officers of at least one legion—the Martian—greeted him with little warmth. He could not understand it, and, ordering them to be paraded, made a speech to them promising them the usual rewards, and reminding them that he was their dead general’s former colleague and present representative.

They laughed in his face. They called him traitor, shouting that he had usurped Octavian’s heritage, and that Octavian would give them far greater rewards than those just offered. For a moment it must have looked as though they would kill him there and then.

Antony’s rage was unbounded. He stormed off to the house where he was staying, calling to him all those officers of the other legions and auxiliary cavalry whom he could trust, amongst these being several of his old friends of the Gallic cavalry with whom he had served in Syria, Egypt, and Gaul. They told him that Octavian’s agents had been trying for weeks past to detach them from Antony’s authority, and they gave him a list of the officers who were disloyal. Fulvia, it seems, was present during this conference, and her anger was more terrible than her husband’s. Furiously she urged him to have no mercy on the rebels; and we have to picture her with flashing eyes and gesticulating arms, calling down curses on these men who were so near to ruining the cause.

Orders were given for the arrest of the disaffected officers. They were dragged before Antony, summarily tried, and condemned to instant execution. Loyal swords flashed, and the heads of the culprits rolled one after the other across the floor. Fulvia was in a hysterical condition, and, screaming her imprecations at the men who were being butchered, she approached so close to them as they died that she was drenched with their spurting blood. To Antony her behavior must have been an appalling revelation; and it is to be supposed that his ultimate estrangement from her began to take shape from this day. In spite of the violence of his temper, and the severity which he sometimes displayed in dealing with a situation of this kind, in spite, too, of his bouts of drunkenness, he was a cultured, sensitive man, far removed from the savage—easy-going and humane, in fact, on most occasions; and there must ever have remained in his mind the disgusting picture of his wife’s face and clothes dripping with blood, and her feet paddling in that scarlet river.

Antony’s violent action cowed the disloyal troops, and they accepted the orders which were now given them to march northwards along the east coast of Italy to Arimmum (Rimini), on the borders of Cisalpine Gaul, where they were to await Antony’s arrival as governor of that province at the close of his Consulship two months hence. With a small force of the more trustworthy troops, the nucleus of which was the Fifth Legion, known as “the Larks”, he then marched towards Rome, his troubles with the conservatives and the conspirators being now relegated to the background in the more immediate crisis of his quarrel with Octavian.

That young man, who had recently attained his nineteenth birthday, was in the meantime touring the southwest, recruiting Caesar’s ex-soldiers, and tempting them, by heavy bribes, from the lands whereon they were settled. A letter from Cicero to Atticus reveals Octavian’s plans.

“A letter for me from Octavian reached me on November 1^st”, he wrote. “He has great schemes. The ex-soldiers of Casilinum (Capua) and Calatia, nearby, he has entirely brought over to his side, and no wonder, since he offers them five hundred denarii apiece! He proposes to go the round of the other military settlements: obviously what he has in view is to put himself at the head of an army to fight Antony; and so I see that in a few days we shall be under arms. Who, however, is to be our leader? Think of Octavian’s name! Think of his age! And he writes to ask that in the first place I will grant him a strictly private interview. Surely it is childish if he supposes that this could possibly be private; and I have written to tell him that what he asks is neither necessary nor practicable. He sent a friend of his to me who brought the news that Antony was moving towards Rome with the Fifth Legion, borrowing money from the towns, and marching under flying colors. He wanted to ask my advice as to whether he should go to Rome with three thousand ex-soldiers, or occupy Casilinum and intercept the advance of Antony, or go to meet the legions from Macedonia now making their way northwards by the coast-road along the Adriatic, whose sympathies are, he hopes, all for him. In short he otters himself as our leader, and thinks it will not be right for us to fail him. I myself have recommended him to go to Rome, because it seems to me that he will there have not only the poor rabble of the city on his side, provided that he has proved his sincerity, but also the good men”.

Octavian took his advice and marched the newly recruited veterans towards Rome; and a few days later Cicero wrote as follows to Atticus. “Every day I have had a letter from Octavian asking me to take up his cause, and be a second time the savior of the Republic, and to come at once to Rome—which I am afraid to accept and ashamed to refuse. He certainly has acted and is acting with vigor. He is bringing a large force to Rome, but then he is the merest boy. He thinks that the Senate can be convoked in a moment. But who will attend? Or, where everything is so precarious, who will make an enemy of Antony? Yet, boy though he is, the country-towns seem to be marvelously in favor of him. At Teanum (Teano), for instance, the good-wishes were astonishing. Could you have believed this?”

Octavian reached Rome on November 10th, and camped his men in the open ground near the Temple of Mars, on the Appian Way outside the city walls; and day by day he made public speeches against Antony, calling him a traitor to the dead Caesar. But clearly the only traitor was the young man himself, for he was now in open alliance with Caesar’s murderers, and was not only flattering Cicero to the skies, but was already making friendly overtures to Decimus Brutus Albinus, the man who had lured the Dictator to his doom, and who was now governor of the province of Cisalpine Gaul from which Antony wished to remove him. This was too much for Octavian’s army of veterans to swallow: they had been enlisted to oppose Antony, but they had not bargained for an alliance with the assassins of their old leader. They began to desert to the other side; and at the same time the republicans in Rome were by no means in favor of this union with the obviously treacherous heir of the dead tyrant, and showed no enthusiasm for him.

Meanwhile, the melancholy and wrong-headed Brutus, the arch-assassin, had left Italy and had gone to live in Athens, where, while giving most of his time to a serious study of philosophy in the schools of Theomnestes and Cratippus, he made his secret preparations for the war with Antony which he felt to be inevitable. He had no intention of taking up the governorship of Crete which had been assigned to him, and was hesitating whether or not to seize the province of Macedonia which had been promised him by Caesar and to which he had therefore as much right as Albinus, for example, had to Cisalpine Gaul. He did not at all approve of Cicero’s relations with Octavian, and wrote to him with great bitterness pointing out that it would be just as bad to have Octavian in power—the heir of the man they had murdered—as it was to have Antony, and saying indignantly that it seemed as though Cicero had no objection to living under the tyranny of an autocrat so long as that autocrat were not his personal enemy, Antony. All Cicero cared about, he declared, was his own comfort, but he, Brutus, refused to be a slave to any man, friend or foe.

But while Octavian’s position was thus uncertain, the angry Antony was approaching Rome with the faithful Larks and with his loyal Gallic cavalry. The Larks, it should be mentioned, were recruited in Gaul, the legion having been first raised by Caesar in that country in 55 BC. The upstanding feathers which they wore on their helmets suggested the tuft of a lark, and perhaps their singing abilities also provided a reason for their nickname. They were a rough lot of fair-haired giants; and having known Antony in the Gallic wars and having witnessed his wild bravery in battle, they loved him, and were prepared to die for him.

From time to time on his march Antony issued proclamations or made speeches denouncing Octavian, belittling his ancestry, and attacking his moral character. He said he knew for a fact that the Dictator had had improper relations with him, as also had one of Caesar’s generals in Spain, the well-known Hirtius who was one of the Consuls-elect for the coming year and now belonged to Cicero’s party; and he made constant jokes in regard to Octavian’s effeminate ways, calling attention to the fact that the youth was regularly in the hands of the  lady-barbers, whose business it was to remove the hair from his legs and to make them soft.

This, of course, was a case of the pot calling the kettle black, for Antony’s own effeminate youth was notorious, even though he had now passed to the opposite extreme, and was a very man amongst men. Moreover, Antony had spoken with disdain of Octavian’s mother, Atia, as a provincial woman from a small town, her home being in Aricia (Riccia), a few miles south of Rome, although his own mother, Julia, had spent her childhood in the same place; and, anyhow, as Cicero remarked in answer to this insinuation of provincialism, what right had Antony to talk in this fashion when his own wife, Fulvia, came from the small town of Tusculum (Frascati), and was the daughter of a man named Bambalio, so called because he had an impediment in his speech and was more or less half-witted? Antony’s purpose, however, had been to show that Octavian was neither by birth nor character deserving of especial reverence; and he was much too angry just now to avoid that kind of imputation which had the nature of a boomerang. The hurling of abuse intended to sting was a recognized part of ancient hostilities, just as it is today in the East; and nobody troubled to ascertain the truth of the accusations.

Antony arrived in Rome on or about November 20th, and sent the troops who were with him to Tibur (Tivoli), some sixteen miles north-east of the city, retaining on the spot only the ex-soldiers whom he had previously recruited—a force apparently much larger than that still loyal to Octavian. He then convened the Senate for the 24th, issuing a warning that those senators who failed to attend would be regarded as his enemies; but, suddenly, on the 23rd, he seems to have heard that his rival’s agents were busy at Tivoli, and therefore, postponing the senatorial meeting until the 28th, he hastened off to the camp of the Larks and their auxiliaries, to address them and if necessary to outbid any offers of money which Octavian might have made them. But while he and his merry men were banqueting and drinking damnation to his rival, he received a staggering blow: dispatches arrived from Rimini informing him that the Martian Legion, whom he had so severely punished at Brindisi, had declared for Octavian. They had detached themselves from the remainder of the troops from Macedonia who were still loyal, or, at any rate, undecided—these consisting in the main of the Second, Fourth, and Thirty-fifth Legions and were marching back towards Rome.

During the next four days he remained at Tivoli, not knowing what to do for the best, since the reports from Rome were most alarming, and his friends seemed to think that there would be an immediate landslide in favor of Octavian. He hardly dared to enter the city for fear that he would be murdered; and yet at all costs he must be present at the meeting of the Senate on the 28th, lest his absence should give his rivals the opportunity to say that he had deserted his Consular post and was no longer fit to hold it.

The meeting was to take place in the Capitol, and while he was turning over in his mind some means of reaching that building without running the gauntlet of a mob now in all likelihood suddenly headed against him, a friend reminded him of a secret passage, an old tunnel burrowed by the Gauls in their attack upon the citadel in 390 BC, which led up into the cellars beneath the senatorial hall. Instantly he made up his mind to enter the city, with some of his Gauls, under the cover of darkness during the night of the 27th, to make use of this tunnel, and quietly to take his place in the Consular chair on the morning of the 28th. It was quite likely that he would be assassinated; but his courage always rose as his fortunes fell, and he preferred the risk of death to the certainty of the disaster which would result from his absence.

On the morning of the 28th the senators, including Cicero, who had arrived on the previous day, trooped into the Capitol, eagerly asking one another what news there was of Antony, and discussing what would happen if he should not put in an appearance. The atmosphere was electric with the menace of a political earthquake; and Cicero was elated at the prospect of being able to propose the deposition of his enemy. Then, suddenly, as though by a miracle, Antony appeared before them, bland and unafraid, and took his seat, presiding thereafter over the business of the day, and saying no word about his or Octavian’s position. It may be, as Cicero afterwards thought, that he had intended to test the opinion of the House by denouncing his youthful rival; but towards the close of the meeting a terrible message was brought to him which must have driven any such thought from his head. It informed him that the Fourth Legion had followed the example of the Martian and had gone over to Octavian; and with sinking heart, but with outward calm he wound up the day’s affairs, dismissed the assembly, and rejoined his waiting bodyguard of Gauls.

He believed that the news of this second mutiny was not yet known in Rome, but he realized that as soon as it was circulated the still hesitating mob would probably declare for Octavian, and Caesar’s veterans might unite under the young man’s standard. Only the Gallic Larks and the Gallic cavalry could be relied on; and he saw at once that his one hope lay in seizing with their help the province of Cisalpine Gaul, of which he had assigned himself the governorship at the coming close of his term as Consul. The Senate, however, had not yet officially confirmed that appointment, and the question which now agitated his mind was whether he had the time or the power to have it ratified and to get out of the city before the landslide.

The action which he took was perilous in the extreme. He knew that most of the senators would be leaving dangerous Rome for the security of their suburban or country homes during the day, and he therefore sent private messages to those of them whom he could trust, calling them to an emergency meeting of the Senate that evening, while those whom he could not trust he allowed to depart uncalled.

As a result of this maneuver he found a thinly-attended but friendly assembly awaiting him at the close of the day; and, quietly addressing them, he said—so I suppose—that in view of the danger of a clash between the troops loyal to him and those siding with Octavian, he proposed to set out for Cisalpine Gaul at once, so that he should be there, ready to take over the governorship from Albinus, at the close of the year. He asked them therefore to be so good as to ratify the allotment of that province to him, and at the same time to give the province of Macedonia to his brother Caius Antonius, after which he proposed that the other governorships for the new year should be assigned by drawing lots in the usual way. All this was nervously agreed to; and at the end of the meeting he found himself in possession of the papers authorizing him to go to Cisalpine Gaul.

Meanwhile, he had sent an invitation to those of the ex-soldiers who did not wish to desert him, to come with him to Tivoli that night, and he had told them to muster quietly and under cover of the darkness at a certain place. Then, putting on the armor and the scarlet cloak of a general, he set out for the rendez-vous, not knowing how many of the veterans would be there; but, to his great relief, he found that the bulk of them had remained loyal, and soon he and a satisfactorily large force were marching under the stars along the highroad to the north. His wife, Fulvia, did not accompany him, for at this period the great ladies of Rome were seldom in any danger of violence; but for greater safety she and her children went to stay in the house of one of Antony’s chief supporters in the city.

During the next two or three days deputations of senators and persons of importance came to him at Tivoli, urging him to try even at this eleventh hour to come to terms with Octavian, but his brother, Lucius, who had joined him, was violently opposed to any reconciliation; and Octavian, on his side, had been so elated by the mutiny of the two legions that he felt able, with the support of Cicero’s party, to force the quarrel to an issue. Nothing came, therefore, of these negotiations; and Antony set out for Cisalpine Gaul early in December, at the head of the Larks, the Gallic cavalry, most of Caesar’s ex-soldiers, and certain units of the garrison of Rome. His purpose was to effect a junction with the Second and Thirty-fifth Legions now at Rimini, and, with this army at his back, and his papers of authority in his hand, to take peaceable possession of his new province, to assume command of the seven legions stationed therein, and to send Albinus home. Later on, it might be necessary to do what Caesar did cross the Rubicon, and march on Rome.

But Octavian and Cicero, working together, sent messengers to Albinus, promising him that if he could induce the army under his command in Cisalpine Gaul to declare for Octavian and to resist Antony, they would give him all the help in their power and would send the two legions who had deserted Antony’s cause, and who were now nearing Rome, to attack their former general in the rear. Cicero’s letters to him were couched in the most flattering terms; and in one of them, after referring to the murder of Caesar as “that great deed of yours, the greatest ever done in the history of mankind”, he said: “I pray that you will for ever set the Republic free from the tyranny of a king, and make the last act of your drama suitable to the first”. In another letter he wrote: “We hope and trust that as you have set free the Republic from a monarch, so now you will from a monarchy”. Albinus replied that he would most certainly do his part, and hold his province against Antony.

The majority of the members of the Caesarian party in Rome, meanwhile, mistrusting Octavian and greatly resenting his alliance with Caesar’s assassins, showed so strongly and so unexpectedly their sympathy with Antony that Octavian suddenly decided to leave the city, put himself under the wing of these two legions who had come over to his side, and remain with them outside Rome. At the same time several of the most important Caesarians set out to follow Antony, being unaware that Albinus would resist his advance, and thinking that Cisalpine Gaul, which was so near to and yet so far from Rome, would be a more comfortable place than the disturbed metropolis. These movements left the Capital more or less in the hands of Cicero and his republicans, and the elderly orator thus found himself in that position of authority for which he had longed unceasingly ever since the days of his consulship.

To him it was clear now that Antony was doomed, and that Octavian would in the end embrace the cause of the republicans and would make his permanent peace with Caesar’s murderers. He was overwhelmingly elated. The democrats would almost cease to exist as a party; the conspirators would at last be recognized as having saved the State, and would once more take their place in roman political life; while Cicero himself would stand for a second Consulship and would be for many glorious years the revered leader of the nation. He felt that he must strain every nerve to destroy Antony, whom he had disliked for many years and for the last two months had hated with burning intensity. He had recently composed a long tirade against him; and this he now decided to publish. The abuse of Antony contained in it was, of course, wildly exaggerated; but he felt that he was justified in placing every possible weapon at the service of his eloquence in his battle with the man whose destruction meant his own aggrandizement and the victory of his own political party.

The composition is now known as the Second Philippic and is one of the fiercest and most violent pieces of writing which antiquity has handed down to us. Cicero begins by indulging in that self-praise for which he was notorious, and which Plutarch describes as a nauseating disease whereof he could not be cured. His opening paragraph contains the exaggerated boast that during the last twenty years no man has done ill by the Republic without having to cross swords with him, and none has survived that encounter; and now he asks how Antony could have dared to court that invariable fate. "”Am I to think that I have been despised?” he asks, and adds in astonishment: “I see nothing in my life, or in my influence in the city, or in my exploits, or in the abilities with which I am endowed, which Antony could despise! Did he think that it was easy to disparage me in the Senate?—a body which has testified in favor of many illustrious citizens that they have governed the Republic well, but in favor of me alone, that I have saved it!”

He then goes on to praise his own Consulship, about which Antony had made some disparaging remarks, and he says that there was not a senator in those days who did not regard him as the very salvation of his life. Only Clodius and Curio had ever dared to criticize it, and he warns Antony that their misfortunes and violent ends await him likewise, especially “since there is now that in his house which was fatal to each of them”, meaning the ill-omened Fulvia, the widow of both these men.

Antony, he proceeds, had often accused him of having instigated the murder of Caesar, and in reply he declares his regret that he was not one of “the gallant band” who undertook “that glorious deed, the greatest exploit ever perform in all the earth”. The reason why Brutus and the assassins shouted the name of Cicero after the murder was committed, he explains, was simply that, having done something which they deemed to be noble, they naturally wished to call all men to witness that they were imitators of the great Cicero’s noble exploits. But he adds that if he had been one of the conspirators he would most certainly have seen that Antony had perished too.

Presently he passes on to a devastating review of Antony’s career from his youth up—how he had behaved like a female prostitute when he was a boy, “until Curio stepped in, and settled him in a steady and durable wedlock”; how he was the friend of the riotous Clodius; how his actions in regard to Caesar caused the war with Pompey; and so on. He admits that he has to thank Antony for sparing his life after Pharsalia, but of course, he adds, “I was sacred in the eyes of the legions, because they remembered that the country had been saved by me”. He describes Antony’s public career thereafter as being that of a drunkard and a libertine, which reached its shocking climax when he appeared naked and drunk in the Forum during the Lupercalia, and offered Caesar the crown. What can be more disgraceful, he asks, than that Antony, who tried to place the crown on the head of the man deservedly slain on that account, should himself be allowed to live?

Next, he points out what damage was done by Antony’s speech at Caesar’s funeral; and, afterwards, how he seized Caesar’s money, forged his papers, and behaved himself like a tyrant. Throughout the whole composition he speaks of him as a sort of madman, a drunken fool, and a reckless gambler; and he calls him in one place a brute-beast, and in another says that he is “devoid of all sense and all feeling”. Finally, he asks whether Antony can possibly think that he will not meet the fate of the Dictator. “If men could not tolerate Caesar”, he says, “does he think that they will tolerate him?”

“As for myself”, he writes in conclusion, “I defended the Republic as a young man, and I will not abandon it now that I am old. I scorned the word of Catiline, and I will not quail before Antony’s. No! I will cheerfully expose my own person, if the liberty of the republic can be restored by my death. To me, indeed, death is now even desirable, after all the honors I have gained, and all the great deeds I have done”.

A string of lies of this sort demanded an answer; and presently an ex-Consul named Quintus Fufius Calenus, who had been one of Caesar’s generals, and had fought side by side with Antony, got up in the Senate and made a vigorous reply which has been preserved. “I would not have Cicero’s innate impudence go without a response”, he said, “nor would I have his private enmity against Antony accepted in place of what is to the common advantage. Ever since Cicero entered politics he has been continually causing disturbances one way or the other; and now he insults and abuses Antony, whom he was wont to say he loved, and makes friends with Octavian, the heir of the man he was instrumental in murdering. And, if he gets the chance, ere long he will murder Octavian also. For the man is naturally untrustworthy and turbulent, and has no ballast in his soul, and is always stirring things up and twisting this way and that. He is a juggler and impostor, and grows rich and strong from the misfortunes of others, blackmailing them, dragging and tearing at the innocent as do the dogs”.

He then gave a picture of Cicero’s youth on his father’s farm, and asked how one who was accustomed to live with the pigs can dare to “slander the youth of Antony who had the advantage of tutors and teachers such as his high rank required”. Cicero, he said, is one of those lawyers “who are always waiting, like the harlots, for a man who will give them money, and who pry into people’s affairs to find out who hates whom, and who is plotting against whom. How much better it would have been if he had been born a stammering Bambalio (like Fulvia’s father) than that he should have taken up such a career. He is always jealous of his betters”, he went on, “always toadying to important people, telling them that he is their only true friend, pandering to their fears or their conceit, and fawning upon them”

Antony’s life, meanwhile, he declared, had been noble, and of the greatest value to the State. At the Lupercalia he cleverly destroyed Caesar’s chance of obtaining the crown by forcing him to reject it in public. “That is the great service which was done by this man whom Cicero calls uneducated; and no such service has been done by this clever, this wise Cicero, this user of much more soft-soap than honest wine, this man who lets his robes drag about his ankles to hide the ugliness of his legs. We all know those long, soft clothes of his, and have smelt his carefully combed grey locks!”

He then referred to the disgraceful manner in which Cicero had divorced his wife, and married a little girl for her money; and he accused the orator of having lived a whole life of secret impurity, and even of having committed incest with his own daughter, Tullia—an accusation which is probably quite as untrue, one may suppose, as are his own slanders upon Antony. Besides this he declared that Cicero in former years had lived on the proceeds of his wife s amours, and that he had recently been paying court, presumably for the sake of money, to an old woman of incalculable years. “This sort of talk is not to my taste”, he explained, “but I want Cicero to get as good as he gave”.

Next, he spoke of Cicero’s actions in the matter of the Catilinarian conspiracy, of which he is “interminably prating”, as having been worthy only of the strongest censure. He then defended Antony’s behavior after Caesar’s death, and said that he had made use of the Dictator’s money and papers in a perfectly proper manner. “What man is there”, he asked, “surpassing Antony in esteem or excelling him in experience? Which of the two seems to be in the wrong—Antony, who is now at the head of troops legally allowed him by the Senate, or Octavian, who is surrounded by a force privately raised?—Antony, who has left Rome to take up the governorship given to him by the Senate, or Albinus, who will prevent him from setting foot in that province?—Antony, who keeps our soldiers together, or those soldiers who have deserted their commander?”

“I warn you, Cicero”, he said in conclusion, “not to show a spitefulness like a woman’s, nor because of your private hatred of Antony to plunge the whole city again into danger”.

On December 20th Cicero, thirsting for revenge, delivered before the Senate his Third Philippic, in which he proposed that Octavian and Albinus should be commended for the steps they were taking against Antony. “Octavian”, he said, “though a mere boy, has held fast with an incredible and godlike degree of wisdom and bravery during this time when Antony’s dangerous folly has been at its height; and he has collected a trustworthy force of ex-soldiers, and has spent his own fortune in doing so, or rather, I should say, has invested it in the Republic. We ought to feel the greatest gratitude to him, for who does not see that if Antony had come unopposed to Rome from Brindisi he would have committed all manner of horrors? The man who at Brindisi ordered so many gallant and virtuous men to be executed, and whose wife’s face was notoriously bespattered with the blood of men dying at his and her feet, would have spared none of us, especially as he was coming here much more angry with us than he had been with those whom he butchered there. But from this calamity Octavian delivered the Republic by his prudence in gathering a force of his own”.

He went on to praise the Martian and the Fourth Legions for having declared for Octavian, and he congratulated Albinus for having refused to hand over Cisalpine Gaul to Antony who seemed, he said, to be behaving as though he were a king. “All slavery is miserable”, he declared, “but to be a slave to a man who is profligate, immoral, effeminate, and never sober, would surely be intolerable. Indeed, on that day when Antony, in the sight of the Roman people, harangued the mob, naked, perfumed, and drunk, and tried to put a crown on his colleague’s head, he lost his right to the Consulship and to his own freedom”. He must never be allowed to assume the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul, “that province which is the flower of Italy, the bulwark of the Roman Empire, the chief ornament of her dignity”.

Cicero’s son, Marcus, it should be mentioned, was now in Athens with Brutus, and, although only twenty-one years of age, was already a hard drinker and a disreputable character—a fact which Antony had not failed to tell the world. Cicero’s nephew, too—the son of his brother Quintus—was a bad character, and had come under Antony’s verbal lash; and now the orator attacked Antony for making such accusations, and asked how this gladiator dared to put such things in writing. He ought to be put to death, he exclaimed; “and what good man will not demand his execution, since on his death depends the safety and the life of every good man?”

He went on to describe how Antony had come into the Senate through the tunnel beneath the Capitol, and how he had then fled to Tivoli, after seeing to the distribution of the provincial governorships. “But now we plant our feet firmly on the ground”, he cried, “and take possession of that liberty of which I have been not only the defender but even the savior. For long I have borne our misfortunes without cowardice and not without dignity; but who can any more endure this most foul monster? What is there in Antony except lust and cruelty and licentiousness and audacity? Of these materials he is wholly made up; and are we to bear the shameful tyranny of this profligate robber? What crimes he has committed since the death of Caesar! He has emptied his (Caesar’s) well-tilled house, has pillaged his gardens, and has transferred to his own mansion all their ornaments. While carrying out two or three measures beneficial, I admit, to the Republic, he has made everything else subservient to his own gain: he has put up exemptions and annuities for sale, has released cities from their taxes, has freed provinces from subjection to the Roman empire, has restored exiles, has passed forged laws in the name of Caesar, and so forth.

“And now”, he continued, “when his fortunes are desperate, he has not diminished his audacity, nor, mad that he is, has ceased to proceed in his headlong career of fury. He is leading his mutilated army into Cisalpine Gaul, with one legion, and that, too, wavering. He is more like a matador than a commander, a gladiator rather than a general”. His brother, Lucius, he said, is just as bad as himself; but the Romans, surely, will never admit them again into the city. Antony, he pointed out, would soon be hemmed in, attacked in the rear by Octavian, and in the front by Albinus. Now was the time to act.

“I entreat you”, he cried to the senators, “seize this opportunity. You know the insolence of Antony, you know his friends, you know his whole household; and to be slaves to such lustful, wanton, debauched, profligate, drunken gamblers would be infamous”. Therefore, be proposed that the two Consuls-elect, Hirtius and Caius Pansa, who would come into office on January 1st, should be empowered to make an end of Antony”.

Having concluded this impassioned speech, every word of which betrayed his fear of Antony and his trembling eagerness to bring about his death, he left the Senate, and went to the Comitia, assembled in the Forum, where he delivered another furious oration, now known as the Fourth Philippic, in which he urged the crowd to declare Antony a public enemy, and to give their allegiance to himself, to Albinus, and to Octavian—that boy whose actions belong to immortality, the word “youth” applying only to his age. “Antony”, he declared, “is not an enemy with whom it is possible to make peace: he is a savage beast; and since he has fallen into a pit, let him be buried in it! Crush him, as, by my diligence, Catiline was crushed!” The corollary, though unspoken, was clear: if Antony were not crushed Cicero’s life would now be in danger, for his libels had been unpardonable.

On January 1st, 43 BC, the new Consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, both Caesarians who had joined Octavian’s party, came into office; and on that day Cicero addressed his Fifth Philippic to the Senate, directing his aim mainly at Calenus who had defended Antony, and had later suggested that negotiations should be opened with him. That course, Cicero declared, would be madness, for Antony was a scoundrel, who would sell the whole Republic for money, in which nefarious business he was aided by his wife, Fulvia, who, herself, had held a very auction of provinces and realms, and she and he had collected so much money that, if it were available for distribution, there would not be a poor man in Rome.

He advised his hearers to put their trust fully in Octavian: “I venture to pledge my word for him to you and to the Roman People”, he said. But upon Antony he called down the wrath of heaven, repeating once more a list of his supposed crimes. He declared, moreover, that Antony had sold the office of judge in the Roman courts to all sorts of men who supported him: dancers, musicians, and, in fact, the whole troop of his boon-companions, have been pitchforked onto the bench, so that infamous men whom no one would care to have in his house have been made judges.

He told the Senate that on that famous day, September 1st, he had declined to attend the meeting because he knew that Antony was going to kill him. And now it was proposed to open negotiations with this inhuman monster! No, indeed! he must not be asked to retire from the borders of Cisalpine Gaul: he must be compelled to do so. “We must reject the slow process of negotiations” he insisted. “With this man we must wage war; war, I say, and that instantly”. 

To Cicero’s great disappointment, nevertheless, a deputation wets sent to Antony, and two days later, on January 3rd the orator delivered his Sixth Philippic, this time to the Comitia in the Forum, in which he repeated his abuse of Antony, and the demand for war against him, calling him now not a human being at all, but a sinister and fatal beast. Daily he became more intent on overcoming the better judgment and consequent hesitancy of the senators, who knew that Antony was not what Cicero declared him to be, and who felt that the old orator, now in fear of his life, was pursuing his personal quarrel to exorbitant lengths.

In the Seventh Philippic, addressed to the Senate, he attempted to contradict a rumor that Antony was prepared to come to terms; and he declared that, in any case, a scoundrel such as he would never abide by such terms. “Beware lest you let this foul and deadly beast escape”, he cried. “I have at all times been an adviser of peace”, he added, “and, indeed, the whole of my career has been passed in warding off the danger of war. Thus I have arrived at the highest honors; yet I, a nursling of peace, do not wish to have peace with Antony”.

His passionate eloquence at last prevailed, and the Senate half­heartedly authorized the new Consul Hirtius and Octavian to march forth with the Martian and Fourth Legions and such other troops as they could collect, so that by their display of force in Antony’s rear they might induce him to surrender. Pansa, the other Consul, meanwhile remained in Rome with orders to try to recruit an army, either voluntarily or by conscription. A week later Hirtius and Octavian arrived outside Rimini, on the east coast of Italy near the frontier of Cisalpine Gaul, where they found that Antony was encamped at Bononia (Bologna), two days’ march to the north, while Albinus was at Mutina (Modena), a day’s march further back into Cisalpine Gaul.

To their surprise it was seen that neither Albinus nor Antony seemed to have any desire to begin real hostilities. Antony was making some pretence of besieging Modena, and his outposts were close under its walls, behind which Albinus was casually preparing for the expected siege; but meanwhile negotiations were in progress between them, and Antony was offering terms to his opponent. Hirtius and Octavian thereupon pushed on as far as Forum Cornelii (Imola), a few miles south of Bologna, and there encamped, leaving Antony’s force unmolested between them and Albinus. At the same time the delegates sent from Rome to treat with Antony had found him ready to avoid hostilities if possible, and were on their way back to the capital with his terms, which were that he would be willing to accept the governorship of Gaul Proper for five years in exchange for Cisalpine Gaul—a proposal indicating clearly enough that he did not feel sufficiently strong to fight Albinus on his front and Hirtius and Octavian in his rear, and preferred a temporary respite in quiet and interesting Gaul.

This news threw Cicero into a frenzy. Antony, now his deadly enemy, might escape, and come back to Rome at some future date to settle accounts with him, which meant the violent death of one or other of them. The Senate was inclining towards moderation—Calenus, in fact, was insisting on an amicable arrangement; and now that Octavian had left the city the few remaining friends of Antony were winning a daily increasing party to the side of peace. In a passion of anger and anxiety, therefore, he delivered his Eighth Philippic to the Senate, urging war, which, indeed, he declared had already begun.

Resorting now to the most outrageous falsehoods, he said that Antony intended to massacre the people of Rome. “He promises our very houses to his band of robbers”, he cried, “for he says he will divide the city amongst them; and he will give them any lands they desire. His officers are marking out for themselves the most beautiful houses, gardens, and estates at Frascati and elsewhere; and those most clownish of men—if, indeed, they are men and not animals—are borne along on their vain hopes as far as the Bay of Naples”—where Cicero’s own favorite estate was situated.

“How could Calenus suggest a peaceful agreement at such a time”, he thundered? “Does he call slavery a desirable peace? Or is it because he expects to be a partner in Antony’s dominion? When I was a boy I was acquainted with the father of Calenus, who was a man of strict virtue and wisdom; and I remember that he used to give the highest praise to the man who killed Tiberius Gracchus. But Calenus himself would not have approved of his father’s opinion. Yet surely whatever is rotten in the body of the Republic ought to be cut off so that the whole may be saved”.

In conclusion Cicero proposed that all the soldiers serving under Antony should be given until the end of February to leave him and to come home, failing which they should be regarded as outlaws; and he implied that Antony himself should be either put to death or sent into exile.

The Ninth Philippic followed shortly afterwards, in which he urged again “that the audacity of Antony be branded with infamy. But a few days later news was received more or less simultaneously in Rome and in the military camps in the north that Brutus had quietly collected a force in Greece and had suddenly marched into Macedonia, of which province Caius Antonius, Antony’s brother, had taken up the governorship. Caius had been forced to retire to Apollonia on the Adriatic coast, and one of his legions had surrendered to Cicero’s son, Marcus, who was serving under Brutus. A force of cavalry, too, which was marching through Greece on its way to join Dolabella in his new Syrian province, had surrendered to Brutus.

This startling news put a new, or, rather, a stronger complexion on matters, for now the assassins of Caesar, as represented by Brutus in Greece and Albinus in Cisalpine Gaul, had joined fully in the fight; and more than ever Octavian’s party was linked with the murderers of the man whose heir he was. To Antony the tidings were almost like a death-knell, for his right flank would now be attacked as well as his front and rear; to Cicero they were like the trump of victory; but to Octavian they must have been a source of anxiety, for he could see his own cause soon swamped in that of the conspirators.

Pansa at once summoned the Senate, to move a vote of thanks to Brutus; but Calenus urged that Brutus had acted without proper authority. Thereupon Cicero made a speech, which is known as the Tenth Philippic, wherein he spoke of his excessive delight at the news, and his disgust with the sturdy Calenus. “Why does Calenus alone oppose the actions of Brutus and his troops, men whom we ought almost to worship?” he demanded. “The glory of Brutus is divine and immortal—such patience; O God, such moderation; such tranquility under injury! I saw him myself when he was leaving Italy for Greece; and O, what a sight was that!—heart­rending not only to men but to the very waves and shores. The savior of his country departing, while its destroyers were remaining there! But Brutus bided his time, and when he saw that Macedonia would be a refuge for Antony in defeat, he invaded that country, and thus hemmed him in”.

“Macedonia is now ours”, he went on. “The legions there are all devoted to us, and, above all, Brutus is ours—a man born for the Republic by some special destiny. But I see what Calenus means: he is afraid that those of Caesar’s ex-soldiers who are on our side will not endure the thought of Brutus having an army. Yet what is the difference between Brutus and Albinus?—what reason is there that the former should be an object of suspicion to these men who are already pledged to help the latter? The ex-soldiers were the first to put themselves under the authority of Octavian; afterwards the Martian legion checked Antony’s mad progress; then the Fourth Legion crushed it. Being thus condemned by his own troops he burst his way into Cisalpine Gaul, pursued by the armies of Octavian and Hirtius; and afterwards Pansa recruited more reinforcements against him here. Why then should there be any objection because the army of Brutus has thrown its weight into the scale, to assist us in overwhelming these pests?”

In February, further news was received from the east, disquieting this time to Cicero, and cheering to Antony, Dolabella had passed safely through Greece, and had reached Smyrna, where Trebonius, the man who had detained Antony in conversation while Caesar was murdered, was governor. Dolabella had requested permission to pass through his province on his way to Syria; but Trebonius had refused, whereupon Dolabella had surprised the city by night, and had captured and killed him.

Calenus agreed that Dolabella had been wrong to do this, especially as the report stated that Trebonius had been murdered under revolting circumstances; and he was the first to censure him. Cicero then delivered his Eleventh Philippic, in which he proposed that Cassius, the original leader of the plot against Caesar, who had been given the province of Cyrene, but was claiming Syria, should be ordered to bring Dolabella to justice. Cassius was at that time in Palestine at the head of no less than eleven legions, collected from all the provinces round about, and even from Egypt where Antony had allowed troops to remain to protect Cleopatra’s throne; and it was felt that he would have no difficulty in avenging Trebonius.

Dolabella was Cicero’s son-in-law, of whom the orator had often spoken in terms of superlative esteem; but now he began his speech by saying that “Dolabella and Antony are the very blackest and foulest monsters that have ever lived since the birth of man—unprecedented, unheard of, savage, barbarous.” Describing the murder of Trebonius, he stated that Dolabella had examined him with scourges and tortures for two days as to where the public money was concealed, and then had cut on his head, which was carried about, fixed on a spear, while his body was dragged through the streets and thrown into the sea. The report was probably quite true, we may suppose, for Dolabella was a young villain with whom Antony had made a friendly compact only out of dire necessity; but Trebonius, it has to be remembered, was also a murderer, and deserves little pity beyond that evoked by his sufferings. Indeed, a letter which he had just received from Cicero, wherein a gloating reference was again made to “the magnificent banquet of the Ides of March”, introduces a dark hue of ferocity into our picture of him which goes far to obscure any appeal in it to our compassion.

Cicero then made his proposal in regard to Cassius, but opinion was much divided in regard to the man who had originated the conspiracy against Caesar; and Cicero could not well insist, “for” he said, “the mention of his glorious achievements is not yet acceptable to every one”, and particularly not to Caesar’s ex-soldiers”. “But I think”, he added, “that we ought not to consider these veterans so much: rather we should look to the new recruits”. Most of the veterans, indeed, were heart and soul for Antony because of this very alliance of Octavian with the assassins.

In March, when spring had come, Antony began seriously to lay siege to Modena, and when news reached Rome that Albinus was hard pressed, the Senate again suggested that negotiations should be opened. Cicero’s twelfth Philippic was delivered in opposition to this move. “What terms can be possibly offered to this polluted and impious traitor?” he asked. “Are we to give him Gaul and an army? That would not be making peace but deferring war”.

In the end the suggestion was dropped, and the Consul Pansa set out with the four legions he had recruited, to join Hirtius and Octavian. Antony now realized his great danger, for Modena held out against him stoutly; and when Hirtius and Octavian sent him a message to report the coming of that deputation which had since been abandoned, he wrote to them expressing his willingness for an accommodation, and telling them that they were acting against the true interests of the State in allying themselves with Caesar’s murderers. The letter, a very sincere and straightforward document, written in the bitterness of his heart, was forwarded to Rome, and Cicero thereupon delivered his Thirteenth Philippic, imploring the senators not to come to terms with Antony and his companions—men “whose breath reeks of wine, nor with Fulvia, who is not only most avaricious but also most cruel”.

He then read certain paragraphs from Antony’s letter, which were as follows:

“When I heard of the death of Trebonius”, Antony wrote, “I was not more rejoiced than grieved. It was a matter of proper rejoicing that a wicked man had paid the penalty due to the ashes of the most illustrious Caesar, and that the divine power of the gods had been manifest before a year was out by the chastisement of the assassins already inflicted in some cases and impending in others. That Dolabella should have been pronounced an enemy because he has put an assassin to death, and that Trebonius, the son of a fool, should appear dearer to the Roman people than Caesar, are circumstances to be lamented”. Here Cicero put in the comment that the father of Trebonius was no fool, but a most worthy man; and, anyhow, he asked, how could Antony reproach any one with mean birth when he himself had had children by a freedwoman, Acadia, his first love?

“But it is the bitterest thing of all”, the letter went on, “that you, Hirtius, who used to be marked out for Caesar’s kindness, should have deplored the death of one of his murderers. And you, too, Octavian, my boy, you who owe everything to his name, are taking pains to have Dolabella condemned, and to effect the release of this murderer, Albinus, from my blockade, in order that Cassius and Brutus may become as powerful as possible once more in Rome”.

Then came a number of disconnected quotations, amongst which appeared the contemptuous remark: “You have the defeated Cicero for a general”; and on this the orator’s amusingly conceited comment was: “I do not mind his calling me defeated, for it is my fate that I can be neither victorious nor defeated without the Republic being so at the same time”. These quotations are summed up in Antony’s indignant words: “You have enlisted my soldiers and many veterans under the pretence of intending the destruction of those men who murdered Caesar; and then, contrary to what they expected, you have led them on to attack their general and their former comrades”.

“But consider, both of you”, the letter proceeded, “whether it is more becoming for you to seek to avenge the death of Trebonius or that of Caesar, and whether it is more reasonable for you to meet me in battle—in order that the old cause of the Pompeians and conservatives, which has so frequently had its throat cut, may be revived once more by you—or for us to agree together so as not to be a laughing-stock to our enemies, men who will count the destruction of either you or me gain to them. Are we to provide them with a spectacle which, so far, Fortune herself has taken care to avoid? —the spectacle of two armies, which belong to one body, fighting each other with Cicero as the master of the show, a man who has won both of you with the same flattery as that with which he used to boast that he had deceived Caesar”.

“However”, he added, “I am quite resolved to brook no more insults either to myself or to my friends, nor to desert that Democratic Party which Pompey hated. If the immortal gods assist me, as I have faith that they will, I shall continue on my way in happiness; but if another fate awaits me, I have already a foretaste of satisfaction in the certainty of your punishment. In conclusion, this is the sum of my feelings: I will forget your past insults if you will forget that you offered them, and if you are prepared to unite with me in avenging Caesar’s death”.

Early in April news was received that Caius Antonius, Antony’s brother, had surrendered to Brutus in Macedonia; but Brutus himself was in some difficulties, for he had very little money at his disposal, and was already exhausted by his exertions in the field, and longed, to be back amongst his books in Athens if not in Rome. Moreover, he had had a long talk with his prisoner, Caius, and had been greatly disturbed by what he had said. Caius had told him that Cicero was not to be trusted to bring peace to distracted Rome, but only everlasting war between the democrats and republicans; and he had pointed out how honest and simple a man Antony was, and how willing to make that peace which Cicero and Octavian were jeopardizing. As a result of these talks, Brutus not only gave Caius his liberty, but joined with him in writing to Cicero proposing a general armistice. Cicero, of course, was furious and wrote very sharply to Brutus, telling him that energetic prosecution of the war, and not sentimental talk of peace, was the thing to be desired.

Meanwhile, Antony’s letter to his opponents had been ignored, and in desperation he decided to hurry south and attack Pansa before he could effect a juncture with Hirtius and Octavian. He therefore left his brother, Lucius, to keep the latter engaged, while he himself secretly marched off with the Second and Thirty-Fifth Legions and a body of cavalry to waylay Pansa. But his move was discovered, and the Martian legion was dispatched to meet and reinforce Pansa, with the result that when Antony made his attack he found himself fighting not only the newly recruited legions but also this legion of war-tried soldiers who were thirsting for revenge upon him for the executions at Brindisi.

A fierce battle ensued in which Pansa was mortally wounded, and the Martian legion was routed, the whole enemy force thereafter making its way in disorder towards Modena. Hirtius thereupon marched to the relief of the fugitives, leaving Octavian to defend the camp against Lucius, in which undertaking he was entirely successful since the attack was no more than a feint to cover Antony’s movements.

Antony, then, beating off a flank attack by Hirtius, marched back to his main army before the walls of Modena, more depressed by his losses than pleased by his success, but thinking that Hirtius and Octavian would take some time to collect the scattered remnant of Pansa’s legions and to reorganize themselves. Hirtius, however, decided to attack again at once, in an attempt to break through Antony’s army and to join forces with Albinus in Modena.

On April 21st, 43 BC, Hirtius at the head of the Fourth Legion advanced on Antony’s camp which was defended by the Larks (the Fifth Legion), and at the same time Albinus made a sortie from Modena. It was a day of alternating hope and despair for Antony, who rushed from one danger-point to another, cheering on his men, and exposing himself with his usual recklessness in battle; but at last the Larks were victorious on both fronts, and Hirtius was killed—a fact of which Antony, however, was unaware, as also he was of the seriousness of Pansa’s wounds. Octavian then hastened to the rescue, but though he fought with personal gallantry, and was involved in the thick of the battle, he was driven off by the Larks; and at the end of the day both he and Albinus retired, leaving the sweating and exhausted Antony with his camp itself intact but with a sadly depleted force, the slaughter on either side having been terrible. There was no singing of the Larks at that sunset.

During the night Antony counted his dead and reviewed the situation. He did not know how greatly the enemy had also suffered, and, as has been said, he was unaware that Octavian was now their only surviving general, Hirtius being dead and Pansa dying. He was hopeless of victory and believed that next day Hirtius, Octavian and Albinus, acting together, would overwhelm him; and therefore in the darkness he gave the order for a retreat towards the west. Lepidus, the man who had helped him to keep order in Rome after Caesar’s murder, and who was now governor of Gallia Narbonensis (Southern France) was apparently a staunch adherent to his party, in spite of Cicero’s attempt to terrorize him; and Antony felt that his only hope lay in joining forces with him, now that Macedonia, on the east, was in the hands of Brutus.

Thus, on the following day Octavian found his enemy’s camp deserted, and at once joined hands with Albinus. Antony and his shattered army had silently marched away.

CHAPTER XIII

Antony's Alliance with Lepidus and then with Octavian; and the Turning of the Tables upon Cicero.

43 BC