Brutus

As for this Strato, Messala, the comrade of Brutus, after a reconciliation with Octavius, once found occasion to introduce him to his new master, and said, with a burst of tears: This is the man, O Caesar, who did the last kind office for my dear Brutus.

Accordingly, Strato was kindly received by Octavius, who, in his subsequent labours, and especially at the battle of Actium, found him, as well as other Greeks, a brave partisan.

And it is said that Messala himself was once praised by Octavius because, though at Philippi he had been most hostile to him and Antony for the sake of Brutus, at Actium he had been a most zealous adherent of his; whereupon Messala said: Indeed, O Caesar, I have ever been on the better and juster side.

When Antony found Brutus lying dead, he ordered the body to be wrapped in the most costly of his own robes, and afterwards, on hearing that the robe had been stolen, put the thief to death. The ashes of Brutus he sent home to his mother Servilia.[*](Suetonius (Divus Augustus, 13) says that the head of Brutus was sent to Rome to be thrown at the feet of Caesar’s statue.)

As for Porcia, the wife of Brutus, Nicolaüs the philosopher, as well as Valerius Maximus,[*](De factis mem. iv. 6, 5.) relates that she now desired to die, but was opposed by all her friends, who kept strict watch upon her; wherefore she snatched up live coals from the fire, swallowed them, kept her mouth fast closed, and thus made away with herself.

And yet there is extant a letter of Brutus to his friends in which he chides them with regard to Porcia and laments her fate, because she was neglected by them and therefore driven by illness to prefer death to life.

It would seem, then, that Nicolaüs was mistaken in the time of her death, since her distemper, her love for Brutus, and the manner of her death, are also indicated in the letter, If, indeed, it is a genuine one.