Civil Wars

"Whom has Antony put to death in a tyrannical manner without trial--he who is now in danger of being condemned unheard? Whom has he banished from the city? Whom has he slandered in our presence? Or, if innocent toward us individually, has he conspired against all of us collectively? When, O Cicero? Was it when he carried through the Senate the act of amnesty for the past? Was it when he abstained from prosecuting anybody for the murder? Was it when he moved an investigation of the public moneys? Was it when he proposed the recall of Sextus Pompey, the son of your Pompey, and payment for his father's confiscated property out of the public treasury? Was it when he seized that conspirator, the false Marius, and put him to death, and you all applauded? And because you did so it was the only act of Antony that Cicero did not calumniate. Was it when he brought in a decree that nobody should ever propose a dictatorship, or vote for it, and that anybody disobeying the decree might be killed with impunity by any one who wished? These are the public acts that Antony performed for us during two months the only months that he remained in the city after Cæsar's death, the very time when the people were pursuing the murderers and you were apprehensive of the future. If he were a villain what better opportunity could he have had? But it is said that he was not in a condition to do otherwise.[*](a)ll' e)s ta\ e)nanti/a ou)k h)=rxe, an obscure sentence. Combes-Dounous suggested h)/rkei in place of h)=rxe, a change approved by Bekker and Mendelssohn.) How? Did he not exercise the sole authority after Dolabella departed for Syria? Did he not have an armed force in readiness in the city, one that you gave him ? Did he not patrol the city by night ? Was he not guarded at night against any conspiracy of his enemies? Did he not have an excuse for this in the murder of Cæsar, his friend and benefactor, the man most beloved by the common people ? Did he not have another of a personal kind in the fact that the murderers conspired against his life also? None of them did he kill or banish, but pardoned them what he could in decency, and did not begrudge them the governorships that were offered to them. Ye behold then, O Romans, these very grave and indisputable charges of Cicero against Antony.

" Since, in addition to charges, surmises are introduced to the effect that Antony was about to lead an army to the city, but became alarmed because Octavius had anticipated him with another army, how does it happen that when the mere intention to do this makes a man an enemy the one who actually comes and encamps alongside of us without authority is not considered an enemy? What would have prevented Antony from coming if he had wanted to? With 30,000 troops in line was he afraid of Octavius' 3000, half-armed, unorganized, who had come together merely to gain his friendship, and who left him as soon as they knew that he had chosen them for war? If Antony was afraid to come with 30,000 how did he dare to come with only 1000? With these what a crowd of us accompanied him to Tibur! What a crowd of us voluntarily joined the soldiers in taking the oath of fidelity to him! What praises did Cicero lavish on his acts and virtues! If Antony himself contemplated any such thing [as invasion] why did he leave as pledges in our hands his mother, his wife, and his grown up son, who are even now at the door of the Senate weeping and fearful, not on account of what Antony has done, but on account of the overwhelming power of his enemies.

"These facts furnish you an example of Antony's defence and of Cicero's fickleness. I will add an exhortation to right-minded men, not to do injustice to the people or to Antony, not to expose the public interests to new enmities and dangers while the commonwealth is sick and in want of timely defenders, but to establish a sufficient force in the city to ward off danger before breeding disorder outside, to provide against attacks from every quarter, and to come to such decisions as you please when you are able to carry them into effect. How shall these ends be accomplished? By allowing Antony, as a matter of policy, or for the sake of the people, to have Cisalpine Gaul. Call Decimus thence with his three legions, and when he comes send him to Macedonia, retaining his legions here. If the two legions that deserted from Antony deserted to us, as Cicero says, let us summon them also from Octavius to the city. Thus with five legions sustaining us we might pass such decrees as we think best with entire confidence, depending on the favor of no man.

" I have addressed these words to men who listen to me without malice or the spirit of contention. Those who would excite you heedlessly and inconsiderately on account of private enmity and private strife I exhort not to come to hasty and rash decisions against the most important personages, who command strong armies, and not to force them into war against their will. Remember Marcius Coriolanus. Recall the recent doings of Cæsar, whom we rashly voted an enemy while he was in like manner leading an army and offering us the fairest terms of peace, whereby we forced him to be an enemy in fact. Have regard for the people who were lately pursuing Cæsar's murderers, lest we seem to insult them by giving those murderers the governorship of provinces, by praising Decimus for nullifying the people's law, and by voting Antony an enemy because he accepted the Gallic province from the people. For which reasons the well-wishers of the country ought to take thought for the erring, and the consuls and tribunes ought to be more than ever careful in view of the public dangers."[*](Piso was the father of Cæsar's wife, Calpurnia. It is very doubtful whether this speech, or any other in defence of Antony, was made by him. Cicero tells us in the first Philippic (4, 6, and 7) that Piso made a strong speech on the first of August on the republican side. In a letter to Cassius (Ad Fam. xii. 2) he says that Piso is one of three senators whose blood Antony is seeking, the other two being P. Servilius and Cicero himself. It must be said, however, that Piso was capable of changing at any moment, for a blacker character never was painted than that which Cicero gives him in his Orations De Provinciis Consularibus and In Pisonem. Dion Cassius (xlvi. 1-28) says that Quintus Fufius Calenus took the lead in defending Antony in this debate. In the eighth Philippic (4-6) Cicero addresses himself to Fufius and answers arguments which the latter had made in favor of Antony in some debate. At an earlier period Fufius had been tribune and had fixed the jury which acquitted Clodius when he was tried for profaning the mysteries of the Bona Dea.)

Thus did Piso defend Antony, reproaching his enemies and alarming them. He was evidently the cause of their not voting Antony an enemy. Nevertheless, he did not succeed in securing for him the governorship of the Gallic province. The friends and relatives of the murderers prevented it, fearing lest, at the end of the war, Antony should join Octavius in avenging the murder, for which reason they meant to keep Octavius and Antony always at variance with each other. They voted to offer Antony Macedonia instead of the Gallic province, and they ordered, either heedlessly or designedly, that the other commands of the Senate be reduced to writing by Cicero and delivered to the ambassadors. Cicero altered the decree and wrote as follows: "Antony must raise the siege of Mutina forthwith, relinquish Cisalpine Gaul to Decimus, withdraw to the hither side of the river Rubicon (which forms the boundary between Italy and the province) before a specified day, and submit himself in all things to the Senate." Thus provokingly and falsely did Cicero write the orders of the Senate, not by reason of an underlying hostility, as it seems, but at the instigation of some evil spirit that was goading the republic to revolution and meditating destruction to Cicero himself.[*](The statement that Cicero falsified the message of the Senate to Antony is untrue. Cicero was vehemently opposed to sending ambassadors to Antony and in favor of an immediate declaration of war and the levying of troops against him. The terms of the message adopted by the Senate and sent by a special embassy are given in the sixth Philippic (2-3). They are in substance the same as those quoted above. Antony was ordered to recross the Rubicon, but not to come within 200 miles of Rome.) The remains of Trebonius having been lately brought home and the indignities visited upon them more carefully inquired into, the Senate with little opposition declared Dolabella a public enemy.

The ambassadors who had been sent to Antony, ashamed of the extraordinary character of the orders, said nothing, but simply delivered them to him. Antony in his wrath indulged in many invectives against the Senate and Cicero. "He was astonished," he said, "that they should consider Cæsar (the man who had contributed most to the Roman sway) a tyrant and a king, and did not so consider Cicero, whom Cæsar had captured in war and whose life he had spared, while Cicero in return now prefers Cæsar's assassins to his friends. He hated Decimus as long as the latter was the friend of Cæsar, but loves him now that he has become his murderer. He favors a man who took the province of Gaul after Cæsar's death without authority,[*](par' ou)deno\s: "at the hands of nobody." In Secs. 49 and 50 we are told that Decimus held the province by the authority of the Senate, and in Sec. 124, Bk. I, that he had been designated as governor of the province by Cæsar himself, all of whose acts were subsequently, on Antony's motion, confirmed by the Senate.) and makes war on one who received it at the hands of the people. He gives rewards to those who deserted from the legions voted to me, and none to those who remain faithful, thus impairing military discipline not more to my disadvantage than to that of the state. He has given amnesty to the murderers, to which I have assented on account of two respectable men. He holds Antony and Dolabella as enemies because we keep what was given to us. That is the real reason. And if I but withdraw from Gaul, then I am neither enemy nor monarch! I declare that I will bring to naught the amnesty with which they are not satisfied."

After saying much more to the same purpose Antony wrote his reply to the decree, saying that he would obey the Senate in all respects as the voice of his country, but to Cicero, who wrote the orders, he would make the following answer: "The people gave me the province of Gaul by a law, and I shall prosecute Decimus for not obeying the law, and I shall visit punishment for the murder upon him alone, as representative of them all, in order that the Senate, which now participates in the wickedness by reason of Cicero's support of Decimus, may at last be purged of the shocking crime." These words Antony spoke and wrote in reply.[*](Antony's reply is quoted with a running comment in the eighth Philippic (8-9). It was a counter-proposition demanding money and lands for his troops; requiring that the edicts of himself and Dolabella relative to Cæsar's writings and note-books should not be questioned; that there should be no inquiry into the disposition made of the money left by Cæsar in the temple of Ops; that he (Antony) should have the province of Transalpine Gaul with six legions (to be filled up from the forces under command of Decimus) for at least five years, and as long as Marcus Brutus and Cassius should retain their provinces.) The Senate immediately voted him an enemy and also the army under him if it should not abandon him. The government of Macedonia and Illyria, with the troops still remaining in both, was assigned to Marcus Brutus until the republic should be reëstablished. The latter already had an army of his own and had received some troops from Apuleius.[*](Apuleius was the quæstor of Asia. Plutarch, who gives him the name of Antistius, says that he was bringing some ships laden with money to Rome and that Brutus met him near Carystus (at the southern end of Eubœa) and persuaded him to deliver the ships and contents to himself, and that the amount of money was 500,000 drachmas. Plutarch mentions also the store of arms at Demetrias, accumulated by Cæsar for the Parthian expedition. (Life of Brutus, 24-25.)) He also had war-ships and ships of burden and about 16,000 talents in money and quantities of arms which he found in Demetrias, where they had been placed by Gaius Cæsar long before, all of which the Senate now voted that he should use for the advantage of the republic. They voted that Cassius should be governor of Syria and that he should make war against Dolabella, and that all other commanders of Roman provinces and soldiers between the Adriatic sea and the Orient should obey the orders of Cassius and Brutus in all things.