Civil Wars

"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."