Civil Wars

The triumvirs entered the city separately on three successive days, Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, each with a prætorian cohort and one legion. As they arrived, the city was speedily filled with arms and military standards, disposed in the most advantageous places. A public assembly was forthwith convened in the midst of these armed men, and the tribune Publius Titius proposed a law providing for a new magistracy for settling the present disorders, to consist of three men to hold office for five years, namely, Lepidus, Antony, and Octavius, with the same power as consuls. (Among the Greeks these would have been called harmosts, which is the name the Lacedæmonians gave to those whom they appointed over their subject states.) No time was given for consideration of this measure, nor was a future day appointed for voting on it, but it was passed forthwith. That same night, the proscription of 130 men in addition to the seventeen was proclaimed in various parts of the city, and a little later 150 more, and additions to the lists were constantly made of those who had been previously condemned or killed by mistake, so that they might seem to have perished justly. It was ordered that the heads of all the victims should be brought to the triumvirs in order to adjust the rewards, which to a free person were payable in money and to a slave in both money and freedom. All were required to afford opportunity for searching their houses. Those who received fugitives, or concealed them, or refused to allow search to be made, were liable to the same penalties as the proscribed, and those who informed against concealers were allowed the same rewards [as those who killed the proscribed].

The proscription was in the following words: " Marcus Lepidus, Mark Antony, and Octavius Cæsar, chosen by the people to set in order and regulate the republic, do declare that, had not perfidious scoundrels begged for mercy and when they obtained it become the enemies of their benefactors and conspired against them, neither would Gaius Cæsar have been slain by those whom he saved by his clemency after capturing them in war, whom he admitted to his friendship and upon whom he heaped offices, honors, and gifts; nor should we have been compelled to use severity against those who have insulted us and declared us public enemies. Now, seeing that the malice of those, who have conspired against us and from whom Gaius Cæsar suffered, cannot be overcome by kindness, we prefer to anticipate our enemies rather than suffer at their hands. Let no one who sees what both Cæsar and ourselves have suffered consider our action unjust, cruel, or immoderate. Although Cæsar was clothed with supreme power, although he was pontifex maximus, although he had overthrown and added to our sway the nations most formidable to the Romans, although he was the first man to attempt the untried sea beyond the pillars of Hercules and was the discoverer of a country hitherto unknown to the Romans, this man was slain in a public and sacred place designated as the senate-house, under the eyes of the gods, with twenty-three dastardly wounds, by men whom he had taken prisoners in war and had spared, some of whom he had named as co-heirs of his wealth. After this execrable crime, instead of arresting the guilty wretches, the rest sent them forth as commanders and governors, in which capacity they seized upon the public money with which they are collecting an army against us and are seeking reënforcements from barbarians ever hostile to Roman rule. Cities subject to Rome that would not obey them they have burned, or ravaged, or levelled to the ground; other cities they have forced by terror to bear arms against the country and against us.

"Some of them we have punished already; and by the aid of divine providence you shall see the rest punished presently. Although the chief part of this work has been finished by us or is well in hand, appertaining to Spain and Gaul as well as to Italy, one task still remains, and that is to march against Cæsar's assassins beyond the sea. On the eve of undertaking this foreign war for you, we do not consider it safe, either for you or for us, to leave other enemies behind to take advantage of our absence and watch for opportunities during the war. We think that there should be no delay in such an emergency, but that we ought rather to sweep them out of our pathway, once for all, seeing that [*](Y.R. 712) they began the war against us when they voted us and the armies under us public enemies.

"What vast numbers of citizens have they doomed to destruction with us, disregarding the vengeance of the gods and the reprobation of mankind! We shall not deal harshly with any multitude of men, nor shall we count as enemies all who have opposed us or plotted against us, or those distinguished for their riches merely, their estates, or their high position; nor shall we go to the same lengths as another man who held the supreme power before us, when he, too, was regulating the commonwealth in civil convulsions, and whom you named the Fortunate[*](Sulla; see i. 97 supra.) on account of his success; and yet necessarily three persons will have more enemies than one. We shall take vengeance only on the worst and most guilty. This we shall do for your interest no less than for our own, for while we keep up our conflicts you will all be involved necessarily in great dangers. It is incumbent on us also to do something to quiet the army, which has been insulted, irritated, and decreed a public enemy by our common foes. Although we might arrest on the spot whomsoever we please, we prefer to proscribe rather than seize them unawares; and this, too, on your account, so that it may not be in the power of enraged soldiers to exceed their orders, but that they may be restricted to a certain number designated by name, and spare the others according to order.

"In God's name then,[*](a)gaqh=| tu/xh| toi/nun: an exclamation of a religious sort equivalent to the Latin quod felix faustumque sit. It has no exact equivalent in English.) let no one harbor any one of those whose names are hereto appended, or conceal them, or send them away, or be corrupted by their money. Whoever shall be detected in saving, or aiding, or conniving with them we will put on the list of the proscribed without allowing any excuse or pardon. Those who kill the proscribed and bring us their heads shall receive the following rewards: to a free man 25,000 Attic drachmas per head; to a slave his freedom and 10,000 Attic drachmas and his master's right of citizenship. Informers shall receive the same rewards. In order that they may remain unknown [*](Y.R. 711) the names of those who receive the rewards shall not be inscribed in our registers." Such was the language of the proscription of the triumvirate as nearly as it can be rendered from Latin into Greek.[*](This is the only copy of this hideous instrument that has come down to us. The text corresponds with all that we glean from other authorities concerning it.)

Lepidus was the first to begin the work of proscription, and his brother Paulus was the first on the list of the proscribed. Antony came next, and the second name on the list was that of his uncle, Lucius Cæsar.[*](Both Dion and Appian say that Lucius Cæsar and Lucius Paulus were allowed to escape. See Sec. 37 infra.) These two men had been the first to vote Lepidus and Antony public enemies. The third and fourth victims were relatives of the consuls-elect for the coming year, namely, Plotius, the brother of Plancus, and Quintus, the father-in-law of Asinnius. These four were placed at the head of the list, not so much on account of their dignity as to produce terror and despair, so that none of the proscribed might hope to escape. Among the proscribed was Thoranius, who was said by some to have been a tutor of Octavius. When the lists were published, the gates and all the other exits from the city, the harbor, the marshes, the pools, and every other place that was suspected as adapted to flight or concealment, were occupied by soldiers; the centurions were charged to scour the surrounding country. All these things took place simultaneously.

Straightway, throughout city and country, wherever each one happened to be found, there were sudden arrests and murder in various forms, and decapitations for the sake of the rewards when the head should be shown; also undignified flights in strange costumes, of persons hitherto well dressed. Some descended into wells, others into filthy sewers. Some took refuge in chimneys. Others crouched in the deepest silence under the thick-set tiles of their roofs. Some were not less fearful of their wives and ill-disposed children than of the murderers. Others feared their freedmen and their slaves; creditors feared their debtors and neighbors feared neighbors who coveted their lands. There was a sudden outburst of previously smouldering hates and a shocking change in the condition of senators, consulars, prætors, tribunes (men who were about to enter upon those offices, or who had already held them), who threw themselves with lamentations at the feet of their own slaves, giving to the servant the character of savior and master. It was most lamentable that even after submitting to this humiliation they did not obtain pity.

Every kind of calamity was rife, but not as in ordinary sedition or military occupation, for in those cases the people had to fear only the members of the opposite faction, or the enemy, and could rely on their own domestics. But now they were more afraid of them than of the assassins, for as the former had nothing to fear on their own account, as in ordinary seditions or wars, they were suddenly transformed from domestics into enemies, either from some concealed hatred, or in order to obtain the published rewards, or to possess themselves of the gold and silver in their masters' houses. For these reasons each one became treacherous to the household, preferring his own gain to compassion for the home. Those who were faithful and well-disposed feared to aid, or conceal, or connive at the escape of the victims, because such acts made them liable to the very same punishments. This was quite different from the peril that befell the seventeen men first condemned. Then there was no proscription, but certain persons were arrested unexpectedly, and as all feared similar treatment all sheltered each other. After the proscriptions some immediately became the betrayers of all. Others, being free from danger themselves and eager for gain, became hunting dogs for the murderers for the sake of the rewards. Of the remainder, some plundered the houses of the slain, and their private gains turned their thoughts away from the public calamities; others, more prudent and upright, were palsied with consternation. It seemed most astounding to them, when they reflected upon it, that while other states afflicted by civil strife had been rescued by harmonizing the factions, in this case the dissensions of the leaders had wrought ruin in the first instance and their agreement with each other had had like consequences afterwards.

Some died defending themselves against their slayers. Others made no resistance, considering the assailants not to blame. Some starved, or hanged, or drowned themselves, or flung themselves from their roofs or into the fire. Some offered themselves to the murderers or sent for them when they delayed. Others concealed themselves and made abject entreaties, or dodged, or tried to buy themselves off. Some were killed by mistake, or by private malice, contrary to the intention of the triumvirs. It was evident that a corpse was not one of the proscribed if the head was still attached to it, for the heads of the proscribed were displayed on the rostra in the forum, where it was necessary to bring them in order to get the rewards. Equally conspicuous were the fidelity and courage of others -- of wives, of children, of brothers, of slaves, who rescued the proscribed or planned for them in various ways, and died with them when they did not succeed in their designs. Some even killed themselves on the bodies of the slain. Of those who made their escape some perished by shipwreck, ill luck pursuing them to the last. Others were preserved, contrary to expectation, to become city magistrates, commanders in war, and even to enjoy the honors of a triumph. Such a display of paradoxes did this time afford.

These things took place not in an ordinary city, not in a weak and petty kingdom; but the deity thus smote the most powerful mistress of so many nations and of land and sea, and so brought about, after a long period of time, the present well-ordered condition. Other like events had taken place in the time of Sulla and even before him in that of Gaius Marius. The most notable of these calamities I have narrated in my history of those times, in which was the added horror that the dead were cast away unburied. The matters we are now considering are the more remarkable by reason of the dignity of the triumvirs and especially of one of them, who, by means of his character and good fortune, established the government on a firm foundation, and left his lineage and name to those who now rule after him. I shall now run over the most remarkable as well as the most shocking of these events, which are all the more worthy to be remembered because they were the last of the kind. I shall not speak of all, however, because the mere killing, or flight, or subsequent return of those who were pardoned by the triumvirs at a later period and passed undistinguished lives at home, is not worthy of mention. I shall refer only to those which are calculated to astonish by their extraordinary nature or to confirm what has already been said. These events are many, and they have been written in numerous books by many Roman historians successively. By way of summary, and to shorten my narrative, I shall record a few of each kind in order to confirm the truth of each and to illustrate the happiness of the present time.

The massacre began, as it happened, among those who were still in office, and the first one slain was the tribune Salvius. His was, according to the laws, a sacred and inviolable office, endowed with the greatest powers, even that of imprisoning the consuls in certain circumstances. Salvius was the tribune who had at first prevented the Senate from declaring Antony a public enemy, but later he had coöperated with Cicero in everything. When he heard of the agreement of the triumvirs, and of their hastening to the city, he gave a banquet to his friends, believing that he should not have many more opportunities for doing so. Soldiers burst in while the feast was going on. Some of the guests started up in tumultuous alarm, but the centurion in command ordered them to resume their places and remain quiet. Then, seizing Salvius by the hair, just as he was, the centurion drew him as far as need be across the table, cut off his head, and ordered the guests to stay where they were and make no disturbance unless they wished to suffer a like fate. So they remained after the centurion's departure, stupefied and speechless, till the most silent watches of the night, reclining by the side of the tribune's body. The second one slain was the prætor Minucius, who was holding the comitia in the forum. Learning that the soldiers were seeking him, he fled, and while he was still running about looking for a hiding-place he changed his clothes, and then darted into a shop, sending away his attendants and the insignia of his office. The attendants, moved by shame and pity, lingered near the place, and thus unintentionally made the discovery of the prætor more easy to his slayers.