"To my delight, Cincius" (he was Atticus' agent)" came to me between daylight on January 30th, with the news that you were in Italy. He was sending, he said, messengers to you, I did not like them to go without a letter from me, not that I had any thing to write to you, especially when you were so close, but that I wished you to understand with what delight I anticipate your coming … The day you arrive come to my house with all your party. You will find that Tyrannio" (a Greek man of letters) "has arranged my books marvelously well. What remains of them is much more satisfactory than I thought[10]. I should be glad if you would send me two of your library clerks, for Tullius to employ as binders and helpers in general; give some orders too to take some parchment for indices. All this, however, if it suits your convenience. Any how, come yourself and bring Pilia[11] with you. That is but right. Tullia too wishes it."
[Footnote 10: They had suffered with the rest of Cicero's property at the time of his exile.]
[Footnote 11: Pilia was the lady to whom Atticus was engaged]
CHAPTER XV.
ANTONY AND AUGUSTUS.
There were some things in which Mark Antony resembled Caesar. At the time it seemed probable that he would play the same part, and even climb to the same height of power. He failed in the end because he wanted the power of managing others, and, still more, of controlling himself. He came of a good stock. His grandfather had been one of the greatest orators of his day, his father was a kindly, generous man, his mother a kinswoman of Caesar, a matron of the best Roman type. But he seemed little likely to do credit to his belongings. His riotous life became conspicuous even in a city where extravagance and vice were only too common, and his debts, though not so enormous as Caesar's, were greater, says Plutarch, than became his youth, for they amounted to about fifty thousand pounds. He was taken away from these dissipations by military service in the East, and he rapidly acquired considerable reputation as a soldier. Here is the picture that Plutarch draws of him: There was something noble and dignified in his appearance. His handsome beard, his broad forehead, his aquiline nose, gave him a manly look that resembled the familiar statues and pictures of Hercules. There was indeed a legend that the Antonii were descended from a son of Hercules; and this he was anxious to support by his appearance and dress. Whenever he appeared in public he had his tunic gired up to the hip, carried a great sword at his side, and wore a rough cloak of Cilician hair. The habits too that seemed vulgar to others—his boastfulness, his coarse humor, his drinking bouts, the way he had of eating in public, taking his meals as he stood from the soldiers' tables—had an astonishing effect in making him popular with the soldiers. His bounty too, the help which he gave with a liberal hand to comrades and friends, made his way to power easy. On one occasion he directed that a present of three thousand pounds should be given to a friend. His steward, aghast at the magnitude of the sum, thought to bring it home to his master's mind by putting the actual coin on a table. "What is this?" said Antony, as he happened to pass by. "The money you bade me pay over," was the man's reply. "Why, I had thought it would be ten times as much as this. This is but a trifle. Add to it as much more."
When the civil war broke out, Antony joined the party of Caesar, who, knowing his popularity with the troops, made him his second in command. He did good service at Pharsalia, and while his chief went on to Egypt, returned to Rome as his representative. There were afterwards differences between the two; Caesar was offended at the open scandal of Antony's manners and found him a troublesome adherent; Antony conceived himself to be insufficiently rewarded for his services, especially when he was called upon to pay for Pompey's confiscated property, which he had bought. Their close alliance, however, had been renewed before Caesar's death. That event made him the first man in Rome. The chief instrument of his power was a strange one; the Senate, seeing that the people of Rome gloved and admired the dead man, passed a resolution that all the wishes which Caesar had left in writing should have the force of law—and Antony had the custody of his papers. People laughed, and called the documents "Letters from the Styx." There was the gravest suspicion that many of them were forged. But for a time they were a very powerful machinery for effecting his purpose.
Then came a check. Caesar's nephew and heir, Octavius, arrived at Rome. Born in the year of Cicero's consulship, he was little more than nineteen; but in prudence, statecraft, and knowledge of the world he was fully grown. In his twelfth year he had delivered the funeral oration over his grandmother Julia. After winning some distinction as a soldier in Spain, he had returned at his uncle's bidding to Apollonia, a town of the eastern coast of the Adriatic, where he studied letters and philosophy under Greek teachers. Here he had received the title of "Master of the Horse," an honor which gave him the rank next to the Dictator himself. He came to Rome with the purpose, as he declared, of claiming his inheritance and avenging his uncle's death. But he knew how to abide his time. He kept on terms with Antony, who had usurped his position and appropriated his inheritance, and he was friendly, if not with the actual murderers of Caesar, yet certainly with Cicero, who made no secret of having approved their deed.
For Cicero also had now returned to public life. For some time past, both before Caesar's death and after it, he had devoted himself to literature.[12] Now there seemed to him a chance that something might yet be done for the republic, and he returned to Rome, which he reached on the last day of August. The next day there was a meeting of the Senate, at which Antony was to propose certain honors to Caesar. Cicero, wearied, or affecting to be wearied, by his journey, was absent, and was fiercely attacked by Antony, who threatened to send workmen to dig him out of his house.
[Footnote 12: To the years 46-44 belong nearly all his treatises on rhetoric and philosophy.]