To maintain a high position requires the skill of a harlequin. It is an abnormality that any man should long tower above his fellows.
For a few short weeks Mark Antony was the pride and pet of Rome. He gave fetes, contests, processions and entertainments of lavish kind. "These things are pleasant, but they have to be paid for," said Cicero.
Then came from Illyria, Octavius Cæsar, aged nineteen, the adopted son of Cæsar the Great, and claimed his patrimony.
Antony laughed at the stripling, and thought to bribe him with a fete in his honor and a promise, and in the meantime a clerkship where there was no work to speak of and pay in inverse ratio.
The boy was weak in body and commonplace in mind—in way of culture he had been overtrained—but he was stubborn.
Mark Antony lived so much on the surface of things that he never imagined there was a strong party pushing the "Young Augustus" forward.
Finally Antony became impatient with the importuning young man, and threatened to send him on his way with a guard at his heels to see that he did not return.
At once a storm broke over the head of Antony. It came from a seemingly clear sky—Antony had to flee, not Octavius.
The soldiers of the Great Cæsar had been remembered in his will with seventy-five drachmas to every man, and the will must stand or fall as an entirety. Cæsar had provided that Octavius should be his successor—this will must be respected. Cicero was the man who made the argument. The army was with the will of the dead man, rather than with the ambition of the living.