The division did not, as two years later, distinguish between East and West. It was still only the western half of the Empire which was to be divided. Italy was to be treated as the centre of government, open to all the triumvirs alike for recruiting and other purposes. The provinces were to be administered in the usual way by governors approved of by them, except that Antony was to have Gaul and Africa, Cæsar Spain and Numidia, thus securing to each a government in the west and south roughly equal in extent and in importance, now that Sicily and Sardinia were in the hands of Sextus Pompeius and thus actually hostile to Italy. But the last article in the agreement, though intended to provide only for a passing state of affairs, did in fact foreshadow the division of the Empire into East and West. By it Antony undertook to go at once to Asia to crush the fragments of the republican party still in arms in the East, and to collect money sufficient for the payment of the promised rewards to the veterans. Cæsar, on the other hand, was to return to Italy to carry on the war against Sextus Pompeius and arrange the assignation of lands. Lepidus was still consul as well as triumvir, but if the suspicion of his being in correspondence with Pompeius was confirmed he was to have no province and was to be suppressed by Cæsar. If it did not turn out to be true Antony undertook to hand over Africa to him. He was throughout treated as subordinate—
“a slight, unmeritable man,
Meet to be sent on errands.”
The real governors of the Empire were to be Antony and Cæsar. The force of circumstances ordained that for the next ten years Antony was to govern the East and Cæsar the West. And as yet the heart and life of the Empire was in the west. It was this, as much as the difference of his character, which eventually secured to Cæsar the advantage over his colleague and made him master of the whole.
CHAPTER VI
PERUSIA AND SICILY
actus cum freto Neptunius
dux fugit ustis navibus.
Augustus returns to Rome after Philippi, early in B.C. 41.
The campaign which ended with the second battle at Philippi and the death of Brutus had been won at the cost of much physical suffering to Cæsar, who only completed his twenty-first year some days after it. He had been in bad health throughout, barely able to endure the journey across Macedonia, and only performing his military duties with the utmost difficulty and with frequent interruptions. On his return journey he had to halt so often from the same cause that reports of his death reached Rome. The slowness with which he travelled also gave time for all kinds of rumours to spread abroad as to farther severities to be exercised upon the republican party on his return, and many of those who felt that they were open to suspicion sought places of concealment for themselves or their property.