[7] The marriage could not have taken place earlier than the middle of B.C. 57, for when Atia’s first husband died Philippus was in Syria. He was succeeded by Gabinius in B.C. 57, and reached Italy in time to stand for the consulship, the elections that year being at the ordinary time, i.e., July (Cic., ad Att. 4, 2).
[8] L. Marcius Philippus was the son of the famous orator, and was a warm supporter of Cicero. With his colleague as consul-designate he proposed the prosecution of Clodius (Cic., ad Q. Fr. ii. 1). When the civil war was beginning he was allowed by Cæsar to remain neutral (Cic., ad Att. ix. 15; x. 4). But Cicero found him tiresome company, for he was garrulous and prosy (ad Att. xii. 9, 16, 18); and in the troublous times following the assassination of Cæsar he set little store by his opinion (ad Att. xvi. 14; ad Brut. i. 17).
[9] The law of B.C. 52 allowed Cæsar to be “elected in his absence” (absentis rationem haberi), but said nothing of his being in possession of a province. By long prescription the Senate had the right of deciding when a provincial governor should be “succeeded.” But then Cæsar’s term of provincial government had been fixed by a lex, which was superior to a Senatus-consultum; and he might also argue that if it was unconstitutional for a man to be elected consul while holding a province, the Senate had violated the constitution in allowing Pompey to be consul in B.C. 52.
[10] The Senate did not insist on the professio, from which Cæsar had been exempted by name in Pompey’s law. But its contention was that it still retained the right of naming the date at which a man was to leave his province, and of deciding in regard to an election whether a man was a legal candidate, which might depend on other things besides the making or not making a professio.
[11] The difficulty was that both consuls were absent. There was no one therefore capable of holding a consular election. But as the other curule magistrates still existed, “the auspicia had not returned to the Fathers,” who could not therefore name an interrex. The Prætor Lepidus—though willing—could not “create” a maius imperium. The only way out of it was to name a Dictator (com. hab. causa); but one of the consuls, according to tradition, could alone do that. Eventually Lepidus, by a special vote of the people was authorised to name Cæsar as Dictator—which had precedents in the cases of Fabius Maximus and Sulla—and Cæsar, as Dictator, held the consular elections. Cæs., b. c. ii, 21; Dio, 41, 36.
[12] Nicolas (ch. 4) says that he took the toga virilis about fourteen (περὶ ἔτη μάλιστα γεγονὼς τεσσαρακαίδεκα). But Suetonius (Aug. 8) says that he spoke the laudatio of his grandmother in his twelfth year, and “four years afterwards” took the toga virilis.
[13] Octavius was sui iuris, his father being dead; his adoption therefore required the formal passing of a lex curiata. Now the opposition, supported by Antony, against this formality being carried out was one of the grounds of Octavian’s quarrel with him in B.C. 44-3, and the completion of it was one of the first things secured by Octavian on his entrance into Rome in August, B.C. 43 [Appian, b. c. iii. 94; Dio, 45, 5]. This seems conclusive against the theory that Iulius adopted him in his lifetime. Moreover all authorities speak of the adoption as made by Will. Livy, Ep. 116, testamento in nomen adoptatus est; Velleius, ii. 59, testamentum apertum est, quo C. Octavium nepotem sororis suæ Iuliæ adoptabat. See also Appian, b. c. iii. 11; Dio, 45, 3; Plutarch, Brut. 22. It is true that Nicolas—speaking of the triumph of B.C. 46—(§ 8) says υἱὸν ἤδη πεποιημἐνος. But if he means anything more than “regarding him as a son,” he twice afterwards contradicts himself: See § 17 ἀπήγγελλον τά τε ἄλλα καὶ ὡς ἐν ταῖς διαθήκαις ὡς υἱὸς εἴη Καίσαρι ἐγγεγραμμένος. Cf. § 13.
[14] Cicero, ad Att. xii. 48, 49; Nicholas, § 14; Valer. Max., 1, 15, 2. For the subsequent fate of the man see Cicero, ad Att. xiv. 6, 7, 8; App., b. c. iii. 2-3.
[15] The patrician gentes were dying out, and it was thought good to replenish their numbers, thus gradually forming a class of nobles distinct from these ennobled by office. In making the Octavii patricians, the initiative was taken by the Senate; in later times, however, the power of creating patricii was conferred on the imperator. Iulius seems also to have done it on his own authority. (Dio, 43, 47; Suet., Aug. 2.)
[16] He took with him Apollodorus of Pergamus, a well-known author of a system of rhetoric (Suet., Aug. 89; Strabo, 13, 4, 3; Quinct., 3, 1, 17). Other teachers of his, whether at Apollonia or elsewhere, are Areius of Alexandria, Alexander of Pergamus, Athenodorus of Tarsus (Suet. l. c.; Dio, 51, 4; Plutarch, Ant. 11; Nicol. Dam., § 17; Zonaras, 10, 38).