Mark Antony indeed after his return did everything in his power to load young Cæsar’s position with difficulty. His conduct to the son of his friend was loveless it is true, yet we can hardly deny that it is explicable. Two things there were especially which separated their interests: Antony would not and could not pay back Cæsar’s treasure to the legitimate heir—equally impossible was it for him to divide the conduct of his party with a boy of nineteen. At the very first personal encounter between the two in the gardens of Pompey, which were then occupied by Antony, the incompatibility of aims which separated them came clearly to light, and the attempts of friends common to them both to bring the two rivals closer to each other could not avail to avert an open breach.
Rightly did Antony oppose the illegal bid of his rival for the tribunate of the people, but nothing but petty spite was the source of his refusal to allow the confirmation by the curiæ of the perfectly valid adoption by Cæsar. Moreover, the young Cæsar, in order to curry favour with the people, had declared his readiness to fulfil a vow of the dictator and to grant games in honour of the victory of Cæsar. Caius Matius and other friends of the dictator gave him every support at these games, from the 20th to the 30th of July; but Mark Antony, who had no power to prohibit games, succeeded in preventing a golden chair with a coronal from being publicly set up in honour of Julius Cæsar. To the friend of Cæsar this Cæsar worship appeared at once of doubtful taste, a worship which his youthful rival sought to organise with all the outward show of an agitator; and before the decisive sentence of the consul the private man had at last to yield. But the later Augustus tells with peculiar satisfaction in his memoirs that, suddenly, in the course of the games, a mighty comet with a long tail was seen, and that it was greeted by the multitude as the star of Cæsar. The star of the Julii was again in the ascendant; and the son who had reared a brazen statue, surmounted with a star of gold, to his father in the temple of Venus, the mother of his stock, secretly hoped to attract the rays from this auspicious talisman upon his own future. A comet always stirs up the imagination of the people mightily, it signifies war; so a contemporary poet mourns: Comets full of foreboding never shone so frequent. This time the people were right; the figure of Nemesis for the murder of Cæsar stood in the doorway.
The nearer things came to a crisis the blacker grew Cæsar’s situation. Antony had contemptuously rejected a confederacy with him; an apparent reconciliation on the Capitol had no enduring consequences. By the outbreak of a civil war, in which a Cæsar could not (even if he would) remain neutral, the young man could only rank himself as a bond fellow of the senate, of the very men who had murdered Cæsar. The thought was so intolerable to him that he did not shrink from an attempt to free himself of his opponent by assassination. Luckily for Cæsar’s cause the attempt failed, and Antony was free a few days later to make away to his legions at Brundusium. Had the attempted assassination succeeded, the young Cæsar, whose security grew more and more perilous would, in all probability, not have been in a position to reap the benefit of this bloody deed. When we take into account the prudence of Cæsar’s conduct on every other occasion but this, we can only explain this folly by the light of that systematic opposition with which Antony had met all his aspirations. To the murderers of Cæsar and the senate he behaved with somewhat greater caution.[f]
Still Antony remained in possession of all actual power. The senate voted, on his demand, that the provinces of Macedonia and Syria, though granted to Brutus and Cassius by the act of Cæsar, should be given to C. Antonius and Dolabella, and that the coveted province of Cisalpine Gaul should be transferred from Dec. Brutus to Antony himself. The news of these arbitrary acts convinced the liberators that they had nothing to hope at Rome. Dec. Brutus immediately left the city and took possession of his province by force. But M. Brutus and Cassius still dallied. Their vacillating conduct during this time gives us an unfavourable impression of their fitness for any enterprise of mark. Cicero, not himself remarkable for political firmness, in this crisis displayed a vigour worthy of his earlier days, and was scandalised by the unworthy bickerings of his friends. At length they set sail from Velia for Greece. This was in the month of September. Cicero also had at one moment made up his mind to retire from public life and end his days at Athens, in learned leisure. In the course of this summer he continued to employ himself on some of his most elaborate treatises. His works on The Nature of the Gods and on Divination, his Offices, his Dialogue on Old Age, and several other essays belong to this period and mark the restless activity of his mind. But though he twice set sail from Italy, he was twice driven back to port at Velia, where he found Brutus and Cassius. Here he received letters from A. Hirtius, and other friends of Cæsar, which gave him hopes that, in the name of Octavius, they might successfully oppose Antony, and restore constitutional government. He determined to return, and announced his purpose to Brutus and Cassius, who commended him, and went their way to the East to raise armies against Antony; he repaired to Rome to fight the battles of his party in the senate.
Meanwhile Antony had been running riot. In possession of Cæsar’s papers, with no one to check him, he produced ready warrant for every measure which he wished to carry, and pleaded the vote of the senate which confirmed all the acts of Cæsar. When he could not produce a genuine paper, he interpolated or forged what was needful.
On the day after Cicero’s return (September 1st) there was a meeting of the senate. But the orator did not attend, and Antony threatened to send men to drag him from his house. Next day Cicero was in his place, but now Antony was absent. The orator rose and addressed the senate in what is called his First Philippic. This was a measured attack upon the government and policy of Antony, but personalities were carefully eschewed. But Antony, enraged at his boldness, summoned a meeting for the 19th of September, which Cicero did not think it prudent to attend. He then attacked the absent orator in the strongest language of personal abuse and menace. Cicero sat down and composed his famous Second Philippic, which is written as if it were delivered on the same day, in reply to Antony’s invective. At present, however, he contented himself with sending a copy of it to Atticus, enjoining secrecy.
Matters quickly drew to a head between Antony and Octavius. The latter had succeeded in securing a thousand men of his uncle’s veterans who had settled at Campania, and by great exertions in the different towns of Italy had levied a considerable force. Meantime four of the Epirot legions had just landed at Brundusium, and Antony hastened to attach them to his cause. But the largess which he offered them was only a hundred denarii a man, and the soldiers laughed in his face. Antony, enraged at their conduct, seized the ringleaders, and decimated them. But this severity only served to change their open insolence to sullen anger, and emissaries from Octavius were ready to draw them over to the side of their young master. They had so far obeyed Antony as to march northwards to Ariminum, while he repaired to Rome. But as he entered the senate house, he heard that two of the four legions had deserted to his rival, and in great alarm he hastened to the camp just in time to keep the remainder of the troops under his standard by distributing to every man five hundred denarii.
Bust of Octavius