THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE was formed, and the tripartition of the Roman world was made.

They assumed the right to dispose of all the offices of the government; and all their decrees were to have the force of law, without any question, confirmation, or revision by either the Senate or the people. In short, they proposed that their power should be absolute—they would do what they pleased. Yet they were compelled to consider the army. To secure the support of the legions, they pledged to them eighteen of the finest districts in Italy, with an addition of about a thousand dollars to each soldier. The conditions of the compact were put into writing, and when each of the triumvirs had taken an oath faithfully to observe them, they were read to the troops. The soldiers signified their approval upon condition that Octavius should marry the daughter of Antony’s wife Fulvia. ^{7[Page 74] The girl’s name was Clodia. She was Fulvia’s daughter by Clodius, her former husband.}TTR 73.2

When the powers of the triumvirate had thus been made firm, the triumvirs sat down “with a list of the noblest citizens before them, and each in turn pricked [with a pin] the name of him whom he destined to perish. Each claimed to be ridded of his personal enemies, and to save his own friends. But when they found their wishes to clash, they resorted without compunction to mutual concessions.” Above all other men Cicero was the one upon whom Antony desired to execute vengeance; and in return for this boon, he surrendered to Octavius his own uncle on his mother’s side. Lepidus gave up his own brothers. “As they proceeded, their views expanded. They signed death warrants to gratify their friends. As the list slowly lengthened, new motives were discovered for appending to it additional names. The mere possession of riches was fatal to many; for the masters of so many legions were always poor: the occupation of pleasant houses and estates sealed the fate of others; for the triumvirs were voluptuous as well as cruel. Lastly, the mutual jealousy of the proscribers augmented the number of their victims, each seeking the destruction of those who conspicuously favored his colleagues, and each exacting a similar compensation in return. The whole number extended, we are told, to three hundred senators and two thousand knights; among them were brothers, uncles, and favorite officers of the triumvirs themselves.”—Merivale. ^{8[Page 74] “Romans Under the Empire,” chap. 26, par. 13.}TTR 74.1

When this list had been arranged, the triumvirs with their legions started to Rome. Before they reached the city, they sent to the consuls the names of seventeen of the most prominent citizens, with an order to put them all to death at once. Cicero was one of the seventeen. The executioners “attacked the houses of the appointed victims in the middle of the night: some they seized and slew unresisting; others struggled to the last, and shed blood in their own defense; others escaping from their hands raised the alarm throughout the city, and the general terror of all classes, not knowing what to expect, or who might feel himself safe, caused a violent commotion.”—Merivale. ^{9[Page 75] Id., par. 14.} Cicero had left the city, but he was overtaken by the messengers of blood, his head and his hands were cut off and carried to Antony, who exulted over the ghastly trophies; and Fulvia in a rage of gloating anger took the bloody head and held it upon her knees, and looking into the face poured forth a torrent of bitter invective against him whose face it was, and then in a perfect abandon of fury seized from her hair her golden bodkin, and pierced and through the tongue that had so often, so exultantly, and so vilely abused both her husbands.TTR 74.2

The triumvirs reached Rome one after another. “Octavius entered first; on the following day Antony appeared; Lepidus came third. Each man was surrounded by a legion and his praetorian cohort. The inhabitants beheld with terror these silent soldiers taking possession of every point commanding the city. Rome seemed like a place conquered and given over to the sword.”—Duruy. ^{10[Page 75] “History of Rome,” chap. 59, sec. 4, par. 10.} A tribune called an assembly of the people; a few came, and the three commanders “were now formally invested with the title of triumvirs, and all the powers they claimed were conferred upon them” November 27, B. C. 43. The following night there was posted throughout the city this edict:—TTR 75.1

“M. Lepidus, Marcus Antonius, and Octavius Caesar, chosen triumvirs for the reconstitution of the republic, thus declare: Had not the perfidy of the wicked answered benefits by hatred; had not those whom Caesar in his clemency spread after their defeat, enriched and loaded with honors, become his murderers, we too should disregard those who have declared us public enemies. But perceiving that their malignity can be conquered by no benefits, we have chosen to forestall our enemies rather than be taken unawares by them. Some have already been punished; with the help of the gods we shall bring the rest to justice. Being ready to undertake an expedition against the parricides beyond the seas, it has seemed to us and will appear to you necessary that we should not leave other enemies behind us. Yet we will be more merciful than a former imperator, who also restored the ruined republic, and whom you hailed with the name of Felix. Not all the wealthy, not all who have held office, will perish, but only the most dangerous evil-doers. These offenders we might have seized unawares; but for your sakes we have preferred to draw up a list of proscribed persons rather than to order an execution by the troops, in which harm might have come to the innocent. This then is our order: Let no one hide any of those whose names follow; whosoever shall aid in the escape of a proscribed man shall be himself proscribed. Let the heads be brought to us. As a reward, a man of free condition shall receive twenty-five thousand Attic drachmae, a slave ten thousand, together with freedom and the name of citizen. The names of persons receiving these rewards shall be kept secret.”—Duruy. ^{11[Page 76] Id.}TTR 75.2

Attached to this document were one hundred and thirty names of senators and knights who were devoted to death. Another list of one hundred and fifty was almost immediately added, and yet others followed in quick succession. Guards had been placed at all the gates, all places of refuge had been occupied, and all means of escape had been cut off. The slaughter began. “The executioners, armed with the prostituted forms of authority, rushed unresisted and unhindered in pursuit of their victims. They found many to aid them in the search, and to stimulate their activity. The contagious thirst of blood spread from the hired assassins to all who had an ancient grudge to requite, a future favor to obtain. Many fell in the confusion whose names were not included in the list of the proscribed. Many a private debt was wiped out in the blood of the creditor. Robbers and cut-throats mingled with the bitter partisan and the private enemy. While the murderer carried the head of his victim to fix it on a spike before the rostra, and claim the proffered reward, the jackals of massacre entered the tenantless house, and glutted themselves with plunder.” Merivale. ^{12[Page 77] “Romans Under the Empire,” chap. 26, par. 15.}TTR 76.1

When the names of the published lists had been exhausted, and all their political enemies had been slain, the triumvirs published yet another list, not of more to be put to death, but of those whose property should be confiscated. When this list was exhausted, then “all the inhabitants of Rome and Italy,—citizens and foreigners, priests and freedmen,”—who had possessions amounting to more than twenty thousand dollars, were obliged to “lend” to the triumvirs one-tenth of all their possessions, and “give” one year’s income besides. Then, “glutted with blood and rapine,” Lepidus, for the triumvirate, announced to the Senate that the proscription was at an end. Octavius, however, reserved the right to kill some more, and “declared that the only limit he had fixed to the proscription was that he should be free to act as he pleased.”—Suetonius. ^{13[Page 77] “Lives of the Caesars,” Augustus, chap. 27.} Then the fawning Senate voted to the triumvirs civic crowns as “the saviors of their country.”TTR 77.1

In the beginning of the year 42 B. C., Antony and Octavius, leaving Lepidus in command of Rome and Italy, started to the East to destroy Brutus and Cassius, the murderers of Caesar; but it was summer before they got all their troops together in Macedonia. Brutus and Cassius, with their united forces, had returned from Asia Minor into Europe. The two armies met at Philippi in Macedonia. The forces of Brutus and Cassius numbered about one hundred thousand, and those of Antony and Octavius about one hundred and twenty thousand. Two battles, twenty days apart, were fought on the same ground. In the first Cassius lost his life; in the second the army of Brutus was annihilated, and Brutus himself committed suicide.TTR 77.2

It became necessary now to pay the soldiers the money and put them in possession of the land which had been promised them when the triumvirate was formed. A sum equal to a thousand dollars had been promised to each soldier, and, as there were now one hundred and seventy thousand soldiers, a sum equal to one hundred and seventy million dollars was required. Antony assumed the task of raising the money from the wealth of Asia, and Octavius the task of dispossessing the inhabitants of Italy and distributing their lands and cities among the soldiers. Antony’s word to the people of Pergamos describes the situation both in Italy and all the countries of Asia. To them he said:—TTR 78.1

“You deserve death for rebellion; this penalty I will remit; but I want money, for I have twenty-eight legions, which with their auxiliary battalions amount to 170,000 men, besides cavalry and detachments in other quarters. I leave you to conceive what a mass of money must be required to maintain such armaments. My colleague has gone to Italy to divide its soil among these soldiers, and to expel, so to speak, the Italians from their own country. Your lands we do not demand; but instead thereof we will have money. And when you hear how easily, after all, we shall be contented, you will, we conceive, be satisfied to pay and be quit of us. We demand only the same sum which you have contributed during the last two years to our adversaries; that is to say, the tribute of ten years; but our necessities compel us to insist upon receiving this sum within twelve months.”—Merivale. ^{14[Page 78] “Romans Under the Empire,” chap. 27, par. 2.}TTR 78.2

As the tribute was much reduced by the time it reached the coffers of Antony, the levy was doubled, and the command given that it should be paid in two installments the same year. To this the people replied, “If you force us to pay the tribute twice in one year, give us two summers and two harvests. No doubt you have also the power to do so.” But instead of considering the distress of the people caused by these most burdensome exactions, “Antony surrounded himself with flute-players, mountebanks, and dancing-girls. He entered Ephesus, preceded by women dressed as Bacchantes, and youths in the garb of Fauns and Satyrs. Already he assumed the attributes of Bacchus, and set himself to play the part by continual orgies.”—Duruy. ^{15[Page 79] “History of Rome,” chap. 60, sec. 3, par. 1.}TTR 78.3

While Cassius was in Asia Minor, he had compelled Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, to supply him with troops and money. As these had been used against the triumvirs, Antony sent from Tarsus in Cilicia, and called her to account for her conduct. She came, representing Venus, to render her account in person. And “when she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart on the river of Cydnus.” “The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water, which they beat, to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggared all description: she did lie In her pavilion (cloth of gold and tissue), O’er-picturing that Venus, where we see The fancy out-work nature: on each side her, Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling cupids, With divers colored fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, And what they undid, did.... “Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, So many mermaids, tended her i’ the eyes, And made their bends adornings: at the helm A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands, That yarely frame the office. From the barge A strange invisible perfume hits the sense Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast Her people out upon her; and Antony, Enthroned in the market-place, did sit alone, Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy, Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra, too, And made a gap in nature.... “Upon her landing, Antony sent to her, Invited her to supper: she replied, It should be better, he became her guest; Which she entreated: Our courteous Antony, Whom ne’er the word of ‘No,’ woman heard speak, Being barbered ten times o’er, goes to the feast; And, for his ordinary, pays his heart, For what his eyes eat only.”—Shakespeare.TTR 79.1

Antony went with Cleopatra to Alexandria, B. C. 41. Fulvia died in the spring of 40. Antony’s giddy infatuation with the voluptuous queen of Egypt was fast estranging him from Octavius and the Roman people. The matter was patched up for a little while, by the marriage of Antony and Octavia, the sister of Octavius, B. C. 40; but within two years Antony was again swallowed up in the charms of Cleopatra, from whom he never again separated. Two children whom he had by her he named respectively the Sun and the Moon, and when Cleopatra assumed the dress and professed the attributes of Isis, Antony played the part of Osiris. ^{16[Page 80] “Antony and Cleopatra,” act 2, scene 2.} He publicly rejected Octavia in 35, divorced her in 32, and war was declared the same year. The war began and ended with the naval battle of Actium, September 2, B. C. 31.TTR 80.1

In the midst of the battle Cleopatra hoisted sail and fled. Antony left everything and followed her. They sailed home to Alexandria, and there committed suicide. In the meantime Lepidus had been set aside, and now, just thirteen and one-half years from the murder of Caesar, the State, having again gone through the same course precisely, came again to the exact point where it had been then, only in worse hands, and Octavius was the head of one hundred and twenty millions of people, and SOLE MASTER OF THE ROMAN WORLD.TTR 80.2