have obeyed the senate if it had resolutely asserted its dignity? Would the aristocracy have united in one compact body? Above all, would the people have hailed the watchword of liberty, and rallied round any civil leader-around Cicero, if he had boldly, and without hesitation, proclaimed himself the champion of freedom? The only answer, unsatisfactory, indeed, as it may be, to these questions is, the calm survey of the events which followed in hasty succession on this crisis of the destiny of Rome. We translate from Mr. Drumann, vol. i., p. 80.

The murderers stood deserted around the body. For the speech which was to have crowned their deed they found no hearers; the deed itself spoke, and so appallingly, that Rome shrunk away from them: first the senate, who had little inclination to participate in the curse attendant on their crime-the solitude around them showed this; then the people likewise. It made no movement when, like a gang of runaway slaves, with the cap, the symbol of freedom, before them, protected by their bloody daggers and by gladiators, they marched through the forum and demanded support, on the assurance that no life was in danger after that of the tyrant. Least of all did Cicero appear, whom M. Brutus had called upon by name as the father of his country. Under the pretext of rendering thanksgiving to the gods, they withdrew to the Capitol.'

In the arrangement of the following incidents, Mr. Drumanu justly complains of the extreme paucity of dates furnished by the ancients. Appian he considers as superior to Dio and to Plutarch, both in the vigour with which he has drawn the characters of the time, and the sagacity with which he has developed their motives; but he has misplaced the events. Assistance is sometimes, but rarely, to be obtained from inscriptions. Even as to the medals, Eckhel, who has reproached his predecessors Mediobarbus, Vaillant, Morell, and Havercamp with want of historical criticism, has, in Mr. Drumann's opinion, arranged the coins according to false principles.

The first panic rapidly passed away; the conspirators, it was soon generally seen, had neither the inclination nor the power to secure the mastery of the city by plunder and massacre. Nothing had been preconcerted or prepared. Men began to choose their sides. Those who were too weak to stand forward alone, displayed their zeal for liberty and the republic—that is, for the aristocracy_re-established by Sylla; whoever hoped to take the place of Cæsar, joined himself to his avenger.' Who were the Romans who, on the evening of the 15th March, were assembled with the liberators in the Capitol? Cicero, in his ardent desire to rule again in the forum by his eloquence, in the senate by his reputation and others, who were not thought worthy by the mur

derers

derers themselves to be admitted into their ranks, but were now eager to pass for their accomplices, to share their honours and rewards. Among these Drumann names from Appian, and briefly characterizes, Lentulus Spinther, Favonius, M. Aquinas, C. Octavius, Balbus, Marcus Patiscus, and others. That even Dolabella appeared there, and that he was willing to secure a dignity conferred on him by Cæsar by means of the murderers of Cæsar, is clear and significant; but as certainly he appeared there for the first time on the following day: if with Appian and Dio we overlook this fact, what followed becomes unintelligible.

For after a part of the precious time had been wasted in congratulations and thanksgivings, Cicero proposed that M. Brutus and Cassius, as prætors, should on the instant summon the senate to the Capitol; they must avail themselves at once of the confident courage of the well-disposed, and the consternation of their adversaries, to act; that is to say, to repeal all the ordinances of the dictator, and bestow the honours of the state on those who would protect them. The Consul Antonius kept himself concealed, and Dolabella had as yet done nothing to maintain his rights, whatever they might be, as his colleague; he was not yet confirmed. But Cicero availed himself of this plan only to avoid measures tending to anarchy. Antonius was neither deposed from his office, nor had abdicated it; his sentiments, however, were known, and, notwithstanding his hostility to Antonius, Dolabella could not be the friend of the liberator; for this reason Cicero intended to exclude him. Cicero thought, with justice, that all was not ended with the murder; that an union with the adherents of the murdered man was impossible; as they had spared their lives, no time should be lost in altogether depriving them of power. But he was mistaken when he expected this result from decrees of the senate; when he dignified by the name of acting anything less than purchasing the venal people, satisfying the veterans' thirst for gold, which overpowered their love for Cæsar; and above all, without form or ceremony, seizing upon the treasure; in a word arraying might against might, and so commanding the peace which was equally desirable to the people and the soldiery.'-Drumann, vol. i. p. 83.

It is singular to see the reverence for constitutional forms paralyzing the measures of the conspirators, and of Cicero himself. In the consul alone resided the legal authority to reinstate affairs; and they fondly thought, or deluded themselves into the belief, that Antony, being consul, would use his powers with moderation, sacrifice at once his revenge and his personal ambition, and act in peaceful harmony with the murderers of Cæsar.

From this point the ancients lead us into a labyrinth, from which we find no way of escape, unless we can fix the precise time of the meeting of the senate in the temple of Tellus, and with the help of a few slight indications reckon backwards and forwards from that point.

The

The senate assembled, as we shall presently see, on the 17th of March. During the nights of the 15th and 16th Brutus and his colleagues remained in the Capitol, while Antony gained the advantage by obtaining possession of the treasures and papers of Cæsar. Appian dates this the night before the meeting of the senate, therefore immediately after the murder. In a speech in the Forum, Brutus complains of the administration of Cæsar's effects, for he already knew that the treasury was empty, but not, as he did later, when he made that which is called his Capitoline speech, how it became so. The observation of Cicero, that, during his stay at Rome, he was an eyewitness of the plunder, and that Antony had paid his debts between the 15th March and the 1st of April, is by no means decisive; but nothing speaks more strongly than that Calpurnia, only in her first panic, while she was apprehensive of persecution and of the plundering of her house, could have taken the perilous step of intrusting the wealth her husband had left behind to another, and that a notorious spendthrift; and that Antony no sooner saw the field open than he seized likewise the public treasure.'-Drumann, vol. i. p. 84.

He took it out of the temple of Ops, according to the accounts, to the amount of 700 million sesterces (between 5,000,000l. and 6,000,000l.); but he subsequently maintained to Octavian, that he found the repositories empty, and himself proposed an inquiry, so that the senate offered a reward of a tenth of the whole for information what had become of the money. It was not merely expended by the consul in loose extravagance, and the payment of his creditors; but won likewise to his party Dolabella, and other influential men, the veterans and the people. Neither the animosity nor the witticisms of Cicero, nor the menaces of his nephew of an indictment for peculation, could wrest from Antony this advantage.

From the private treasure of Cæsar, which Calpurnia allowed to be moved to his house for greater security, he obtained 25 millions of denarii, about 4000 talents, (between 700,000l. and 800,000l.,) as well as many articles of value. But the inexhaustible source of wealth, as well as the most effective means of beating his adversaries beneath his feet, was the possession of the Dictator's papers, his memorandum-book, which contained, or might contain, his designs and plans for the future, and which at the same time was given up by the widow to the consul.

By this arrangement of the events, Antony's superiority is immediately explained. The meeting of the senate in the temple of Tellus, on the 17th, took place at his summons as Consul; but, already in possession of the treasure, Antony commanded as the master, rather than obeyed as the servant of the republic. The other consul, Dolabella, was secured to his interests. Thus the plunder of the provinces again, as it were, revenged itself on the liberties of Rome. What could the constitutional party effect,

after

after the first false step, the abandonment of the sinews of the war' to the adversary? The subservience of Lepidus to the views of Antony may be ascribed more perhaps to the arts by which he worked on the vanity and ambition of that weak man, than to the dazzling influence of his wealth. Lepidus, who, on the night of the murder, marched his troops into the city and occupied the Campus Martius, was at that crisis the arbiter of the Roman destinies. But the same irresolution, the same astonishment, which seemed to oppress the minds of the tyrannicides with the grandeur of the act which they had achieved,-the same rigid adherence to constitutional proceedings, while the constitution was manifestly in abeyance, which allowed Antony to anticipate them in the seizure of the treasure-left Lepidus open to his negociations, apparently without any counteracting exertions on their part. The rival, bought by the hand of Antony's daughter for his son, and by the vacant high-priesthood, sank into the tool of Antony. The activity displayed by Antony in this negociation is a further probability in favour of his bold precipitancy in mastering

the treasure.

Notwithstanding the dark colouring of the Philippics, the vices and prodigalities of his youth, and the impressions of weakness and irresolution which remain upon the mind from the final fate of the soft triumvir' after the battle of Actium, it is impossible not to admire the address and the vigour which were displayed by Mark Antony throughout this trying crisis. Antony must have felt that, in sparing his life, the conspirators had committed an irreparable fault; in leaving him in possession of the consular power, in submitting to his official authority, in treating him as a person of whom it was possible to suppose, from his position, his character, his very virtues, his gratitude, and his attachment to Cæsar, that he could be other than their deadly enemy. He must be all or nothing; and all he might have been-but for the appearance of a new competitor, whose extraordinary and peculiar abilities no political wisdom could have anticipated. His only formidable rival was the boy Octavian, with more than the coolness, the subtlety, the relentless determination of purpose, which belongs to the age and experience of the most practised veteran. Antony availed himself with equal skill of all his advantages, his office, his wealth, his influence with the veterans; he steadily pursued the course of his ambition through the bye-paths of crafty negociation, and the bloody tracks of civil war. At first he succeeded almost in convincing Cicero of his patriotic designs, while all the time he was weaving his toils around one adversary after another. Cicero and Antony were now the real heads of their respective parties; Cicero of that of the constitution, of the aristocracy, of the govern

ment

ment by the civil authority-Antony of that of monarchy, however disguised, of the people, as far as an alliance against the patrician party, of government by the army. Could Cicero have done more in his position, and with the means at his command? He was weighed down in the first place by the imbecility and misconduct of the conspirators. Drumann has well described the insignificance into which they at once fell.

The lot of the deliverers was by no means enviable. They could only submit, while their enemies built up what they had cast down, and remodelled what they had thrown out of joint. Their hand was strong enough to point the dagger, but not to wield the destinies of Rome. Instead of being objects of wonder, they were forced to seek an asylum with the gods, and congratulated themselves when-they were pardoned. They found no sympathy; neither with the multitude, who only spared them from the desire of peace; nor with their enemies for it is courage and subtlety, not cowardly murder, which commands the respect of our adversaries— -nor even with their own faction, who began to esteem them very lightly as incapable instruments. No one in the meantime appeared, as Octavian did at a later period, to make a forward movement; and on the other side there was nothing left but to receive them with open arms, since their punishment had been remitted. According to Appian, on the 18th of March they came down from the Capitol, but this took place on the 17th; for, in fact, it was necessary as soon as possible to give an assurance to the people that they need not fear a civil war in the city. In a numerous assembly the decrees of the senate were read by the command of the consuls, with the approbation of Cicero. For the first time on this day, Cicero raised his voice again as a free republican, and doubtless in his joy he spoke with the greatest spirit. The multitude listened with delight, and were anxious to see the conspirators, whom they had taken into their favour. But conscience still made them cowards; though these advances were made to them, they demanded hostages for their security.'-Drumann, vol. i. p. 96.

Antony, the restorer of peace, consummated his work; he sent his young son, with the son of Lepidus, and so lured them out of their hiding-places, the more easily to drive them out of Rome. When they reached the Forum, they were received with clamours of joy by the multitude, and by their command they were embraced by the consuls as a token of sincere reconciliation.

Lepidus was the host of M. Brutus, the brother of his wife; and Antony invited Cassius, for whom, as a ready man of the world, he expressed the most profound contempt, both in his jest, "You have not still another little dagger under your arm?" and in the smile with which, well aware of the simplicity, the egotism, and the helplessness of the murderers, he received his answer, "I have still a dagger for you, if you are ambitious of being a tyrant."'

Yet