[135] When Antony had said these things with intense feeling and impetuosity, all the others remaining silent and agreeing, the following decree was passed: "There shall be no prosecution for the murder of Cæsar, but all of his acts and decrees are confirmed, because this policy is deemed advantageous to the commonwealth." The friends of the murderers insisted that those last words should be added for their security, implying that Cæsar's acts were confirmed as a measure of utility and not of justice; and in this matter Antony yielded to them. When this decree had been voted the leaders of the colonists who were present asked for another act special to themselves, in addition to the general one, in order to confirm their colonies. Antony did not oppose this, but rather intimidated the Senate to pass it. So this was adopted, and another like it concerning the colonists who had been already sent out. The Senate was thereupon dismissed, and a number of senators collected around Lucius Piso, whom Cæsar had made the custodian of his will1 and urged him not to make the will public, and not to give the body a public funeral, lest some new disturbance should arise therefrom. As he would not yield they threatened him with a public prosecution for defrauding the people of such an amount of wealth which ought to go into the public treasury; thus giving new signs that they were suspicious of a tyranny.
1 Suetonius says that Cæsar deposited his will with the eldest of the Vestal virgins. His account is as follows: "At the instance of Lucius Piso, his father-in-law, Cæsar's will was opened and read in the house of Antony, which will he had made on the preceding ides of September, in his Lavican villa, and had deposited with the eldest of the Vestal virgins. Quintus Tubero relates that Pompey had been constantly made his heir in the wills written by him from his first consulship to the beginning of the civil war, and that this fact was publicly made known to the army. In his latest will he made the three grandsons of his sisters his heirs, giving to Gaius Octavius three-fourths and to Lucius Pinarius and Quintus Pedius the remaining fourth." (Jul. 83.) The epitome of Livy (cxvi.) says that the will gave Octavius one-half.
The Civil Wars. Appian. Horace White. London. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. 1899.
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