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[3] It was said that Amatius was only waiting an opportunity to entrap Brutus and Cassius. On the rumor of this plot,1 Antony, using his consular authority, arrested Amatius and boldly put him to death without a trial. The senators were astonished at this deed as an act of violence and contrary to law, but they enjoyed it exceedingly because they thought that the situation of Brutus and Cassius would never be safe without such boldness. The followers of Amatius, and the plebeians generally, missing Amatius and feeling indignation at the deed, and especially because it had been done by Antony, whom the people had honored, determined that they would not be scorned in that way. With shouts they took possession of the forum, exclaiming against Antony and called on the magistrates, in place of Amatius, to dedicate the altar and to offer the first sacrifices on it to Cæsar. Having been driven out of the forum by soldiers sent by Antony, they became still more indignant, and vociferated more loudly, and some of them showed places where Cæsar's statues had been torn from their pedestals. One man told them that he could show a shop where the statues had been broken up. The others followed, and having witnessed the fact, they set fire to the place. Finally, Antony sent more soldiers and some of those who resisted were killed, others were captured, and of these the slaves were crucified and the freemen thrown over the Tarpeian rock.2

1 τῆς ἐνέδρας ᾿Αντώνιος ἐπιβαίνων. There is a curious resemblance in these words to our slang phrase " getting on to his game."

2 Cicero in the first Philippic refers to the killing of this impostor as the act of Antony and Dolabella in common, and says that the rest of the work was done by Dolabella alone; but he believes that if Antony had been present he would have coöperated with his colleague. Valerius Maximus says that the pseudo-Marius was a horse doctor (equarius medicus) and that his real name was Herophilus. "He gave out that C. Marius was his grandfather, and so extolled himself that several colonies of veterans, and towns of the first class, and almost all the rural communities, adopted him as their patron. When Cæsar opened his gardens to the people after he had made an end of young Pompey in Spain, Herophilus, who was separated from Cæsar by only the space between two columns, was received by the crowd with almost as much enthusiasm as himself, so that unless the powers of the godlike Cæsar had put a stop to these shameful outbursts, the republic would have received the same hurt as in the case of Equitius (the pseudo-Gracchus)." (Val. Max. ix. 15. 2.)

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