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[62] The ambassadors who had been sent to Antony, ashamed of the extraordinary character of the orders, said nothing, but simply delivered them to him. Antony in his wrath indulged in many invectives against the Senate and Cicero. "He was astonished," he said, "that they should consider Cæsar (the man who had contributed most to the Roman sway) a tyrant and a king, and did not so consider Cicero, whom Cæsar had captured in war and whose life he had spared, while Cicero in return now prefers Cæsar's assassins to his friends. He hated Decimus as long as the latter was the friend of Cæsar, but loves him now that he has become his murderer. He favors a man who took the province of Gaul after Cæsar's death without authority,1 and makes war on one who received it at the hands of the people. He gives rewards to those who deserted from the legions voted to me, and none to those who remain faithful, thus impairing military discipline not more to my disadvantage than to that of the state. He has given amnesty to the murderers, to which I have assented on account of two respectable men. He holds Antony and Dolabella as enemies because we keep what was given to us. That is the real reason. And if I but withdraw from Gaul, then I am neither enemy nor monarch! I declare that I will bring to naught the amnesty with which they are not satisfied."

1 παρ᾽ οὐδενὸς: "at the hands of nobody." In Secs. 49 and 50 we are told that Decimus held the province by the authority of the Senate, and in Sec. 124, Bk. I, that he had been designated as governor of the province by Cæsar himself, all of whose acts were subsequently, on Antony's motion, confirmed by the Senate.

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