greater part of the army.

At the end of May Cicero began to return towards Rome, in order to
arrive there in time for the meeting of the senate on the first of
June, but many of his friends dissuaded him from entering the city,
and at last he determined not to appear in the senate on that day, but
to make a tour in Greece, to assist him in which, Dolabella named
him one of his lieutenants. Antonius also gave Brutus and Cassius
commissions to buy corn in Asia and Sicily for the use of the
republic, in order to keep them out of the city.

Meantime Sextus Pompeius, who was at the head of a considerable
army in Spain, addressed letters to the consuls proposing terms
of accommodation, which after some debate, and some important
modifications, were agreed to, and he quitted Spain, and came as far
as Marseilles on his road towards Rome.

Cicero having started for Greece was forced to put back by contrary
winds, and returned to Velia on the seventeenth of August, where he
had a long conference with Brutus, who soon after left Italy for his
province of Macedonia, which Caesar had assigned him before his death,
though Antonius now wished to compel him to exchange it for Crete.
After this conference Cicero returned to Rome, where he was received
with unexampled joy, immense multitudes thronging out to meet him, and
to escort him into the city. He arrived in Rome on the last day of
August. The next day the senate met, to which he was particularly
summoned by Antonius, but he excused himself as not having recovered
from the fatigue of his journey.

Antonius was greatly offended, and in his speech in the senate
threatened openly to order his house to be pulled down, the real
reason of Cicero's absenting himself from the senate being, that the
business of the day was to decree some new and extraordinary honours
to Caesar, and to order supplications to him as a divinity, which
Cicero was determined not to concur in, though he knew it would be
useless to oppose them.

The next day also the senate met, and Antonius absented himself, but
Cicero came down and delivered the following speech, which is
the first of that celebrated series of fourteen speeches made in
opposition to Antonius and his measures, and called Philippics from
the orations of Demosthenes against Philip, to which the Romans were
in the habit of comparing them.[2]

I. Before, O conscript fathers, I say those things concerning the
republic which I think myself bou