n glory according to fortune, which
varied. The successful warriors were deemed shrewd and patriotic, and the
defeated ones were called both enemies of their country and pestilential
fellows.

[-35-] This was the state that the Roman affairs had at that time
reached: I shall now go on to describe the separate events. There seems
to me to be a very large amount of self-instruction possible, when one
takes facts as the basis of his reasoning, investigates the nature of
the former by the latter, and then proves his reasoning true by its
correspondence with the facts.

The precise reason for Antony's besieging Decimus in Mutina was that
the latter would not give up Gaul to him, but he pretended that it was
because Decimus had been one of Caesar's assassins. For since the true
cause of the war brought him no credit, and at the same time he saw the
popular party flocking to Caesar to avenge his father, he put forward this
excuse for the conflict. That it was a mere pretext for getting control
of Gaul he himself made plain in demanding that Cassius and Marcus Brutus
be appointed consuls. Each of these two utterances, of the most opposite
character as they were, he made with an eye to his own advantage. Caesar
had begun a campaign against his rival before the war was granted him by
the vote, but had done nothing worthy of importance. When he learned
of the decrees passed he accepted the honors and was glad, especially
because when he was sacrificing at the time of receiving the distinction
and authority of praetor the livers of all the victims, twelve in number,
were found to be double. He was impatient, to be sure, at the fact that
envoys and proposals had been sent also to Antony, instead of unrelenting
war being declared against him at once, and most of all because he
ascertained that the consuls had forwarded some private despatch to his
rival about harmony, that when some letters sent by the latter to certain
senators had been captured these officials had handed them to the persons
addressed, concealing the transaction from him, and that they were not
carrying on the war zealously or promptly, making the winter their
excuse. However, as he had no means of making known these facts,--for he
did not wish to alienate them, and on the other hand he was unable to use
any persuasion or force,--he stayed quiet himself in winter quarters in
Forum Cornelium, until he became frightened about Decimus. [-36-] The
latter had previously