ms to be, that
it was sad that Caesar should have been forced to yield, or that any one
should have been there to force him. As far as Caesar is concerned, it is
palliative rather than condemnatory. Suetonius, indeed, declares that
though Augustus for a time resisted the proscription, having once taken
it in hand he pursued it more bloodily than the others.[237] It is said
that the list when completed contained the names of three hundred
Senators and two thousand Knights; but their fate was for a time
postponed, and most of them ultimately escaped. We have no word of their
deaths, as would have been the case had they all fallen. Seventeen were
named for instant execution, and against these their doom went forth. We
can understand that Cicero's name should have been the first on the
list.

We are told that when the news reached Rome the whole city was struck
with horror. During the speaking of the Philippics the Republican party
had been strong and Cicero had been held in favor. The soldiers had
still clung to the memory of Caesar; but the men of mark in the city,
those who were indolent and rich and luxurious, the "fish-ponders"
generally, had thought that, now Caesar was dead, and especially as
Antony had left Rome, their safest course would be to join the Republic.
They had done so, and had found their mistake. Young Caesar had first
come to Rome and they had been willing enough to receive him, but now he
had met Antony and Lepidus, and the bloody days of Sulla were to come
back upon them. All Rome was in such a tumult of horror and dismay that
Pedius, the new Consul, was frightened out of his life by the clamor.
The story goes that he ran about the town trying to give comfort,
assuring one and another that he had not been included in the lists,
till, as the result of it all, he himself, when the morning came, died
from the exertion and excitement.

There is extant a letter addressed to Octavian--supposed to have been
written by Cicero, and sometimes printed among his works--which, if
written by him, must have been composed about this time. It no doubt was
a forgery, and probably of a much later date; but it serves to show what
were the feelings presumed to have been in Cicero's bosom at the time.
It is full of abuse of Antony, and of young Caesar. I can well imagine
that such might have been Cicero's thoughts as he remembered the praise
with which he had laden the young man's name; how he had decreed to him
most un