hich Decimus
Brutus was governor.

Caesar had no child but the Julia who had been wife to Pompeius, and his
heir was his young cousin Caius Octavius, who changed his name to Caius
Julius Caesar Octavianus, and, coming to Rome, demanded his inheritance,
which Antonius had seized, declaring that it was public money; but
Octavianus, though only eighteen, showed so much prudence and fairness
that many of the Senate were drawn towards him rather than Antonius, who
had always been known as a bad, untrustworthy man; but the first thing
to be done was to put down the murderers--Decimus Brutus was in Gaul,
Marcus Brutus and Cassius in Macedonia, and Sextus Pompeius had also
raised an army in Spain.

Good men in the Senate dreaded no one so much as Antonius, and put their
hope in young Octavianus. Cicero made a set of speeches against
Antonius, which are called Philippics, because they denounce him as
Demosthenes used to denounce Philip of Macedon, and like them, too, they
were the last flashes of spirit in a sinking state; and Cicero, in
those days, was the foremost and best man who was trying at his own risk
to save the old institutions of his country. But it was all in vain;
they were too rotten to last, and there were not enough of honest men to
make a stand against a violent unscrupulous schemer like Antonius, above
all now that the clever young Octavianus saw it was for his interest to
make common cause with him, and with a third friend of Caesar, rich but
dull, named Marcus AEmilius Lepidus. They called on Decimus Brutus to
surrender his forces to them, and marched against him. Then his troops
deserted him, and he tried to escape into the Alps, but was delivered up
to Antonius and put to death.

[Illustration: MARCUS ANTONIUS.]

Soon after, Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavianus all met on a little island
in the river Rhenus and agreed to form a triumvirate for five years for
setting things to rights once more, all three enjoying consular power
together; and, as they had the command of all the armies, there was no
one to stop them. Lepidus was to stay and govern Rome, while the other
two hunted down the murderers of Caesar in the East. But first, there was
a deadly vengeance to be taken in the city upon all who could be
supposed to have favored the murder of Caesar, or who could be enemies to
their schemes. So these three sat down with a list of the citizens
before them to make a proscription, each letting a kinsman or frie