him a
thought. Seeing who he was, it would be absurd to do so.

And then he turned up in Rome, a sickly youth of eighteen;
demanded his moneys from Anthony; dunned him till he got some
fragment of them;--then borrowed largely on his own securities,
and proceeded to pay--what prodigal Anthony had been much too
thrifty to think of doing--Ceasar's debts. Rome was surprised.

This was Caesar's grand-nephew, Octavius; who had been in camp
at Apollonia in Illyricum since he had coolly proposed to his
great-uncle that the latter, being Dictator, and about to start
on his Parthian campaign, should make him his Master of the
Horse. He had been exempted from military service on account of
ill-health; and Julius had a sense of humor; so he packed him
off to Apollonia to 'finish' a military training that had never
begun. There he had made a close friend of a rising young
officer by the name of Vipsanius Agrippa; a man of high
capacities who, when the news came of Caesar's death, urged him
to lose no time, but rouse the legions in their master's name,
and march on Rome to avenge his murder.--"No," says Octavius, "I
shall go there alone."

Landing in Italy, he heard of the publication of the will, in
which he himself had been named heir. That meant, to a very vast
fortune, and to the duty of revenge. Of the fortune, since it
was now in Mark Anthony's hands, you could predict nothing too
surely but its vanishment; as to the duty, it might also imply a
labor for which the Mariuses and Sullas, the Caesars and Pompeys,
albeit with strong parties at their backs, had been too small
men. And Octavius had no party, and he was no soldier, and he
had no friends except that Vipsanius back in Apollonia.

His mother and step-father, with whom he stayed awhile on his
journey, urged him to throw the whole matter up: forgo the
improbably fortune and very certain peril, and not rush in where
the strongest living might fear to tread. Why, there was Mark
Anthony, Caesar's lieutenant--the Hercules, mailed Bacchus, Roman
Anthony--the great dashing captain whom his soldiers so adored--
even he was shilly-shallying with the situation, and not daring
to say _Caesar shall be avenged._ And Anthony, you might be
sure, would want no competitor--least of all in the boy named
heir in Caesar's will.--"Oh, I shall go on and take it up," said
Octavius; and went. And paid Caesar's debts, as we have
seen, presently: thereby advertising his assumpti