s
Pompey in Sicily, and with Brutus and Cassius in the East. After the
death of Caesar, the Senate appointed Sextus Pompey to the command of the
Republican fleet. He had become master of Sicily; his fleet commanded
the Mediterranean; and Rome began to suffer from want of its usual
supplies of corn. It was arranged that Octavian should attempt the
conquest of Sicily, while Antony was preparing for the campaign in the
East. A fleet under Salvidienus Rufus was sent against Pompey, but was
defeated by the latter in the Straits of Sicily, in sight of Octavian.
But the war against Brutus and Cassius was more urgent, and accordingly
Octavian and Antony sailed shortly afterward to the East, leaving Pompey
undisputed master of the sea.

On quitting Italy, Brutus had first gone to Athens. The remains of the
Pompeian legions, which continued in Greece after the battle of
Pharsalia, gathered round him; Hortensius, the governor of Macedonia,
acknowledged him as his successor; and C. Antonius, whom his brother had
sent over to take the command of the province, was obliged to surrender
to Brutus.

His colleague had been equally fortunate in Syria. Dolabella, to whom
Antony had given this province, was besieged in Laodicea by Cassius, and
put an end to his own life.

These events took place in B.C. 43. Brutus and Cassius were now masters
of the Roman world east of the Adriatic. It was evident that their
enemies before long would cross over into Greece; but, instead of
concentrating their forces in that country, they began to plunder the
cities of Asia Minor, in order to obtain money for their troops. Brutus
pillaged Lycia, and Cassius Rhodes. The inhabitants of the Lycian town
of Xanthus refused to submit to the exactions of Brutus, made an heroic
defense when they were attacked, and preferred to perish in the flames
of their city rather than to yield. Brutus and Cassius were thus engaged
when the news of the Triumvirate and the Proscription reached them; but
they continued some time longer plundering in the East, and it was not
till the spring of B.C. 42 that the Republican chiefs at length
assembled their forces at Sardis, and prepared to march into Europe. So
much time, however, had now been lost, that Antony and Octavian landed
upon the coast of Greece, and had already commenced their march toward
Macedonia before Brutus and Cassius had quitted Asia.

Brutus seems to have had dark forebodings of the approaching struggle.
He co