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They never so much as entered Fidentia, but marched round it, acquiescent to the gentle suggestion of a trembling and incoherent alderman, quaking with fear and barely able to enunciate some disjointed sentences. At Parma they emptied two ergastula and never so much as approached the others, repeating this inconsistency at Mutina and Bononia.
At length the last battle was fought at Mutina; it was long and bloody, but the Romans conquered ; and thenceforth the struggle was no longer a war, but a slave-hunt.
What? what do you think of those men who are besieging Mutina, who are levying troops in Gaul, who are threatening your fortunes? will they ever be friends to you, or you to them? Will he embrace the Roman knights?
You have declared a wicked war against your country; you are attacking Mutina; you are besieging the consul elect; two consuls are carrying on war against you; and with them, Caesar, the propraetor; all Italy is armed against you; and then do you call yours "a party," instead of a revolt from the republic? "To seek to avenge the death of Trebonius, or that of Caesar."
For, to say nothing of the countless acts of wickedness committed by him while consul in the city, during which time he has squandered a vast amount of public money, restored exiles without any law, sold our revenues to all sorts of people, removed provinces from the empire of the Roman people, given men kingdoms for bribes, imposed laws on the city by violence, besieged the senate, and, at other times, excluded it from the senate-house by force of arms; to say nothing, I say, of all this, do you not consider this, that he who has attacked Mutina, a most powerful colony of the Roman people who has besieged a general of the Roman people, who is consul elect who has laid waste the lands, do you not consider, I say, how shameful and iniquitous a thing it would be for that man to be received into this order, by which he has been so repeatedly pronounced an enemy for these very reasons?
I. IF, O conscript fathers, while I learnt from the letters which have been read that the army of our most wicked enemies had been defeated and routed, I had also learnt what we all wish for above all things, and which we do suppose has resulted from that victory which has been achieved, namely, that Decimus Brutus had already quitted Mutina, then I should without any hesitation give my vote for our returning to our usual dress out of joy at the safety of that citizen on account of whose danger it was that we adopted the robe of war.
Antony had left Rome, and thrown himself, like Catiline, into the arms of his soldiers, in his province of Cisalpine Gaul. There he maintained himself in defiance of the Senate, who at last, urged by Cicero, declared him a public enemy. The last struggle was begun. Intelligence soon arrived that Antony had been defeated at Mutina by the two last consuls of the Republic, Hirtius and Pansa.
Mutina surrendered to Pompeius; and Brutus was, notwithstanding the safe-conduct promised to him, subsequently put to death by order of that general. Alba too was, after a long siege, reduced by famine, and the leader there was likewise executed.
The other consul, Pansa, remained at Rome to raise new levies; but by the end of March he also marched to form a junction with Hirtius. Both parties pretended to be acting in Cæsar's name. Antony left his brother Lucius in the trenches before Mutina, and took the field against Hirtius and Octavius. For three months the opponents lay watching each other.
Then, as he was making his way into Gaul, Decimus Brutus opposed him; who preferred being himself surrounded by the waves of the whole war, to allowing him either to retreat or advance; and who put Mutina on him as a sort of bridle to his exultation. Who ever was such a barbarian? Who was ever so savage? so brutal?
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