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Is it possible that you could live the courtier of Octavius; that you could accept of employments and honours from him, from the tyrant of your country; you, the brave, the noble-minded, the virtuous Messalla; you, whom I remember, my son-in-law Brutus has frequently extolled as the most promising youth in Rome, tutored by philosophy, trained up in arms, scorning all those soft, effeminate pleasures that reconcile men to an easy and indolent servitude, fit for all the roughest tasks of honour and virtue, fit to live or to die a free man?
'Madam Howard, Throckmorton laughed, 'I would ask you how many broken treaties, how many deeds of treachery, went to the making of the Roman state, since Sinon a traitor brought about the fall of Troy, since Aeneas betrayed Queen Dido and brought the Romans into Italy, until Sylla played false with Marius, Cæsar with the friends of Sylla, Brutus with Cæsar, Antony with Brutus, Octavius with Antony aye, and until the Blessed Constantine played false to Rome herself.
It was vice and faction which had prepared the way for violence, and the last appeal to the sword had settled the fate of the empire, henceforth to be governed by a despot. But there being now three despots among the partisans of Cæsar, who sought to grasp his sceptre, Which should prevail? Antonius was the greatest general; Octavius was the greatest man; Lepidus was the tool of both.
The two fleets had thus become merged and mingled into one. Antony immediately decided that this was Cleopatra's treason. She had made peace with Octavius, he thought, and surrendered the fleet to him as one of the conditions of it. Antony ran through the city, crying out that he was betrayed, and in a frensy of rage sought the palace. Cleopatra fled to her tomb.
They were both old officers of the Gallic army, C. Vibius Pansa and Au. Cicero was ready to believe that they had become patriots, because, disgusted with the arrogance of Antony, they had declared for Octavius and the senate. Antony began to fear that all parties might combine to crush him.
But the government party was determined not to yield, consul stood against consul, Gnaeus Octavius against Lucius Cinna, and tribune against tribune; both sides appeared in great part armed on the day and at the place of voting. The tribunes of the senatorial party interposed their veto; when swords were drawn against them even on the rostra, Octavius employed force against force.
Gracchus seemed to himself to have reached the point when he must either wholly renounce his reform or begin a revolution. He chose the latter course; for he came before the burgesses with the declaration that either he or Octavius must retire from the college, and suggested to Octavius that a vote of the burgesses should be taken as to which of them they wished to dismiss.
Oswald won the Latin prize at his preparatory school and Dicky is good at sums. Alice and Noel are twins: they are ten, and Horace Octavius is my youngest brother. It is one of us that tells this story but I shall not tell you which: only at the very end perhaps I will. While the story is going on you may be trying to guess, only I bet you don't.
The first Roman, who was ever honoured with a legal title, as a title of distinction, was Octavius, upon whom the senate, but a few years before the birth of Paul, had conferred the name of Augustus. But no procurator of a province took this title. Neither does it appear that the circumstance gave birth to inferior titles to those in inferior offices in the government.
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."
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