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This raised in the soldiers yet a greater pity, so that they resolved to confer secretly with him, and dressed Laelius and Clodius in women's clothes, and sent them to see him. They advised him without delay to attack Lepidus's trenches, assuring him that a strong party would receive him, and, if he wished it, would kill Lepidus.
This is as satisfactory as Lepidus's account of the generation of the crocodile: "Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of your sun: so is your crocodile."
In the night, after Caesar's death he occupied the forum with his troops and thought of making himself master of the city, but Antonius dissuaded him from that idea and won him over to his views by giving his daughter in marriage to Lepidus's son, and by assisting him to seize on the office of Pontifex Maximus, which was vacant by Caesar's death.
Antony, however, had no wish for this, but next morning marched his army to pass over the river that parted the two camps. He was himself the first man that stepped in, and, as he went through towards the other bank, he saw Lepidus's soldiers in great numbers reaching out their hands to help him, and beating down the works to make him way.
But Antonius's friends were encouraged by Lepidus's letter to renew their suggestions of a treaty; which caused Cicero to deliver the following speech to the senate for the purpose of counteracting the influence of their arguments.
His extortions had been notorious; he was threatened with prosecution as soon as his consulship should expire; and the adventure to which he was about to commit himself was undertaken, so the aristocrats afterward maintained, in despair of an acquittal. Lepidus's side of the story was never told, but another side it certainly had.
Indeed, Lucius Caesar, Antony's uncle, had become his enemy, and Lepidus's brother, Lucius Paulus, hostile to him. The lives of these were saved, but many of the rest were slaughtered even in the houses of their very friends and relatives, from whom they especially expected protection and honor.
But the unmitigated Epicurus, as he used to call him, could not but be hateful to him, treating all such pretensions as absurd and puerile. Alexander consequently loathed Amastris beyond all the cities of Pontus, knowing what a number of Lepidus's friends and others like-minded it contained.
This bold design was successfully executed. Antony advanced alone, clothed in wretched garments, and with his matted hair and beard hanging about his breast and shoulders, up to Lepidus's lines. The men, who knew him well, received him with acclamations; and pitying the sad condition to which they saw that he was reduced, began to listen to what he had to say.
Meanwhile, seeing that Lepidus was vexed at being deprived of the office that belonged to him, he sent him to Africa; for he proposed, by being the sole bestower of that position, instead of allowing Antony to share in the appointment, to gain in a greater degree Lepidus's attachment.
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