fore a given
day or to know that they would occupy the position of enemies. Moreover
they removed the senators who had received from him governorships over
the provinces and resolved that others should be sent in their place.
These measures were ratified at that time. Not long after, before
learning his decision, they voted that a state of rebellion existed,
changed their senatorial garb, gave charge of the war against him to the
consuls and Caesar (a kind of pretorian office), and ordered Lepidus and
Lucius Munatius Plancus, who was governing a portion of Transalpine Gaul,
to render assistance.

[-30-] In this way did they themselves furnish an excuse for hostility
to Antony, who was without this anxious to make war. He was pleased to
receive news of the decrees and forthwith violently reproached the envoys
with not treating him rightly or fairly as compared with the youth
(meaning Caesar). He also sent others in his turn, so as to put the blame
of the war upon the senators, and make some counter-propositions which
saved his face but were impossible of performance by Caesar and those who
sided with him. He intended not to fulfill one of their demands, well
aware that they too would not take up with anything that he submitted. He
promised, however, that he would do all that they had determined, that he
himself might have a refuge in saying that he would have done it, while
at the same time his opponent's party would be before him in becoming
responsible for the war, by refusing the terms he laid before them. In
fine, he said that he would abandon Gaul and disband his legions, if they
would grant these soldiers the same rewards as they had voted to Caesar's
and would elect Cassius and Marcus Brutus consuls. He brought in the
names of these men in his request with the purpose that they should
not harbor any ill-will toward him for his operations against their
fellow-conspirator Decimus.

[-31-] Antony made these offers knowing well that neither of them would
be acted upon. Caesar would never have endured that the murderers of his
father should become consuls or that Antony's soldiers by receiving the
same as his own should feel still more kindly toward his rival. Nor, as a
matter of fact, were his offers ratified, but they again declared war
on Antony and gave notice to his associates to leave him, appointing a
different day. All, even such as were not to take the field, arrayed
themselves in military cloaks, and they co