xtent, and seems at this period to have
contemplated the assumption of dictatorial power in his own hands.
Antony was nearly being one of the greatest rascals the world has known.
The desire was there, and so was the intellect, had it not been weighted
by personal luxury and indulgence.

Now young Octavius came upon the scene. He was the great-nephew of
Caesar, whose sister Julia had married one Marcus Atius. Their daughter
Atia had married Caius Octavius, and of that marriage Augustus was the
child. When Octavius, the father, died, Atia, the widow, married Marcius
Philippus, who was Consul B.C. 56. Caesar, having no nearer heir, took
charge of the boy, and had, for the last years of his life, treated him
as his son, though he had not adopted him. At this period the youth had
been sent to Apollonia, on the other side of the Adriatic, in Macedonia,
to study with Apollodorus, a Greek tutor, and was there when he heard of
Caesar's death. He was informed that Caesar had made him his heir and at
once crossed over into Italy with his friend Agrippa. On the way up to
Rome he met Cicero at one of his southern villas, and in the presence
of the great orator behaved himself with becoming respect. He was then
not twenty years old, but in the present difficulty of his position
conducted himself with a caution most unlike a boy. He had only come, he
said for what his great-uncle had left him; and when he found that
Antony had spent the money, does not appear to have expressed himself
immediately in anger. He went on to Rome, where he found that Antony and
Dolabella and Marcus Brutus and Decimus Brutus and Cassius were
scrambling for the provinces and the legions. Some of the soldiers came
to him, asking him to avenge his uncle's death; but he was too prudent
as yet to declare any purpose of revenge.

Not long after Caesar's death Cicero left Rome, and spent the ensuing
month travelling about among his different villas. On the 14th of April
he writes to Atticus, declaring that whatever evil might befall him he
would find comfort in the ides of March. In the same letter he calls
Brutus and the others "our heroes," and begs his friend to send him
news--or if not news, then a letter without news.[180] In the next he
again calls them his heroes, but adds that he can take no pleasure in
anything but in the deed that had been done. Men are still praising the
work of Caesar, and he laments that they should be so inconsistent.
"Though they