d have seen Antony on the subject, but that Antony is too much
busied looking after the soldiers in the Campagna. Cicero fails to have
the wishes of Atticus carried out, and shortly the subject becomes lost
in the general confusion. But the discussion shows of how much
importance at the present moment Cicero's interference with Antony is
considered. It shows also that up to this period, a few months previous
to the envenomed hatred of the second Philippic, Antony and Cicero were
presumed to be on terms of intimate friendship.

The worship of Caesar had been commenced in Rome, and an altar had been
set up to him in the Forum as to a god. Had Caesar, when he perished,
been said to have usurped the sovereign authority, his body would have
been thrown out as unworthy of noble treatment. Such treatment the
custom of the Republic required. It had been allowed to be buried, and
had been honored, not disgraced. Now, on the spot where the funeral pile
had been made, the altar was erected, and crowds of men clamored round
it, worshipping. That this was the work of Antony we cannot doubt. But
Dolabella, Cicero's repudiated son-in-law, who in furtherance of a
promise from Caesar had seized the Consulship, was jealous of Antony and
caused the altar to be thrown down and the worshippers to be dispersed.
Many were killed in the struggle--for, though the Republic was so
jealous of the lives of the citizens as not to allow a criminal to be
executed without an expression of the voice of the entire people, any
number might fall in a street tumult, and but little would be thought
about it. Dolabella destroyed the altar, and Cicero was profuse in his
thanks.[187] For though Tullia had been divorced, and had since died,
there was no cause for a quarrel. Divorces were so common that no family
odium was necessarily created. Cicero was at this moment most anxious to
get back from Dolabella his daughter's dowry. It was never repaid.
Indeed, a time was quickly coming in which such payments were out of the
question, and Dolabella soon took a side altogether opposed to the
Republic--for which he cared nothing. He was bought by Antony, having
been ready to be bought by any one. He went to Syria as governor before
the end of the year, and at Smyrna, on his road, he committed one of
those acts of horror on Trebonius, an adverse governor, in which the
Romans of the day would revel when liberated from control. Cassius came
to avenge his friend Trebonius,