ek historian
Appian gives us none of these horrors, but simply intimates that
Trebonius, having been taken in the snare, had his head cut off.[215]
That Cicero believed the story is probable. It is told against his
son-in-law, of whom he had hitherto spoken favorably. He would not have
spoken against the man except on conviction. Dolabella was immediately
declared an enemy to the Republic. Cicero inveighs against him with all
his force, and says that such as Dolabella is, he had been made by the
cruelty of Antony. But he goes on to philosophize, and declare how much
more miserable than Trebonius was Dolabella himself, who is so base that
from his childhood those things had been a delight to him which have
been held as disgraceful by other children. Then he turns to the
question which is in dispute, whether Brutus should be left in command
of Macedonia, and Cassius of Syria--Cassius was now on his way to avenge
the death of Trebonius--or whether other noble Romans, Publius
Servilius, for instance, or that Hirtius and Pansa, the two Consuls,
when they can be spared from Italy, shall be sent there. It is necessary
here to read between the lines. The going of the Consuls would mean the
withdrawing of the troops from Italy, and would leave Rome open to the
Caesarean faction. At present Decimus and Cicero, and whoever else there
might be loyal to the Republic, had to fight by the assistance of other
forces than their own. Hirtius and Pansa were constrained to take the
part of the Republic by Cicero's eloquence, and by the action of those
Senators who felt themselves compelled to obey Cicero. But they did not
object to send the Consuls away, and the Consular legions, under the
plea of saving the provinces. This they were willing enough to do--with
the real object of delivering Italy over to those who were Cicero's
enemies but were not theirs. All this Cicero understood, and, in
conducting the contest, had to be on his guard, not only against the
soldiers of Antony but against the Senators also, who were supposed to
be his own friends, but whose hearts were intent on having back some
Caesar to preserve for them their privileges.

Cicero in this matter talked some nonsense. "By what right, by what
law," he asks, "shall Cassius go to Syria? By that law which Jupiter
sanctioned when he ordained that all things good for the Republic should
be just and legal." For neither had Brutus a right to establish himself
in Macedonia as Proco