icero and Lucullus, little
pleased at this, undertook to kill both Caesar and Pompey through the
medium of one Lucius Vettius; they failed of their attempt, however, and
all but perished themselves as well. For Vettius, being informed against
and arrested before he had acted, denounced them; and had he not charged
Bibulus also with being in the plot against the two, they would have
certainly met some evil fate. As it was, inasmuch as in his defence he
accused the man who had revealed the project to Pompey, he was suspected
of not speaking the truth on other points either, but created the
impression that the matter had been somehow purposely contrived with a
view to calumniating the opposite party. About these details some spread
one report and others another, but nothing was definitely proven.
Vettius was brought before the populace and after naming only those whom
I have mentioned was thrown into prison, where not much later he was
treacherously murdered.

[-10-] In consequence of this Cicero became an object of suspicion on
the part of Caesar and Pompey, and he strengthened their conjecture in
his defence of Antonius. The latter, in his governorship of Macedonia,
had committed many outrages upon the subject territory as well as the
section that was under truce, and had been well chastised in return. He
ravaged the possessions of the Dardani and their neighbors and then did
not dare to withstand their attack, but pretending to retire with his
cavalry for some other purpose took to flight; in this way the enemy
surrounded his infantry and drove them out of the country with violence,
taking away their plunder from them besides. When he tried the same
tactics on the allies in Moesia he was defeated near the city of the
Istrianians by the Bastarnian Scythians who came to their aid; and
thereupon he decamped. It was not for this conduct, however, that he was
accused, but he was indicted for conspiracy with Catiline; yet he was
convicted on the former charge, so that it was his fate to be found not
guilty of the crime for which he was being tried, but to be punished for
something of which he was not accused. That was the way he finally came
off; but at the time Cicero in the character of his advocate, because
Antonius was his colleague, made a most bitter assault upon Caesar as
responsible for the suit against the man, and heaped some abuse upon him
in addition.

[-11-] Caesar was naturally indignant at it, but, although co