of heaven. The question hangs now on its last issue. The struggle is
for our liberties. You must either conquer, Romans,--and this, assuredly,
with such patriotism and such unanimity as I see here, you must do, or you
must endure anything and everything rather than be slaves. Other nations
may endure the yoke of slavery, but the birthright of the people of Rome
is liberty".

Antony had left Rome, and thrown himself, like Catiline, into the arms
of his soldiers, in his province of Cisalpine Gaul. There he maintained
himself in defiance of the Senate, who at last, urged by Cicero, declared
him a public enemy. Caesar Octavianus (great-nephew of Julius) offered his
services to the state, and with some hesitation they were accepted. The
last struggle was begun. Intelligence soon arrived that Antony had been
defeated at Mutina by the two last consuls of the Republic, Hirtius and
Pansa. The news was dashed, indeed, afterwards by the further announcement
that both consuls had died of their wounds. But it was in the height of
the first exultation that Cicero addressed to the Senate his fourteenth
Philippic--the last oration which he was ever to make. For the moment,
he found himself once more the foremost man at Rome. Crowds of roaring
patriots had surrounded his house that morning, escorted him in triumph up
to the Capitol, and back to his own house, as they had done in the days of
his early glory. Young Caesar, who had paid him much personal deference,
was professing himself a patriot; the Commonwealth was safe again--and
Cicero almost thought that he again himself had saved it.

But Rome now belonged to those who had the legions. It had come to that:
and when Antony succeeded in joining interests with Octavianus (afterwards
miscalled Augustus)--"the boy", as both Cicero and Antony called him--a
boy in years as yet, but premature in craft and falsehood--who had come
"to claim his inheritance", and succeeded in rousing in the old veterans
of his uncle the desire to take vengeance a on his murderers, the fate of
the Republic and of Cicero was sealed.

It was on a little eyot formed by the river Reno, near Bologna, that
Antony, young Caesar, and Lepidus (the nominal third in what is known as
the Second Triumvirate) met to arrange among themselves the division of
power, and what they held to be necessary, to the securing it for the
future--the proscription of their several enemies. No private affections
or interests were to be al