« Dio 46.42 | Dio 46.43 | Dio 46.44 | About This Work »
43This was the soldiers’ excuse for the embassy, but all they really did was to demand the money that had been voted them and to urge that Caesar should be appointed consul. 2While the senators were postponing their reply, on the ground that it required deliberation, the envoys, acting presumably on their instructions from Caesar, asked that amnesty be granted to a certain person who had embraced Antony’s cause. They did not really desire to obtain it, but wished to test the senators and see if they would grant at least this request, and, if they should not, to gain as an excuse for resentment their pretended vexation at being refused. 3At any rate, when they failed to gain their petition (for, although no one spoke against it, yet, since many had preferred the same request on behalf of others at the same session, this petition also, since it was but one out of many, was rejected with a show of plausibility), 4all the soldiers were openly angry, and one of them went out of the senate-chamber and getting his sword,—for they had gone in unarmed—touched it and said: “If you do not grant the consulship to Caesar, this shall grant it.” And Cicero, interrupting him, answered: “If you exhort in this way he will get it.” 5Now for Cicero this incident paved the way for destruction. As for Caesar, he did not censure the soldier’s act, but made a complaint because his men had been obliged to lay aside their arms on entering the senate and because one of the senators had asked whether they were sent by the legions or by Caesar. 6He summoned in haste Antony and Lepidus (for he had attached Lepidus also to himself through the friendship existing between Antony and Lepidus), and he himself, pretending to have been forced to such measures by his soldiers, set out with all of them against Rome.
« Dio 46.42 | Dio 46.43 | Dio 46.44 | About This Work »