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6In consequence they were now offering up to each other their staunchest friends in return for their bitterest enemies, and getting their most implacable foes in return for their closest comrades, sometimes exchanging equal numbers and sometimes several for one or fewer for more, and carrying on their negotiations in general after the fashion of a market, particularly in over-bidding one another as at an auction. 2If one person was found who matched another in value so that there was a parity between them, there was an even exchange; but those whose value was enhanced by some excellence or rank or even relationship perished each at the price of several lives. For, as is natural in civil wars, which last a long time and involve many incidents, many had in the course of the strife come into collision even with their nearest relatives. 3For example, Antony had found an enemy in his uncle, Lucius Caesar, and Lepidus in his brother, Lucius Paullus. But though the lives of these men were spared, yet many of the rest were slaughtered even in the houses of their friends and relatives, at whose hands they most confidently expected to be saved and honoured. 4For, in order that no one should hesitate to kill another out of fear of being deprived of the rewards,—inasmuch as Marcus Cato, in his quaestorship, had demanded back from those who had murdered anyone in the time of Sulla all that they had received for their work,—they proclaimed that the name of none of the perpetrators should be registered in the public records. 5Encouraged by this, men proceeded to slay, in addition to the others, also the well-to -do, even when they had no dislike for any of them. For since they stood in need of vast sums of money and had no other source from which to satisfy the desires of their soldiers, they affected a kind of common enmity against the rich. 6And among the many other lawless acts they committed in carrying out this policy, they took a lad and enrolled him among the youths of military age, in order that they might kill him as now classed among the grown men.
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