Kitap 3
1.1
I. THUS was Gaius Caesar, who had been foremost in extending the Roman sway, slain by his enemies and buried by the people. All of his murderers were brought to punishment. How the most distinguished of them were punished this book and the next one will show, and the other civil wars waged by the Romans will likewise be included in them.
1.2
The Senate blamed Antony for his funeral oration over Caesar, by which, chiefly, the people were incited to disregard the decree of amnesty lately passed, and to scour the city in order to fire the houses of the murderers. But he changed it from bad to good feeling toward himself by one capital stroke of policy. There was a certain pseudo-Marius in Rome named Amatius. He pretended to be a grandson of Marius, and for this reason was popular with the masses. Being, according to this pretence, a relative of Caesar, he was pained beyond measure by the latter’s death, and erected an altar on the site of his funeral pyre. He collected a band of reckless men and made himself a perpetual terror to the murderers. Some of these had fled from the city, and those who had accepted the command of provinces from Caesar himself had gone away to take charge of the same, Decimus Brutus to Cisalpine Gaul, Trebonius to Asia adjoining Ionia, and Tillius Cimber to Bithynia. Cassius and Marcus Brutus, who were the special favorites of the Senate, had been chosen by Caesar as governors for the following year, the former of Syria, and the latter of Macedonia. Being still city praetors, they remained there necessarily, and in their official capacity they conciliated the colonists by various decrees, and among others by one enabling them to sell their allotments, the law hitherto forbidding the alienation of the land till the end of twenty years.
