VOL. 3.—­1

The following is contained in the Forty-fifth of Dio’s Rome: 

About Gaius Octavius, who afterward was named Augustus (chapters 1-9).

About Sextus, the son of Pompey (chapter 10).

How Caesar and Antony entered upon a period of hostility (chapters 11-17).

How Cicero delivered a public harangue against Antony (chapters 18-47).

Duration of time, the remainder of the year of the 5th dictatorship of C. Iulius Caesar with M. Aemilius Lepidus, Master of the Horse, and of his 5th consulship with Marcus Antonius. (B.C. 44 = a. u. 710.)[1]

(BOOK 45, BOSSEVAIN.)

[B.C. 44 (a. u.710)]

[-1-] This was Antony’s course of procedure.—­Gaius Octavius Copia,—­this was the name of the son of Caesar’s niece, Attia,—­came from Velitrae in the Volscian country, and having been left without a protector by the death of his father Octavius he was brought up in the house of his mother and her husband, Lucius Philippus, but on attaining maturity spent his time with Caesar.  The latter, who was childless, based great hopes upon him and was devoted to him, intending to leave him as successor to his name, authority, and supremacy.  He was influenced largely by Attia’s explicit affirmation that the youth had been engendered by Apollo.  While sleeping once in his temple, she said, she thought she had intercourse with a serpent, and through this circumstance at the end of the allotted time bore a son.  Before he came to the light of day she saw in a dream her womb lifted to the heavens and spreading out over all the earth; and the same night Octavius thought the sun rose from her vagina.  Hardly had the child been born when Nigidius Figulus, a senator, straightway prophesied for him sole command of the realm. [2]

He could distinguish most accurately of his contemporaries the order of the firmament and the mutations of the stars, what they accomplished by separation and what by conjunctions, in their associations and retirements, and for this reason had incurred the charge of practicing some kind of forbidden pursuits.  He accordingly met on that occasion Octavius, who was somewhat tardy in reaching the senate on account of the birth of the child,—­there happened to be a meeting of the senate that day,—­and asked him why he was late.  On learning the cause he cried out:  “You have begotten a master over us.” [3] At that Octavius was alarmed and wished to destroy the infant, but Nigidius restrained him, saying that it was impossible for it to suffer any such fate. [-2-] This was the conversation at that time.  While the boy was growing up in the country an eagle snatched from his hands a loaf of bread, and after soaring aloft flew down and gave it back to him.[4] When he was a lad and staying in Rome Cicero dreamed that the boy was let down by golden chains to the summit of the Capitol and received a whip from Jupiter.[5] He did