For behold, on the first of June, on which day they had given notice that we were all to attend the senate, everything was changed.  Nothing was done by the senate, but many and important measures were transacted by the agency of the people, though that people was both absent and disapproving.  The consuls elect said, that they did not dare to come into the senate.  The liberators of their country were absent from that city from the neck of which they had removed the yoke of slavery; though the very consuls themselves professed to praise them in their public harangues and in all their conversation.  Those who were called Veterans, men of whose safety this order had been most particularly careful, were instigated not to the preservation of those things which they had, but to cherish hopes of new booty.  And as I preferred hearing of those things to seeing them, and as I had an honorary commission as lieutenant, I went away, intending to be present on the first of January, which appeared likely to be the first day of assembling the senate.

III.  I have now explained to you, O conscript fathers, my design in leaving the city.  Now I will briefly set before you, also, my intention in returning, which may perhaps appear more unaccountable.  As I had avoided Brundusium, and the ordinary route into Greece, not without good reason, on the first of August I arrived at Syracuse, because the passage from that city into Greece was said to be a good one.  And that city, with which I had so intimate a connexion, could not, though it was very eager to do so, detain me more than one night.  I was afraid that my sudden arrival among my friends might cause some suspicion if I remained there at all.  But after the winds had driven me, on my departure from Sicily, to Leucopetra, which is a promontory of the Rhegian district, I went up the gulf from that point, with the view of crossing over.  And I had not advanced far before I was driven back by a foul wind to the very place which I had just quitted.  And as the night was stormy, and as I had lodged that night in the villa of Publius Valerius, my companion and intimate friend, and as I remained all the nest day at his house waiting for a fair wind, many of the citizens of the municipality of Rhegium came to me.  And of them there were some who had lately arrived from Rome; from them I first heard of the harangue of Marcus Antonius, with which I was so much pleased that, after I had read it, I began for the first time to think of returning.  And not long afterwards the edict of Brutus and Cassius is brought to me; which (perhaps because I love those men, even more for the sake of the republic than of my own friendship for them) appeared to me, indeed, to be full of equity.  They added besides, (for it is a very common thing for those who are desirous of bringing good news to invent something to make the news which they bring seem more joyful,) that parties were coming to an agreement; that the senate was to meet on the first of August; that Antonius having discarded all evil counsellors, and having given up the provinces of Gaul, was about to return to submission to the authority of the senate.