[Footnote 1:  I.e., the making away with Antony.]

The publication of this unspoken speech raised for the time an enthusiasm against Antony, whom Cicero now openly declared to be an enemy to the state.  He hurled against him Philippic after Philippic.  The appeal at the end of that which comes the sixth in order is eloquent enough.

“The time is come at last, fellow-citizens; somewhat too late, indeed, for the dignity of the people of Rome, but at least the crisis is so ripe, that it cannot now be deferred an instant longer.  We have had one calamity sent upon us, as I may say, by fate, which we bore with—­in such sort as it might be borne.  If another befalls us now, it will be one of our own choosing.  That this Roman people should serve any master, when the gods above have willed us to be the masters of the world, is a crime in the sight of heaven.  The question hangs now on its last issue.  The struggle is for our liberties.  You must either conquer, Romans,—­and this, assuredly, with such patriotism and such unanimity as I see here, you must do, or you must endure anything and everything rather than be slaves.  Other nations may endure the yoke of slavery, but the birthright of the people of Rome is liberty”.

Antony had left Rome, and thrown himself, like Catiline, into the arms of his soldiers, in his province of Cisalpine Gaul.  There he maintained himself in defiance of the Senate, who at last, urged by Cicero, declared him a public enemy.  Caesar Octavianus (great-nephew of Julius) offered his services to the state, and with some hesitation they were accepted.  The last struggle was begun.  Intelligence soon arrived that Antony had been defeated at Mutina by the two last consuls of the Republic, Hirtius and Pansa.  The news was dashed, indeed, afterwards by the further announcement that both consuls had died of their wounds.  But it was in the height of the first exultation that Cicero addressed to the Senate his fourteenth Philippic—­the last oration which he was ever to make.  For the moment, he found himself once more the foremost man at Rome.  Crowds of roaring patriots had surrounded his house that morning, escorted him in triumph up to the Capitol, and back to his own house, as they had done in the days of his early glory.  Young Caesar, who had paid him much personal deference, was professing himself a patriot; the Commonwealth was safe again—­and Cicero almost thought that he again himself had saved it.

But Rome now belonged to those who had the legions.  It had come to that:  and when Antony succeeded in joining interests with Octavianus (afterwards miscalled Augustus)—­“the boy”, as both Cicero and Antony called him—­a boy in years as yet, but premature in craft and falsehood—­who had come “to claim his inheritance”, and succeeded in rousing in the old veterans of his uncle the desire to take vengeance a on his murderers, the fate of the Republic and of Cicero was sealed.