kill both Caesar and Pompey through the medium of one Lucius Vettius; they failed of their attempt, however, and all but perished themselves as well.  For Vettius, being informed against and arrested before he had acted, denounced them; and had he not charged Bibulus also with being in the plot against the two, they would have certainly met some evil fate.  As it was, inasmuch as in his defence he accused the man who had revealed the project to Pompey, he was suspected of not speaking the truth on other points either, but created the impression that the matter had been somehow purposely contrived with a view to calumniating the opposite party.  About these details some spread one report and others another, but nothing was definitely proven.  Vettius was brought before the populace and after naming only those whom I have mentioned was thrown into prison, where not much later he was treacherously murdered.

[-10-] In consequence of this Cicero became an object of suspicion on the part of Caesar and Pompey, and he strengthened their conjecture in his defence of Antonius.  The latter, in his governorship of Macedonia, had committed many outrages upon the subject territory as well as the section that was under truce, and had been well chastised in return.  He ravaged the possessions of the Dardani and their neighbors and then did not dare to withstand their attack, but pretending to retire with his cavalry for some other purpose took to flight; in this way the enemy surrounded his infantry and drove them out of the country with violence, taking away their plunder from them besides.  When he tried the same tactics on the allies in Moesia he was defeated near the city of the Istrianians by the Bastarnian Scythians who came to their aid; and thereupon he decamped.  It was not for this conduct, however, that he was accused, but he was indicted for conspiracy with Catiline; yet he was convicted on the former charge, so that it was his fate to be found not guilty of the crime for which he was being tried, but to be punished for something of which he was not accused.  That was the way he finally came off; but at the time Cicero in the character of his advocate, because Antonius was his colleague, made a most bitter assault upon Caesar as responsible for the suit against the man, and heaped some abuse upon him in addition.

[-11-] Caesar was naturally indignant at it, but, although consul, refused to be the author of any insolent speech or act against him.  He said that the rabble purposely cast out[35] many idle slurs upon their superiors, trying to entice them into strife, so that the commoners might seem to be equal and of like importance, in case they should get anything similar said of themselves.  Hence he did not see fit to put any person on an equal footing with himself.  It had been his custom, therefore, to conduct himself thus toward others who insulted him at all, and now seeing that Cicero was not so anxious about abusing him as about obtaining