Then came a check.  Caesar’s nephew and heir, Octavius, arrived at Rome.  Born in the year of Cicero’s consulship, he was little more than nineteen; but in prudence, statecraft, and knowledge of the world he was fully grown.  In his twelfth year he had delivered the funeral oration over his grandmother Julia.  After winning some distinction as a soldier in Spain, he had returned at his uncle’s bidding to Apollonia, a town of the eastern coast of the Adriatic, where he studied letters and philosophy under Greek teachers.  Here he had received the title of “Master of the Horse,” an honor which gave him the rank next to the Dictator himself.  He came to Rome with the purpose, as he declared, of claiming his inheritance and avenging his uncle’s death.  But he knew how to abide his time.  He kept on terms with Antony, who had usurped his position and appropriated his inheritance, and he was friendly, if not with the actual murderers of Caesar, yet certainly with Cicero, who made no secret of having approved their deed.

For Cicero also had now returned to public life.  For some time past, both before Caesar’s death and after it, he had devoted himself to literature.[12] Now there seemed to him a chance that something might yet be done for the republic, and he returned to Rome, which he reached on the last day of August.  The next day there was a meeting of the Senate, at which Antony was to propose certain honors to Caesar.  Cicero, wearied, or affecting to be wearied, by his journey, was absent, and was fiercely attacked by Antony, who threatened to send workmen to dig him out of his house.

[Footnote 12:  To the years 46-44 belong nearly all his treatises on rhetoric and philosophy.]

The next day Cicero was in his place, Antony being absent, and made a dignified defense of his conduct, and criticised with some severity the proceedings of his assailant.  Still so far there was no irreconcilable breach between the two men.  “Change your course,” says the orator, “I beseech you:  think of those who have gone before, and so steer the course of the Commonwealth that your countrymen may rejoice that you were born.  Without this no man can be happy or famous.”  He still believed, or professed to believe, that Antony was capable of patriotism.  If he had any hopes of peace, these were soon to be crushed.  After a fortnight or more spent in preparation, assisted, we are told, by a professional teacher of eloquence, Antony came down to the Senate and delivered a savage invective against Cicero.  The object of his attack was again absent.  He had wished to attend the meeting, but his friends hindered him, fearing, not without reason, actual violence from the armed attendants whom Antony was accustomed to bring into the senate-house.