| GRECIANS AND ROMANS | |
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| wealth to her former libertie. Therefore he sent certaine | MARCUS |
| of his friends to Antonius, to make them friends againe: | ANTONIUS |
| and thereuppon all three met together, (to wete, Caesar, | The con- |
| Antonius, and Lepidus) in an Iland envyroned round about | spiracie and |
| with a litle river, and there remayned three dayes together. | meeting of |
| Now as touching all other matters, they were easily agreed, | Caesar |
| and did devide all the Empire of Rome betwene them, as if | Antonius, |
| it had bene their owne inheritance. But yet they could | and Lepidus. |
| hardly agree whom they would put to death: for every one | |
| of them would kill their enemies, and save their kinsmen | |
| and friends. Yet at length, giving place to their gredy | |
| desire to be revenged of their enemies, they spurned all | |
| reverence of bloud, and holines of friendship at their feete. | |
| For Caesar left Cicero to Antonius will, Antonius also for- | The proscrip- |
| sooke Lucius Caesar, who was his Uncle by his mother: | tion of the |
| and both of them together suffred Lepidus to kill his owne | Triumviri. |
| brother Paulus. Yet some writers affirme, that Caesar and | |
| Antonius requested Paulus might be slain, and that Lepidus | |
| was contented with it. In my opinion there was never a | |
| more horrible, unnatural, and crueller chaunge then this | |
| was. For thus chaunging murther for murther, they did | |
| aswel kill those whom they did forsake and leave unto | |
| others, as those also which others left unto them to kil: but | |
| so much more was their wickednes and cruelty great unto | |
| their friends, for that they put them to death being inno- | |
| cents, and having no cause to hate them. After this plat | |
| was agreed upon betwene them: the souldiers that were | |
| thereabouts, would have this friendship and league betwixt | |
| them confirmed by mariage, and that Caesar should mary | |
| Claudia, the daughter of Fulvia, and Antonius wife. This | |
| mariage also being agreed upon, they condemned three | |
| hundred of the chiefest citizens of Rome, to be put to | |
| death by proscription. And Antonius also commaunded | Antonius |
| them to whom he had geven commission to kil Cicero, that | cruelty unto |
| they should strik of his head and right hand, with the which | Cicero. |
| he had written the invective Orations (called Philippides) | |
| against Antonius. So when the murtherers brought him | |
| Ciceroes head and hand cut of, he beheld them a long time | |
| with great joy and laughed hartily, and that oftentimes for | |
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