changed their senatorial garb, gave charge of the war against him to the consuls and Caesar (a kind of pretorian office), and ordered Lepidus and Lucius Munatius Plancus, who was governing a portion of Transalpine Gaul, to render assistance. [-30-] In this way did they themselves furnish an excuse for hostility to Antony, who was without this anxious to make war. He was pleased to receive news of the decrees and forthwith violently reproached the envoys with not treating him rightly or fairly as compared with the youth (meaning Caesar). He also sent others in his turn, so as to put the blame of the war upon the senators, and make some counter-propositions which saved his face but were impossible of performance by Caesar and those who sided with him. He intended not to fulfill one of their demands, well aware that they too would not take up with anything that he submitted. He promised, however, that he would do all that they had determined, that he himself might have a refuge in saying that he would have done it, while at the same time his opponent's party would be before him in becoming responsible for the war, by refusing the terms he laid before them. In fine, he said that he would abandon Gaul and disband his legions, if they would grant these soldiers the same rewards as they had voted to Caesar's and would elect Cassius and Marcus Brutus consuls. He brought in the names of these men in his request with the purpose that they should not harbor any ill-will toward him for his operations against their fellow-conspirator Decimus.