aligned in his favor, and many others with it ...[161] and in this plan and in the events that followed, he had the approval of his friends. These were: Marcus Agrippa, Lucius Maecenas, Quintus Juventius, Marcus Modialius, and Lucius.[162] Other officers, centurions, and soldiers followed, as well as a multitude of slaves and a pack train carrying the pay-money and the supplies. As for his mother,[163] he decided not to acquaint her with his plan, lest, out of affection and weakness, like a woman and a mother, she might be a hindrance to his great purpose. He gave out openly that he was going to Campania to sell some of his father’s property there, to take the money and put it to the uses that his father had enjoined. But even so, he went off entirely without her consent. At that time Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius were at Dicaearchia,[164] and when they learned of the throng that was accompanying Octavian from Rome (the messengers having exaggerated the report, as usually happens) they were struck with much fear and consternation, thinking that the expedition was directed against themselves. They took to flight across the Adriatic. Brutus went to Achaea, Cassius to Syria. When Octavian arrived in Calatia in Campania,[165] the inhabitants received him as the son of their benefactor and treated him with the highest honor. On the following day he disclosed the whole situation to them and he appealed to the soldiers, telling them how unjustly his father had been killed and how he was himself being plotted against. As he spoke, some of the decurions did not wish to listen at all, but the people did so eagerly and with good will, and they sympathized with him, frequently bidding him to be of good cheer, for they would not neglect him but would assist him in every way until he should be established in his inherited rights. Then he invited them to his house and gave each of them five hundred drachmae; and the next day he called together the members of the curia and appealed to them not to be outdone in good will by the people, but to remember Caesar who had given them the colony and their position of honor. He promised that they would experience no less benefits at his own hands. He showed that it was more fitting for him to enjoy their aid and to make use of their influence and arms than for Antonius to do so. They were aroused to a greater zeal to help him and to undertake trouble and danger with him if need be. Octavian commended their zeal and asked them to accompany him as far as the neighboring colonies, and furnish him safe-conduct. The people were pleased at this and gladly complied, escorting him under arms to the