abolished for ever by a decree of the senate. Octavius now attached himself to those by whom he hoped to strengthen himself against Antony; and as, of course, he could not league himself with the murderers of Cæsar, he made particular advances to Cicero, whose hands were clean in that affair, and who allowed himself to be entrapped by the deep cunning of the young man: for he deemed it impossible that one so young should be false; and he always tried to see what he wished, to find in Octavius a disposition to consult the good of the commonwealth. Thus arose this connexion.—Octavius carried his point, and Antony had to give up to him the will and the inheritance, that is to say, as much of the latter as was still left; for Antony had already made away with the greatest part of the sums which Cæsar had deposited with him. The ill-feeling between Octavius and Antony now ran very high: each suspected the other, and perhaps with good reason, of trying to murder him. To so great a height had the excitement risen, that Cicero resolved to go away to Athens, until the first of January of the following year, when Hirtius and Pansa were to be consuls: the former of these was a very worthy and able man, and really his friend, whilst Pansa was much less eminent, being only a commonplace soldier. This summer Cicero displayed the greatest intellectual activity. He began the books _de Officiis_; he wrote the ones _De Divinatione_, _De Fato_, _De Gloria_, the _Topica_, and also that huge quantity of letters, many of which are no longer extant. I do not know of any person, who was so intensely laborious as Cicero, was at that time. A common man will under such circumstances be stunned; he only thinks with terror of what is before him: Cicero, on the contrary, was aware of everything that was going on; but instead of letting himself be made the slave of events which he could not check, he turned all his thoughts to the intellectual world. This activity was the recreation which he found in this grief; it shows the wonderful strength of his soul. Contrary winds obliged him to stop at Rhegium.