colony, under the name of Augusta Perusia, as it is still called on solemn occasions. From the year of the Perusian war (712), dates Virgil’s fourth eclogue, which is in praise of Asinius Pollio under whose protection he then was, probably at Mantua: Asinius was, at that time, all but an enemy to Octavian, and very near taking up arms against him. Now that all was over, Antony, who had concentrated his troops in Greece, went across to Brundusium; and there, by the mediation of Mæcenas and Cocceius, a peace was concluded between him and Octavian, by which the civil war was put off for nine years. To this period belongs Horace’s journey to Brundusium. (The greatest part of his poems were written in his early youth, or at least before the battle of Actium: his most poetical time was about his thirtieth year.) As a bond of peace, it was agreed that Antony should marry Octavia, the widow of C. Marcellus, and half sister of Octavian,—not indeed by Atia, and therefore not of the Julian house, but by the same father. In the midst of a most corrupt age, and in a bad family, she was a noble-minded woman,—a sad example of the hard fate to which persons of the highest rank may be subjected. She was an exemplary wife: in her behaviour to C. Marcellus, she was spotless; and such she was also to Antony, who neglected her in the most shameful way. An excellent mother she also was; but she had the misfortune of losing her dearest son, the hope of the Roman people: of her children by Antony, the Antonia who was afterwards married to Drusus, the son of Livia, seems alone to have been worthy of her. Antony got the empire of the east as far as the Ionian Sea,—the self-same division which was projected under Severus, nearly settled under Diocletian, and at last established under the sons of Theodosius; the west was given to Octavian; but Lepidus was to have Africa, and doubtless Sicily also and the islands between those countries.