Greece -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
IX. However Dolabella,[343] who was then a tribune, a young man who
aimed at change, introduced a measure for the annulling of debts, and
he persuaded Antonius,[344] who was a friend of his and always wished to
please the many, to work with him and to take a part in this political
measure. But Asinius and Trebellius gave him the contrary advice, and it
happened that a strong suspicion came on Antonius, that he was wronged
in the matter of his wife by Dolabella. And as he was much annoyed
thereat, he not only drove his wife from his house, who was his cousin,
for she was the daughter of Caius Antonius who was consul with Cicero,
but he joined Asinius and resisted Dolabella. Dolabella occupied the
Forum with the design of carrying the law by force, but Antonius, after
the Senate had declared by a vote that it was needful to oppose
Dolabella with arms, came upon him and joining battle killed some of the
men of Dolabella and lost some of his own. This brought on Antonius the
hatred of the many, and he was not liked by the honest and sober on
account of his habits of life, as Cicero says, but was detested; for
people were disgusted at his drunkenness at unseasonable hours, and his
heavy expenditure, and his intercourse with women, and his sleeping by
day, and walking about with head confused and loaded with drink, and by
night his revellings and theatres and his presence at the nuptials of
mimi and jesters. It is said indeed that after being present at the
entertainment on the marriage of Hippias the mime, and drinking all
night, when the people summoned him early in the morning to the Forum,
he came there still full of food and vomited, and one of his friends
placed his vest under to serve him. Sergius the mime was one of those
who had the greatest influence over him, and Cytheris[345] from the same
school, a woman whom he loved, and whom when he visited the cities he
took round with him in a litter; and there were as many attendants to
follow the litter as that of his mother. People were also vexed at the
sight of golden cups carried about in his excursions as in processions,
and fixing of tents in the ways, and the laying out of costly feasts
near groves and rivers, and lions yoked to chariots, and houses of
orderly men and women used as quarters for prostitutes and lute-players.
For it was considered past all endurance that, while Cæsar was lodging
in the open field out of Italy, clearing up the remnant of war with
great labour and danger, others, through means of Cæsar's power, were
indulging in luxury and insulting the citizens.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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