Greece -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
X. These things appear also to have increased the disorder and to have
given the soldiers licence to commit shameful violence and robbery.
Wherefore, when Cæsar returned, he pardoned Dolabella; and being elected
consul for the third time he chose not Antonius, but Lepidus for his
colleague. Antonius bought the house of Pompeius when it was sold, but
he was vexed when he was asked for the money; and he says himself that
this was the reason why he did not join Cæsar in his Libyan expedition,
having had no reward for his former successes. However Cæsar is
considered to have cured him of the chief part of his folly and
extravagance by not allowing his excesses to pass unnoticed. For he gave
up that course of life and turned his thoughts to wedlock, taking for
his wife Fulvia, who had been the wife of the demagogue Clodius, a woman
who troubled herself not about domestic industry or housekeeping, nor
one who aspired to rule a private man, but her wish was to rule a ruler
and command a general: so that Cleopatra was indebted to Fulvia[346] for
training Antonius to woman-rule, inasmuch as Cleopatra received him
quite tamed and disciplined from the commencement to obey women. However
Antonius attempted by sportive ways and youthful sallies to make Fulvia
somewhat merrier; as for example, on the occasion when many went to meet
Cæsar after his victory in Iberia, Antonius also went; but as a report
suddenly reached Italy that Cæsar was dead and the enemy were advancing,
he returned to Rome, and taking a slave's dress he came to the house by
night, and saying that he brought a letter from Antonius to Fulvia, he
was introduced to her wrapped up in his dress. Fulvia, who was in a
state of anxiety, asked, before she took the letter, whether Antonius
was alive; but without speaking a word he held out the letter to her,
and when she was beginning to open and read it, he embraced and kissed
her. These few out of many things I have produced by way of instance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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