On one occasion he directed that a present of three thousand pounds should be given to a friend. His steward, aghast at the magnitude of the sum, thought to bring it home to his master's mind by putting the actual coin on a table. "What is this?" said Antony, as he happened to pass by. "The money you bade me pay over," was the man's reply. "Why, I had thought it would be ten times as much as this. This is but a trifle. Add to it as much more." When the civil war broke out, Antony joined the party of Caesar, who, knowing his popularity with the troops, made him his second in command. He did good service at Pharsalia, and while his chief went on to Egypt, returned to Rome as his representative. There were afterwards differences between the two; Caesar was offended at the open scandal of Antony's manners and found him a troublesome adherent; Antony conceived himself to be insufficiently rewarded for his services, especially when he was called upon to pay for Pompey's confiscated property, which he had bought. Their close alliance, however, had been renewed before Caesar's death. That event made him the first man in Rome. The chief instrument of his power was a strange one; the Senate, seeing that the people of Rome gloved and admired the dead man, passed a resolution that all the wishes which Caesar had left in writing should have the force of law--and Antony had the custody of his papers. People laughed, and called the documents "Letters from the Styx." There was the gravest suspicion that many of them were forged. But for a time they were a very powerful machinery for effecting his purpose. Then came a check. Caesar's nephew and heir, Octavius, arrived at Rome. Born in the year of Cicero's consulship, he was little more than nineteen; but in prudence, statecraft, and knowledge of the world he was fully grown. In his twelfth year he had delivered the funeral oration over his grandmother Julia. After winning some distinction as a soldier in Spain, he had returned at his uncle's bidding to Apollonia, a town of the eastern coast of the Adriatic, where he studied letters and philosophy under Greek teachers. Here he had received the title of "Master of the Horse," an honor which gave him the rank next to the Dictator himself. He came to Rome with the purpose, as he declared, of claiming his inheritance and avenging his uncle's death. But he knew how to abide his time. He kept on terms with Antony, who had usurped his position and appropriated his inheritance, and he was friendly, if not with the actual murderers of Caesar, yet certainly with Cicero, who made no secret of having approved their deed.