Pompey himself may seem to have had his share in the revenge of his former enemy, who fell at his feet, and breathed out his soul through the multitude of his wounds; for they say he received three-and-twenty.’ The assassination of Cæsar has justly been pronounced ‘the most stupid action that ever the Romans committed.’ The later ages of the republic had been one continued scene of violence and anarchy; and not until Cæsar had risen to the chief power in the state was there a restoration of order and efficient government. His assassination plunged the Roman dominions into new and complicated civil wars. On the one side were the conspirators with Brutus and Cassius at their head, bent on the futile project of throwing back the Empire into the condition of a republic. On the other were Mark Antony, an able and valiant officer of Cæsar’s; Lepidus, another officer of less distinguished abilities; and Marcus Octavius, a young man of eighteen, Cæsar’s grandnephew, and who, as his uncle’s heir, now assumed the name of Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus. These three united themselves into a triumvirate (November B. C. 44) for avenging Cæsar’s death, and settling the affairs of the republic. After making themselves masters of Italy, and putting to death by wholesale proscription all those citizens whose views they suspected, among others the great and amiable Cicero, they pursued the conspirators into Greece. At length, in the autumn of B. C. 42, two great battles were fought at Philippi in Macedonia between the republican forces and those of the triumvirate. The former were defeated; Cassius caused himself to be slain, Brutus committed suicide, and the triumvirs thus remained masters of the Roman world. They divided it among them: Antony assuming the government of the East, Lepidus obtaining Africa, and Octavianus returning to Italy, master of the countries adjacent to that peninsula. Each continued to govern his share for some time independently; but a quarrel ensuing between Octavianus and Lepidus, the latter was deprived of his power, and obliged to retire into private life. The Empire was now divided between Antony and Octavianus, the former master of the East, the latter of the West. At length, however, political and private reasons led to a rupture between the two potentates (B. C. 33). The rash and pleasure-loving Antony, who had been caught in the toils of Cleopatra, the licentious queen of Egypt, and therefore one of his subject sovereigns as master of the East, was no match for the cunning, abstemious, and remorseless Octavianus. Defeated at the battle of Actium (2d September B. C. 31), he fled with Cleopatra to Egypt, where, being hard pressed by Octavianus, they both died by their own hands. Octavianus thus remained sole master (B. C. 30) of the great Empire which Julius Cæsar had prepared for him; and under the new name of Augustus, he continued to wield the sovereignty during the long period of forty-four years (B. C. 30-A. D. 14).