When, after the fall of Brutus and Cassius, there remained none to fight for the commonwealth; when Sextus Pompeius was utterly defeated at Sicily; and Lepidus being deprived of his command, and Mark Antony slain, there remained no leader even to the Julian party but Octavius; having put off the name of triumvir, styling himself Consul, and pretending that all he aimed at was the jurisdiction attached to the tribuneship for the protection of the commons; when he had cajoled the soldiery by donations, the people by distribution of corn, and men in general by the charms of peace, he (Octavius) began by gradations to exalt himself over them; to draw to himself the functions of the senate and of the magistrate, and the framing of the laws; in which he was thwarted by no man: the boldest spirits having fallen in some or other of the regular battles, or by proscription; and the surviving nobility being distinguished by wealth and public honors, according to the measure of their promptness to bondage; and as these innovations had been the cause of aggrandizement to them, preferring the present state of things with safety to the revival of ancient liberty with personal peril. Neither were the provinces averse to that condition of affairs; since they mistrusted the government of the senate and people, on account of the contentions among the great and the avarice of the magistrates: while the protection of the laws was enfeebled and borne down by violence, intrigue, and bribery. Moreover, Augustus, as supports to his domination, raised his sister's son, Claudius Marcellus,[103] a mere youth, to the dignity of pontiff and curule aedile; aggrandized by two successive consulships Marcus Agrippa,[104] a man meanly born, but an accomplished soldier, and the companion of his victories; and soon, on the death of Marcellus, chose him for his son-in-law. The sons of his wife, Tiberius Nero and Claudius Drusus, he dignified with the title of Imperator, tho there had been no diminution in the members of his house. For into the family of the Caesars he had already adopted Lucius and Caius, the sons of Agrippa; and tho they had not yet laid aside the puerile garment, vehement had been his ambition to see them declared princes of the Roman youth, and even designed to the consulship; while he affected to decline the honors for them. Upon the decease of Agrippa, they were cut off, either by a death premature but natural, or by the arts of their stepmother Livia; Lucius on his journey to the armies in Spain, Caius on his return from Armenia, ill of a wound: and as Drusus had been long since dead, Tiberius Nero was the only survivor of his stepsons. On him every honor was accumulated (to that quarter all things inclined); he was by Augustus adopted for his son, assumed colleague in the empire, partner in the tribunitian authority, and presented to the several armies; not from the secret machinations of