Antonius left Rome about the end of September, in order to engage in his service four legions of Caesar's, which were on their return from Macedonia. But when they arrived at Brundusium three of them refused to follow him, on which he murdered all their centurions, to the number of three hundred, who were all put to death in his lodgings, in the sight of himself and Fulvia his wife, and then returned to Rome with the one legion which he had prevailed on; while the other three legions declared as yet for neither party. On his arrival in Rome he published many very violent edicts, and summoned the senate to meet on the twenty-fourth of October; then he adjourned it to the twenty-eighth; and a day or two before it met, he heard that two out of the three legions had declared for Octavius, and encamped at Alba. And this news alarmed him so much, that he abandoned his intention of proposing to the senate a decree to declare Octavius a public enemy, and after distributing some provinces among his friends, he put on his military robes, and left the city to take possession of Cisalpine Gaul, which had been assigned to him by a pretended law of the people, against the will of the senate. On the news of his departure Cicero returned to Rome, where he arrived on the ninth of December. He immediately conferred with Pansa, one of the consuls elect, (Hirtius his colleague was ill,) as to the measures to be taken. He was again addressed with earnest solicitations by the friends of Octavius, who, to confirm his belief in his good intentions, allowed Casca, who had been one of the slayers of Caesar, and had himself given him the first blow, to enter on his office as tribune of the people on the tenth of December. The new tribunes convoked the senate for the nineteenth, on which occasion Cicero had intended to be absent, but receiving the day before the edict of Decimus Brutus, by which he forbade Antonius to enter his province (immediately after the death of Caesar he had taken possession of Cisalpine Gaul, which had been conferred on him by Caesar), and declared that he would defend it against him by force and preserve it in its duty to the senate, he thought it necessary to procure for Brutus a resolution of the senate in his favour. He went down therefore very early, and, in a very full house, delivered the following speech.