This was but the beginning of blood-shedding, for when the triumvirs reached Rome they issued list after list of the doomed, some names being apparently included at the request of daughters, wives, and friends to gratify private malice. The head and hands of Cicero were cut off and sent to be affixed to the rostra, where they had so often been seen during his life. It is said that on one occasion a head was presented to Antony, and he exclaimed: "I do not recognize it, show it to my wife"; and that on another, when a man begged a few moments of respite that he might send his son to intercede with Antony, he was told that it was that son who had demanded his death. The details are too horrible for record, and yet it is said that the massacre was not so general as in the former instance. In this reign of terror, three hundred senators died, and two thousand knights. While these events had occurred in Rome, Brutus and Cassius had been successfully pursuing their conquests in Syria and Greece, and were now masters of the eastern portion of the Roman world. When they heard of the triumvirate and the proscription, they determined to march into Europe; but Antony and Octavius were before them, and the opposed forces met on the field of Philippi, which lies nine miles from the Ægean Sea, on the road between Europe and Asia, the Via Egnatia, which ran then as now from Dyrrachium and Apollonia in Illyricum, by way of Thessalonica to Constantinople, or Byzantium, as it was then called. Brutus engaged the forces of Octavius, and Cassius those of Antony. Antony made head against his opponent; but Octavius, who was less of a commander, and fell into a fit of illness on the beginning of the battle, gave way before Brutus, though in consequence of misinformation of the progress of the struggle, Cassius killed himself just before a messenger arrived to tell him of his associate's success. Twenty days afterwards the struggle was renewed on the same ground, and Brutus was defeated, upon which he likewise put an end to his own life. If the murderers of Cæsar had fought for the republic, there was no hope for that cause now. The three rulers were reduced to two, for Lepidus was ignored after the victory of his associates, and it only remained to eliminate the second member of the triumvirate to establish the monarchy. For the present, Octavius and Antony divided the government between them, Antony taking the luxurious East, and leaving to Octavius the invidious task of governing Italy and allotting lands to the veterans.