CHAPTER XII POST-MORTEM The daggers of Brutus, Cassius, and their allies, on the Ides of March, 44 B.C., avenged the republic which they were too late to save. It thus chanced that the details of the new imperial government were in the main arranged not by Julius Cæsar but by his great-nephew, Gaius Octavius Cæsar, who succeeded both to the private fortune and the public office of the usurper. It was, however, only after another period of civil warfare that the new Cæsar came into his possessions. The story of this civil war belongs to the history of the Roman empire rather than to that of the Roman republic, and will be referred to only briefly. Octavius Cæsar was in Illyricum at the time of the assassination of his uncle. Hastening to Rome, he found the city divided into two factions, one led by Brutus and Cassius, composed of those who desired to restore the republic; and the other, the old adherents of Cæsar, under the leadership of Mark Antony. Octavius had perhaps more to fear from the friends of his uncle than from his assassinators, as the latter, while they would have prevented him from assuming the political powers of his uncle, would probably not have opposed his taking possession of the latter's private fortune; while Mark Antony, who had possession of Cæsar's papers and money, was probably intending to seize both the powers and property of Julius Cæsar. Octavius Cæsar, however, was possessed of a fair share both of his uncle's ability and perfidy, and proved himself more than a match for all his enemies, both in open warfare and in secret treachery. At first Octavius seemed inclined to enter into an alliance with Cicero and some of the other senators against Antony, but finding that Cicero sought to restore the republic and could not be used as his tool, Octavius reached an agreement with Antony, and the two, together with Lepidus, formed the second triumvirate. The immediate result of this coalition was another proscription, recalling the days of Sulla; the condemnation of all the assassinators of Cæsar by the Senate; and extensive military preparations to overthrow the armies which they had collected. The ancient historian Appian of Alexandria thus describes the terrors of the proscriptions: