The events of the next three years are difficult to disentangle; to the actors they must have been perplexing in the extreme. The factor which had been omitted from the calculations of all the leaders was the character of the army, which Cæsar had created. As fast as Cæsar made way in Gaul he enlisted the Gauls in his service; his legions were in the end less Italian than Gallic; to the Gauls the abstraction called the Roman Senate had no more significance than the House of Commons to Sikhs and Gurkhas; they had not got beyond, or not fallen behind, the conceptions of personal fidelity to a chieftain which are developed by the clan system. Not only was it natural to them to transfer their fidelity from the person of a father to that of his son and successor, but such personal ties were their strongest political passion. They would obey Antonius and even Lepidus as Cæsar’s friends and trusted subordinates, but their affection for Cæsar’s heir was of a different character; to avenge their dead commander, to put his son in his rights, were to them matters of the first importance; as for the Roman Constitution and theoretical Republics, they neither cared about them nor understood them. At first Octavian did not grasp the situation; his temperament was legal and formal; his first preoccupation was to assert his legal rights against Antonius, and in order to do this effectively, he had no objection to using such help as might be given him by Cicero and the Constitutional party, who for their part proposed to use against him Antonius and then put him out of the way. The first serious operation in the field showed Octavian his mistake; the Senate sent him with the Consuls to relieve Decimus Brutus, brother of Marcus Brutus, who was being besieged by the Cæsarians under Antonius at Mutina; both Consuls, old Cæsarians, were killed, and the soldiers insisted on bringing Octavian back to Rome and making him Consul; it was not long before they also insisted on a reconciliation between the Cæsarian leaders, compelling Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavian to work together and unite in the task of punishing the enemies of Cæsar. The proscription was partly the work of the army; so far as it was a punishment of the enemies of Cæsar, Octavian was an accomplice, though an unwilling accomplice; Antonius and Lepidus both took advantage of it to satisfy old grudges and make large confiscations. Meanwhile the general disorganization invited any man who found himself in command of troops, or was otherwise favourably circumstanced, to fish in troubled waters; Cicero’s son-in-law Dolabella, the dissolute little gentleman who was “tied to a sword,” was not the only man who saw an opportunity of doing something to his own advantage. Adventures of this kind disturbed the world for a few months, but after Brutus and Cassius had been beaten near Philippi a fairly definite division declared itself; the world was again divided between Cæsarians and Pompeians, and the