When Octavian made overtures to Cicero and called him his “father,” he was in earnest, and acted according to his own inclinations, but he took a false step from which he was forced to recede; he quickly learned that he commanded sympathy as the avenger of his father’s murderer, that on those terms he was the darling of the fierce legionaries; he also learned that the Constitutional Party, to whom his temperament inclined him, regarded him as a necessary evil, and that his “father” proposed to use him and then remove him; after the publication of the Second Philippic, in which Cæsar was denounced no less savagely than Antonius, Octavian could no longer keep on terms of friendship with Cicero; he would have been treated as a renegade by his own soldiers; he had not even the alternative of retiring into private life; he was too dangerous to both parties alike; had he rejected the devotion of the legions, the daggers of the Constitutionalists or of the emissaries of Antonius would have struck him down; nominally a leader, he was really a hunted beast. The soldiers forced him into alliance with Antonius, the soldiers forced him to marry the daughter of the tigress Fulvia, the combination of ferocity drove him to his share in the proscription. To Antonius the proscription was a means of filling his ever leaky purse; to Fulvia, the sister of Clodius, it was a vengeance, she had an old score to settle with Cicero, to the soldiers it was the merited punishment of the murderers of Cæsar; Octavian could not hold back; he, however, did the best thing that was permitted by the circumstances, as soon as Antonius departed for the East he let the pursuit of the proscribed lapse; he broke with Fulvia and sent back her daughter; he proved singularly placable to those who wished to make terms with him. At this period Octavian can hardly have designed the universal dominion to which he afterwards succeeded; it was enough to enjoy comparative security in Italy, and to be recognized as the chief agent in restoring safety to the peninsula; none of his military operations were aggressive, and he preferred diplomacy to war; he was content to let Antonius carry off the richest part of the Empire; he was content to make terms with Sextus Pompeius, and allow him to take his share of the provinces, provided the commercial interests of Rome were respected, and the corn ships allowed to find their way into the harbour. He required time to deal with the most difficult of tasks, the reabsorption of Cæsar’s veterans in the civilian population; in order that Octavian might be personally safe, it was necessary gradually to break up the army which had dictated to him, and replace it by one of which he would be master.