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 old his father, on his way to his province, carried out successfully an order of the Senate to destroy a band of brigands near Thurii, survivors, it is said, of the followers of Spartacus and Catiline. In memory of this success his parents gave the boy the cognomen Thurinus. He never seems to have used the name, though Suetonius says that he once possessed a bust of the child with this name inscribed on it in letters that had become almost illegible. He presented it to Hadrian, who placed it in his private sacrarium.

About 57 or 56 his mother Atia re-married. Her husband was L. Marcius Philippus (prætor B.C. 60, governor of Syria B.C. 59-7, Consul B.C. 56); and when in his ninth year Octavius lost his foster-mother he became a regular member of his stepfather's household. Philippus was not a man of much force, but he belonged to the highest society, and though opposed to Cæsar in politics, appears to have managed to keep on good terms with him. But during his great-nephew's boyhood Cæsar was little at Rome. Prætor in B.C. 62, he had gone the following year to Spain. He returned in B.C. 60 to stand for the consulship, and soon