Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/180

 172 ANTONY. now employing the mediation of his friends to come to a good understanding with Antony. They both met together with Lepidus in a small island, where the con- ference lasted three days. The empire was soon deter- mined of, it being divided amongst them as if it had been their paternal inheritance. That which gave them all the trouble was to agree who should be put to death, each of them desiring to destroy his enemies and to save his friends. But, in the end, animosity to those they hated carried the day against respect for relations and affection for friends ; and Caesar sacrificed Cicero to Antony, Antony gave up his uncle Lucius Cassar, and Lepidus received permission to murder his brother Paulus, or, as others say, yielded his brother to them. I do not believe any thing ever took place more truly savage or barbarous than this composition, for, in this exchange of blood for blood, they were equally guilty of the lives they surrendei-ed and of those they took ; or, indeed, more guilty in the case of their friends, for whose deaths they had not even the justification of hatred. To com- plete the reconciliation, the soldiery, coming about them, demanded that confirmation should be given to it by some alliance of marriage ; Coesar should marry Clodia, the daughter of Fulvia, wife to Antony. This also being agreed to, three hundred persons Avere put to death by proscription. Antony gave orders to those that were to kill Cicero, to cut off his head and right hand, with which he had written his invectives against him ; and, when they were brought before him, he regarded them jojfully,, actually bursting out more than once into laughter, and, when he had satiated himself with the sight of them, ordered them to be hung up above the sjDcaker's place in the forum, thinking thus to insult the dead, while in fact he only exposed his own wanton arrogance, and his un- worthiness to hold the power that fortune had given him.