Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/340

 332 MARCUS BRUTUS. was under a compulsion, and sent orders to Hortensius that he should kill Caius Antonius in revenge of the death of Cicero his friend, and Brutus* his kinsman, who also was proscribed and slain. Upon this account it was that Antony, having afterwards taken Hortensius in the battle of Philippi, slew him upon his brother's tomb. But Brutus exjaresses himself as more ashamed for the cause of Cicero's death than grieved for the misfortune of it, and says he cannot help accusing his friends at Rome, that they were slaves more through their own doing than that of those who now were their tyrants; they could be present and see and yet Buffer those things which even to hear related ought to them to have been insufferable. Having made his army, that was already very con- siderable, pass into Asia, he ordei'ed a fleet to be pre- pared in Bithynia and about Cyzicus.' But going himself through the country by land, he made it his business to settle and confirm all the cities, and gave audience to the jsrinces of the parts through which he passed. And he sent orders into Syria to Cassius to come to him, and leave his intended journey into Egypt; letting him understand, that it was not to gain an empire for them- selves, but to free their country, that they went thus wandering about and had got an army together whose business it was to destroy the tyrants ; that therefore, if they remembered and resolved to persevere in their first purpose, they ought not to be too far from Italy, but make what haste they could thither, and endeavor to I'elieve their feUow-citizens from oppression. Cassius obeyed his summons, and returned, and Bru- tus went to meet him ; and at Smyrna they met, which • Decimus Brutus Albinus, who had been put to death by Antony's orders in Cisalpine Gaul.