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  DIO'S ROME



  AN HISTORICAL NARRATIVE ORIGINALLY COMPOSED IN GREEK DURING THE REIGNS OF
  SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, GETA AND CARACALLA, MACRINUS, ELAGABALUS AND ALEXANDER
  SEVERUS:



  AND


  NOW PRESENTED IN ENGLISH FORM


  BY

  HERBERT BALDWIN FOSTER, A.B. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins), Acting
  Professor of Greek in Lehigh University



  THIRD VOLUME _Extant Books 45-51 (B.C. 44-29)_.


  1906




  VOLUME CONTENTS

Book Forty-five

Book Forty-six

Book Forty-seven

Book Forty-eight

Book Forty-nine

Book Fifty

Book Fifty-one




DIO'S ROMAN HISTORY

45

VOL. 3.--1

The following is contained in the Forty-fifth of Dio's Rome:

About Gaius Octavius, who afterward was named Augustus (chapters 1-9).

About Sextus, the son of Pompey (chapter 10).

How Caesar and Antony entered upon a period of hostility (chapters 11-17).

How Cicero delivered a public harangue against Antony (chapters 18-47).

Duration of time, the remainder of the year of the 5th dictatorship of C.
Iulius Caesar with M. Aemilius Lepidus, Master of the Horse, and of his 5th
consulship with Marcus Antonius. (B.C. 44 = a. u. 710.)[1]


(_BOOK 45, BOSSEVAIN_.)

[B.C. 44 (_a. u_.710)]

[-1-] This was Antony's course of procedure.--Gaius Octavius Copia,--this
was the name of the son of Caesar's niece, Attia,--came from Velitrae in
the Volscian country, and having been left without a protector by the
death of his father Octavius he was brought up in the house of his mother
and her husband, Lucius Philippus, but on attaining maturity spent his
time with Caesar. The latter, who was childless, based great hopes upon
him and was devoted to him, intending to leave him as successor to his
name, authority, and supremacy. He was influenced largely by Attia's
explicit affirmation that the youth had been engendered by Apollo. While
sleeping once in his temple, she said, she thought she had intercourse
with a serpent, and through this circumstance at the end of the allotted
time bore a son. Before he came to the light of day she saw in a dream
her womb lifted to the heavens and spreading out over all the earth; and
the same night Octavius thought the sun rose from her vagina. Hardly
had the child been born when Nigidius Figulus, a senator, straightway
prophesied for him sole command of the realm. [2]

He could distinguish most accurately of his contemporaries the order of
the firmament and the mutations of the stars, what they accomplished
by separation and what by conjunctions, in their associations and
retirements, and for this reason had incurred the charge of practicing
some kind of forbidden pursuits. He accordingly met on that occasion
Octavius, who was somewhat tardy in reaching the senate on account of the
birth of the child,--there happened to be a meeting of the senate that
day,--and asked him why he was late. On learning the cause he cried out:
"You have begotten a master over us." [3] At that Octavius was alarmed and
wished to destroy the infant, but Nigidius restrained him, saying that
it was impossible for it to suffer any such fate. [-2-] This was the
conversation at that time. While the boy was growing up in the country an
eagle snatched from his hands a loaf of bread,