[20] "As to your pecuniary needs and your wishing to borrow from the public funds, I should think you must be joking, unless we might believe that you are still ignorant of the fact that the public treasury was left empty by your father. After he assumed the government the public revenues were brought to him instead of to the treasury, and they will presently be found among Cæsar's assets when we vote an investigation into these matters. This will not be unjust to Cæsar now that he is dead, nor would he say that it was unjust if he were living and were asked for the accounts. And as there will be many private persons to dispute with you concerning single pieces of property, you may assume that this portion will not be uncontested. The money transferred to my house was not so large a sum as you conjecture, nor is any part of it in my custody now. The men in power and authority, except Dolabella and my brothers, divided up the whole of it straightway as the property of a tyrant, but were brought around by me to support the decrees in favor of Cæsar,1 and you, if you are wise, when you get possession of the remainder, will distribute it among those who are disaffected toward you rather than among the people. The former, if they are in harmony with you,2 will send the people, who are to be colonized, away to their settlements. The people, however, as you ought to have learned from the Greek studies you have been lately pursuing, are as unstable as the waves of the sea, now advancing, now retreating. In like manner, among us also, the people are forever exalting their favorites, and casting them down again."
1 The truth was that Antony paid his own debts with Cæsar's money. So Cicero tells us in the second Philippic. " Where," he asks, " are the seven hundred million sesterces that were registered at the temple of Ops? His money was indeed a cause for mourning, yet if it was not to be returned to the rightful owners it might relieve us from taxes. But you owed four million sesterces on the Ides of March. How did it happen that you were free from debt on the Kalends of April?" (Phil. ii. 37.)
2 ἂν συμφρονῶσι: to which Schweighäuser adds σοι. All the codices except one read σωφρονῶσι, i.e., " if they are wise." The Teubner edition adheres to the latter reading; the Didot to the former. I have preferred the former because it gives point to Antony's advice. It furnishes a reason why Octavius should use his money in one way rather than in the other. It would enable him to get rid of his expensive allies.
The Civil Wars. Appian. Horace White. London. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. 1899.
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