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[21] As the other conditions were not carried into effect, or were delayed, Lucius departed to Præneste, saying that he was in fear of Octavius, who, by virtue of his office, had a guard, while he (Lucius) was unprotected. Fulvia went there to meet Lucius, saying now that she had fears for her children on account of Lepidus. She used him for a pretext this time instead of Octavius. Both of them wrote these things to Antony, and friends were sent to him with the letters, who were to give him particulars about each complaint. Although I have searched, I have not been able to find any clear account of what Antony wrote in reply. The officers of the armies bound themselves by an oath to act as umpires again between their magistrates, to decide what was right, and to coerce whichever should refuse to obey the decision; and they summoned Lucius and his friends to attend for this purpose. These refused to come, and Octavius reproached them in invidious terms to the officers of the army and in the presence of the optimates of Rome. The latter hastened to Lucius and implored him to have pity on the city and on Italy, torn by the civil wars, and to accept the arbitration of themselves, or of the officers, whatever the decision might be.1

1 According to Dion Cassius (xlviii. 4-10), Fulvia was the life and soul of this uprising. "She girded herself with a sword, gave the watchwords to the soldiers, and often harangued them." Velleius (ii. 74) says: " Lucius Antonius, a partaker of his brother's vices, but destitute of the virtues that the latter sometimes showed, by accusing Octavius before the veterans, and by calling to arms those who had lost their fields in the prescribed distribution of the lands and the naming of the colonies, had collected a large army. On the other hand Fulvia, the wife of Antony, who was a woman in nothing but her form, took part in the contest, and threw everything into armed strife and tumult. She had first fixed the seat of war at Præneste." Plutarch says that when Antony had left Alexandria to make an expedition against the Parthians, and had gone as far as Phœnicia, he received dolorous letters from Fulvia, which caused him to turn about and set sail for Italy with two hundred ships. "While making the voyage he learned from friends who were fleeing that Fulvia had been the cause of the war, being by nature restless and headstrong, and hoping to tear Antony away from Cleopatra by stirring up commotion in Italy." (Life of Antony, 30.)

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