Extreme measures were, however, not agreeable to Epicureans, who in
general had nothing but condemnation for civil war. However, Octavian's
strong stand could only have pleased them: Caesar's grand-nephew and heir
would naturally be to them a sympathetic figure.
A fragment of Philodemus, recently deciphered,[1] reveals the teacher
adopting in his lectures the very point of view which we have already
found in Piso. The fragment is brief and mutilated, but so much is clear:
Philodemus criticizes the party of Cicero for carrying the attack upon
Antony to such extremes that through fear of the liberators a reaction
in favor of Antony might set in. We find this position reflected even in
Vergil. He never speaks harshly of the liberators, to be sure; in
fact his indirect reference to Brutus in the _Aeneid_ is remarkably
sympathetic for an Augustan poet, but we have two epigrams of his
attacking partizans of Antony in terms that remind us of passages in
Cicero's _Philippics_. It would almost appear that Vergil now drew his
themes for lampoons from Cicero's unforgettable phrases,[2] as Catullus
had done some fifteen years before. How thoroughly Vergil disliked Antony
may be seen in the familiar line in the _Aeneid_ which Servius recognized
as an allusion to that usurper (_Aen_.
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