Our friend Oppius is more modest; he laments for Cæsar as much as the other, but says not a word that can offend the loyalists." "Can I," writes Matius[1] himself a little later, "can I, who wished the lives of all to be spared, fail to be indignant, when that man is slain from whom I gained the fulfilment of my wish? . . . What right have they to be angry with me, if my desire is that they shall repent what they have done? I wish that Cæsar's death should be a bitter thing to everyone." Cicero had good reason to observe,[2] "You see our bald friend has no mind for peace; in other words, no mind for Brutus." Of Balbus he writes[3] much in the same tone. "Heavens! how clear it was that he disliked the idea of peace; and you know the man, how circumspect he is." Hirtius, too, as late as the 11th of May, appears of the same mind:[4] "These fellows make no secret of their intentions; my pupil for instance, who is to dine with me to-day, dearly loves him whom Brutus pierced. If you ask what they are after, I see clearly enough that they do not wish for peace: the burden of their discourse is, that a great man has been murdered, that by his fall the whole commonwealth has been thrown into confusion; that all his Acts will be set aside so soon as the pressure of fear is removed from us: that his clemency ruined him; if it had not been for that, nothing of the kind could have happened to him."
