Note 84 — Chapter III · THE INHERITANCE

Cicero, in 2 Phil. § 93, seems to assume that Antony had taken the money all at once. But from Cicero’s own letters it would seem that the process of despoiling the temple of Ops was a gradual one, and that the use made of the money by Antony was more or less a matter of conjecture. On the 27th of April he writes: “You mention plundering going on at the temple of Ops. I, too, was a witness to that at the time” (ad Att. xiv. 14). On the 7th of May he says that Dolabella had a great share of it (ad Att. xiv. 18). In November he says that his nephew Quintus knew all about it, and meant to reveal it to the public (ad Att. xvi. 14). Appian (b. c. iii. 20) makes Antony say to Octavian: “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—except Dolabella and my brothers—divided up the whole of it as the property of a tyrant.”