ABSTRACT
The diverse sources present impossible choices for the historian at every turn. Whatever the mitigation to be allowed him, or the blame to be attached to his antagonists, Octavian, participant in the Perusine war as well as the campaign of Philippi and the proscriptions, must bear the greatest responsibility and be credited with systematic and rational efforts to realise his ambitions. Their intensity can be measured by considering the dangers of the course he embarked on. On 10 November 44, Octavian appeared in Rome in the absence of the consul Mark Antony. The marriage followed Octavians divorce of Scribonia, whose intolerable wilfulness was the reason offered in the Autobiography, but Octavian was loosening his ties with Pompeius and bringing himself closer to Antony. Nevetheless, when it came in the last four years of the decade to the war of words with Antony, Octavian reproached him for the execution of the son of the great Pompey.
