The Annals and the Histories · Ann. 1.10

It was said, on the other hand, "that filial duty and State necessity were merely assumed as a mask. It was really from a lust of sovereignty that he had excited the veterans by bribery, had, when a young man and a subject, raised an army, tampered with the Consul's legions, and feigned an attachment to the faction of Pompeius. Then, when by a decree of the Senate he had usurped the high functions and authority of Prætor, when Hirtius and Pansa were slain--whether they were destroyed by the enemy, or Pansa by poison infused into a wound, Hirtius by his own soldiers and Cæsar's treacherous machinations--he at once possessed himself of both their armies, wrested the consulate from a reluctant Senate, and turned against the State the arms with which he had been intrusted against Antonius. Citizens were proscribed, lands divided, without so much as the approval of those who executed these…

Cornelius Tacitus · trans. Church & Brodribb, 1876
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