His pleasures, as he progressed through Greece and Asia, were those that had long been traditional among the Republic’s proconsuls: posing as a lover of Greek culture while leeching the Greeks; patronizing local princelings; fighting the Parthians. To diehard republicans, this was all reassuringly familiar, and gradually, in the months and years that followed Philippi, the shattered remnants of Brutus’s armed forces would gravitate, faute de mieux, toward Antony. With him, in the East, the cause of legitimacy licked its wounds as its lifeblood ebbed away.
