(The Vengeance of Fulvia, 1888, by Francisco Maura y Montaner (1857-1931). And it was for the sake of these that, once the Second Triumvirate had come to power, Antony was able to obtain Cicero’s proscription and assassination, much against the inclinations of Octavian. This name comes from a comparison, made by Cicero himself, between them and the equally brutal orations of his Greek counterpart Demosthenes against the conqueror of Greece, Philip of Macedon. It was after this battle that Cicero delivered the last of his fourteen orations against Antony known as the Philippics. (It was he who recovered Hirtius’ body from the battlefield.) By late fall, he would join with Antony in the political alliance known as the Second Triumvirate, thus ending the military opposition to Antony, and not long after, de facto bringing the Republic to its end. The command was then given to Caesar’s heir Octavian, who fought on the Senate’s side. But Hirtius himself was killed in the fighting, and with Pansa’s death, the armies of the Senate were left leaderless. Seven days later, Hirtius attacked him at Modena, and defeated him, at which Antony was forced to lift the siege of the city and fly west. However, Antony’s fortunes would soon take a turn for the better. But as Antony and his troops were returning to their camp outside Modena, worn out by the fierce fighting at Forum Gallorum, they were attacked by the other consul, Aulus Hirtius, and very badly defeated. (The precise location of this town on the Via Aemilia in northern Italy is unknown it was somewhere between Bologna and Modena, closer to the latter.) In the first confrontation, Antony defeated the armies of the Senate under the command of the consul Gaius Pansa, who was wounded and died of his injuries several days later. Today marks the anniversary of the Battle of Forum Gallorum in 43 BC, a turning point in the civil war that broke out in the Roman Republic between the Senate and Marc Antony after Julius Caesar’s assassination.
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