9. This Benevolence of this Dictator Did Not Extend to His Enemies
A generation after the dictator Sulla’s proscriptions at the head of the patrician Optimates devastated the Populares faction, the pendulum swung when Octavius and Mark Antony, now leading the Populares, went after the Optimates. In even bloodier and more thorough prescriptions than those of Sulla against the Populares, the duo launched a massive purge that executed thousands of Rome’s conservative Optimates. They also killed other suspected opponents, including Cicero, who had tried to follow a centrist path only to end up offending both sides.
Having slaughtered the conservative faction and broken its back for good, Octavius and Mark Antony next went to war against Julius Caesar’s assassins. They defeated them and exacted revenge for the death of Caesar. In subsequent generations, in the Roman Empire, what remained of the patrician class was gradually killed off, as they were caught up in or were falsely accused of conspiracies against various emperors, until they became virtually extinct.
