The era may be variously computed, from the winning of sole power by the last of the dynasts through the War of Actium, from the ostensible restoration of the Republic in 27 B.C., or from the new act of settlement four years later, which was final and permanent. […] To take it all for granted, however, and make a clean beginning after Actium or in 27 B.C. is an offence against the nature of history and is the prime cause of many pertinacious delusions about the Principate of Augustus. […] Brutus and Cassius lie damned to this day by the futility of their noble deed and by the failure of their armies at Philippi; and the memory of Antonius is overwhelmed by the oratory of Cicero, by fraud and fiction, and by the catastrophe at Actium. […] It is much to be regretted that he did not carry his History of the Civil Wars through the period of the Triumvirate to the War of Actium and the Principate of Augustus: the work appears to have ended when the Republic went down at Philippi. […] To gain a fair estimate of the acts and intentions of Antonius in the year of his consulate, it will be necessary to forget both the Philippics and the War of Actium.