Antony was offended by the words because they were wanting in the respect due to him.He replied:"the Roman people never surrendered the government to anybody to dispose of in succession,not even when they had kings.I release you from any indebtedness to me in the way of gratitude for those acts. They were performed not for your sake, but for the people's, except in one particular, which was of the greatest importance to Caesar and to yourself.For if, to secure my own safety and to shield myself from enmity,I had allowed honors to be voted to the murderers as tyrannicides, Caesar would have been declared a tyrant, to whom neither glory,nor any kind of honor, nor confirmation of his acts would have been possible;
who could make no valid will, have no son, no property, nor any burial of his body, even as a private citizen. The laws provide that the bodies of tyrants shall be cast out unburied.I willingly chose to incur these dangers rather than allow Caesar to remain unburied— the most valiant man of his time, the most fortunate in every respect, and the one to whom the highest honours were due from me. It is by reason of the dangers I incurred that you enjoy your present distinction as the successor of Caesar.It would have been more becoming in you to testify your gratitude to me for these things than to reproach me for concessions made to soothe the Senate, or in compensation for what I needed from it,
or in pursuance of other needs or reasons — you a younger man addressing an older one."The bulk of the nobiles, both ex-Pompeians and adherents of Caesar, banished from Italy, were with Pompeius. With Pompeius they found a refuge, with Brutus and Cassius a party and a cause, armies of legions and the hope of vengeance. When a civil war seemed only a contest of factions in the nobility, many young men of spirit and distinction chose Caesar in preference to Pompeius; but they would not tolerate Caesar's ostensible political heirs and the declared enemies of their own class. The older men were dead, dishonored or torpid: the young nobiles went in a body to the camp, eagerly or with the energy of despair.