The eleventh Philippic was occasioned by the news which had arrived in Rome of the death of Trebonius. Trebonius had been surprised in Smyrna by a stratagem as to which alone no disgrace would have fallen on Dolabella, had he not followed up his success by killing Trebonius. How far the bloody cruelty, of which we have the account in Cicero's words, was in truth executed, it is now impossible to say. The Greek historian Appian gives us none of these horrors, but simply intimates that Trebonius, having been taken in the snare, had his head cut off.[215] That Cicero believed the story is probable. It is told against his son-in-law, of whom he had hitherto spoken favorably. He would not have spoken against the man except on conviction. Dolabella was immediately declared an enemy to the Republic. Cicero inveighs against him with all his force, and says that such as Dolabella is, he had been made by the cruelty of Antony. But he goes on to philosophize, and declare how much more miserable than Trebonius was Dolabella himself, who is so base that from his childhood those things had been a delight to him which have been held as disgraceful by other children. Then he turns to the question which is in dispute, whether Brutus should be left in command of Macedonia, and Cassius of Syria--Cassius was now on his way to avenge the death of Trebonius--or whether other noble Romans, Publius Servilius, for instance, or that Hirtius and Pansa, the two Consuls, when they can be spared from Italy, shall be sent there. It is necessary here to read between the lines. The going of the Consuls would mean the withdrawing of the troops from Italy, and would leave Rome open to the Cæsarean faction. At present Decimus and Cicero, and whoever else there might be loyal to the Republic, had to fight by the assistance of other forces than their own. Hirtius and Pansa were constrained to take the part of the Republic by Cicero's eloquence, and by the action of those Senators who felt themselves compelled to obey Cicero. But they did not object to send the Consuls away, and the Consular legions, under the plea of saving the provinces. This they were willing enough to do--with the real object of delivering Italy over to those who were Cicero's enemies but were not theirs. All this Cicero understood, and, in conducting the contest, had to be on his guard, not only against the soldiers of Antony but against the Senators also, who were supposed to be his own friends, but whose hearts were intent on having back some Cæsar to preserve for them their privileges.