In 42 BC, he commanded the fleet of Octavian against Sextus Pompeius, who had taken control of Sicily and was harassing the coasts of Italy.
Salvidienus captured and destroyed the city of Sentinum and then, with Agrippa, surrounded Lucius Antonius's forces in Perusia.
The other Antonian generals, who had no clear orders from Mark Antony, remained out of the struggle, and Lucius Antonius was forced to surrender after a few months' siege (winter of 40 BC).
Antony revealed to Octavian the treachery of Salvidienus, who was accused of high treason in the Senate and condemned to death in the fall of 40 BC.
[3] 16th-century French scholar Denis Lambin proposed that the figure of Nasidienus Rufus ("big red nose") in the poetry of Roman writer Horace is a "thinly veiled" parody of Salvidienus.