The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 05

by Unknown

CHAPTER XXV. THE CLOSING SCENES OF CÆSAR’S LIFE

THE END OF THE AFRICAN WAR

The suicide of Cato was the consistent act of a heathen philosopher, determined at least to maintain the purity of his soul uncontaminated by base compliances. Assuredly the calm dignity of its execution demands our respect and compassion, if not the principle on which it was based. Far different was the manner in which the rude barbarian Juba and the coarse soldier Petreius ran forward to meet their ends. They had escaped together from the field of battle, and the Numidian offered to provide shelter for his companion in one of his own strongholds. The Roman province was so ill-disposed towards the barbarian chief that he was obliged to hide himself by day in the most secluded villages, and roam the country on his homeward flight during the hours of darkness. In this way he reached Zama, his second capital, where his wives and children, together with his most valuable treasures, were deposited. This place he had taken pains to fortify at the commencement of the war, with works of great extent and magnitude. But on his appearance before the walls, the inhabitants deliberately shut their gates against him and refused to admit the enemy of the victorious Roman. Before setting out on his last expedition, Juba had constructed an immense pyre in the centre of the city, declaring his intention, if fortune went ill with him, of heaping upon it everything he held most dear and precious, together with the murdered bodies of the principal citizens, and then taking his own place on the summit, and consuming the whole in one solemn conflagration. But the Numidians had no sympathy with this demonstration of their sovereign’s despair, and resolved not to admit him within their walls. Juba having tried in vain every kind of menace and entreaty, to which no reply was vouchsafed, at last retired, but only to experience a similar reception in every other quarter to which he resorted. He at least had little to hope from the clemency which the victor had extended to his conquered countrymen. His companion, hard as his own iron corslet, scorned to accept it. The fugitives supped together, and, flushed with the fumes of the banquet, challenged each other to mutual slaughter. They were but unequally matched; the old veteran was soon despatched by his more active antagonist, but Juba was constant in his resolution, and only demanded the assistance of an attendant to give himself the last fatal stroke.

Nor was the fate of Considius, of Afranius, and Faustus Sulla less disastrous. The first of these had abandoned the defence of Thysdrus at the approach of the forces which Cæsar despatched against it, and attempted to make his escape with the treasures he had amassed into the territories, until now friendly, of the Numidian chieftains. He was destroyed, for the sake of his hoarded booty, by the Gætulians who accompanied him in his flight. The others had retained the command of a squadron of Scipio’s cavalry, and after burning one town which had shut its gates against them had made a desperate attack on the military post which Cato maintained outside the walls of Utica, to wreak an unworthy vengeance on the Cæsarian partisans there kept in custody. Baffled in this object they had made their way into Utica, while Cato still commanded there, and had added bitterness to his last days by the violence and ferocity of their behaviour. From thence they led their ruffians along the coast in the hope of finding means of transporting them into Spain. But on their way they fell in with Sittius, who was advancing to join Cæsar; their men were routed and themselves taken. The bands of the Roman adventurer carried on war with the same brutality as the barbarians among whom they practised it. The captors quarrelled among themselves; their passions were inflamed, perhaps, in the distribution of the prisoners and the booty; and both Afranius and Faustus were killed in the fray which ensued. But the massacre of the son of the dictator Sulla, accidental as it was, or at least unauthorized, could hardly fail of being charged as a deliberate act upon the representative of Marius.

While his foes were thus flying and falling, Cæsar advanced triumphantly from the scene of his last exploit, receiving the submission of the towns on his way, carrying off the stores and treasure collected for his enemies’ use, and leaving garrisons to retain them in fidelity. As he drew near to Utica he was met by L. Cæsar, whose petition for mercy seems to have been confined to his own person, and to whom, as well as to a long list of distinguished nobles, the conqueror extended the promise of his protection. He lamented with every appearance of sincerity that Cato had robbed him of the pleasure of pardoning one who, of all his antagonists, had been the most obstinate in his opposition, and the most inveterate in his hatred. The fatal compliance of the Utican senators, who, not content with obeying his enemies’ commands, had contributed money to their cause, furnished him with a specious pretence for rifling their coffers of the treasures he now most urgently needed. His requisitions amounted to two hundred millions of sesterces. At the same time the city of Thapsus was mulcted in two millions, and the company of Roman traders in three. Hadrumetum paid down three millions, and its Roman capitalists five. Leptis and Thysdrus also suffered in due proportion. A grand auction was held at Zama for the sale of all the objects of Juba’s royal state, and of the goods of the Roman citizens who had borne arms under the tyrant’s orders. Upon the people who had so boldly defied their sovereign, and refused him admittance within their walls, honours and largesses were munificently showered, and the taxes heretofore demanded for the royal treasury were partially remitted by the collectors of the republic. But the country of Numidia was deprived of its independence, and definitely reduced to the form of a province, under the proconsulate of Sallust. The rewarded and the punished acquiesced equally in the conqueror’s dispositions; the submission of Africa to his authority was from thenceforth complete. The Uticans were allowed to commemorate with a funeral and a statue the humane and noble conduct of their late governor.

THE RETURN TO ROME

Cæsar settled the affairs of Africa with his usual despatch, and sailed from Utica on the fourteenth day of April, 46 B.C. On his way to Italy, he stopped at Caralis, in Sardinia. The aid which the island had afforded to his adversaries furnished him with a decent pretext for extorting from the inhabitants large sums of money. At the end of the same month he again weighed anchor; but the prevalence of easterly winds drove him repeatedly to shore, and he at last reached Rome on the twenty-eighth day after his departure from the Sardinian capital. The reports he received at this time of the revival of the republican cause in Spain did not give him much uneasiness. Cneius had been detained by sickness in the Baleares, and the fugitives from the field of Thapsus had been almost all cut off in their attempts to reach the point to which their last hopes were directed. The legionaries who had mutinied against Cassius Longinus were still either unsatisfied with their treatment under the commander who had superseded him, or fearful of their general’s vengeance when a fitting opportunity should arrive. It was from Cæsar’s own soldiers that the invitation had gone forth to the republican chiefs to renew the struggle on the soil of Spain. The spirit of the old commonwealth still survived in many of the towns of Bætica; promises of support were freely given; but the remnant of the African armament was contemptible both in numbers and ability. Of all the haughty nobles who had thronged the tent of Pompey at Luceria or Thessalonica, not one with a name known to history remained in arms, except Labienus alone. He indeed had succeeded in making his escape from Africa, in company with Varus; but the insurgents had already placed themselves under the command of Scapula and Aponius, officers of their own, nor would they suffer themselves to be transferred from them to any other except the son of the great Pompey. The extent to which the flame of insurrection had spread was probably unknown at this time to Cæsar. He was impatient to reap at last the fruit of so much bloodshed, to assume the post of honour he had won, and to work out the principles and objects of so many years of anticipation. A distant and contemptible outbreak might be subdued without meeting it in person. Accordingly, C. Didius, an officer of no eminent reputation, was sent with a naval and military force to the succour of Trebonius, whom, however, he found already expelled from his government by the growing force of the new movement.

Meanwhile Rome had sunk, during the conqueror’s absence, into a state of torpid tranquillity. The universal conviction that the dictator’s power was irresistible had quelled all further heavings of the spirit of discontent. Dolabella had been gratified with a command in the late campaign; while others, in whose fidelity and military skill he could rely, had been left behind to overawe disaffection. The most illustrious of the nobility having now no occasion to remain at Rome for the sake of paying court to a jealous ruler, had retired generally to their country seats; but Cicero seems to have feared giving occasion for distrust if he withdrew himself from the broad eye of public observation. He occupied himself, however, in his philosophical studies, and could rejoice that he had never, like so many of his contemporaries when plunging into the excitements of political life, abandoned the literary pursuits common to them in youth. While he still regarded the contest in Africa with the sentiments of a true republican, he confessed with a sigh that though the one cause was assuredly the more just, yet the victory of either would be equally disastrous. He probably held aloof from the proceedings of the servile senate, which occupied itself during the months of Cæsar’s absence in devising new honours for his acceptance. First of all it decreed the religious ceremony of a thanksgiving of forty days, being twice the term to which the compliance of popular gratitude had ever previously extended, and it was by the length of the observance that the honour was estimated. Next it appointed that the victor’s triumphal car should be drawn by horses of white, the sacred colour, and that the number of his attendant lictors should be doubled. He was to be requested to undertake the office of censor for three years, under a new title, which should not remind the citizens too closely of the times of republican liberty, that of præfectus morum, or regulator of manners. The changes which the revolutionary storm had effected in the condition of so many of the citizens justified a resort to the old constitutional resource for purging the senate of scandalous or impoverished members, and infusing new blood into its veins.

The most substantial of all these tributes to Cæsar’s ascendency was the decree by which he was appointed dictator for a period of ten years; for thus the initiative of legal measures was united in his hands with the command of the legions both at home and abroad. Other specious honours, in the taste of the times, were accumulated upon him. His chair was to be placed between those of the consuls in the assembly of the senate; he was to preside and give the signal in the games of the circus; and his figure in ivory was to be borne in procession among the images of the gods, and laid up in the Capitol, opposite the seat of Jupiter himself. A statue was to be erected to him in bronze, standing upon a globe, with the inscription, “Cæsar the demi-god.” His name was to be engraved on the entablature of the Capitol, in the place of that of Catulus, its true restorer. The historian who recounts these honours assures us that many others besides these were offered; he has only omitted to specify them because Cæsar did not think fit to accept them. It is difficult to imagine to what lower depth of obsequiousness the senate could have descended, or what higher dignities the conqueror would have rejected.

CÆSAR’S TRIUMPHS

The time had now arrived for the celebration of the Gallic triumph, which had been so long postponed. In the interval, the imperator’s victories had been multiplied, and the ranks of his veterans had been recruited by fresh enlistments; so that every soldier who had shared in his later perils and successes demanded the reward of participating in his honours. Cæsar claimed not one, but four triumphs: the first, for his conquest of the Gauls; the second for his defeat of Ptolemy; another, for his victory over Pharnaces; and the last, for the overthrow of Juba. But he carefully avoided all reference to what were in reality the most brilliant of his achievements. In Spain and Thessaly he had routed the disciplined legions of his own countrymen; but their defeat brought no accession of honour or territory to the republic. The glory it reflected on the victor was dubious and barren. The four triumphs were celebrated, with intervals of a few days between each, that the interests of the public might not pall with satiety. The first procession formed in the Campus Martius, outside the walls of the city. It defiled through the triumphal gate at the foot of the Capitoline Hill, and crossed the deep hollow of the Velabrum and Forum Boarium, on its way to the Circus Maximus, which occupied the valley between the Palatine and Aventine. In passing through the Velabrum, the chariot in which the imperator stood, happened to break down; a mischance which so affected him that he never afterwards, it is said, ascended a vehicle without repeating a charm.

The long procession wound round the base of the Palatine, skirting the Aventine and Cælian hills, to the point where the arch of Constantine now stands. There it began the ascent of the gentle slope which separates the basin of the Colosseum from that of the Roman Forum. It followed the same track which now leads under the arch of Titus, paved at this day with solid masses of hewn stone, which may possibly have re-echoed to the tramp of Cæsar’s legions. Inclining a little to the right at the point where it gained the summit of the ridge and looked down upon the comitium and rostra, in the direction of the Capitol, it passed before the spot where the temple of Julius was afterwards built; thence it skirted the right side of the Forum, under the arch of Fabius, till it reached a point just beyond the existing arch of Severus, where the two roads branched off, the one to the Capitoline temple, the other to the Mamertine prison. Here it was that Cæsar took the route of triumph to the left, while Vercingetorix was led away to the right, and strangled in the subterranean dungeon. The Gallic hero doubtless met with firmness and dignity the fate to which he had so long been doomed, while his conqueror was exhibiting a melancholy spectacle of human infirmity, crawling up the steps of the Capitol on his knees, to avert, by an act of childish humiliation, the wrath of the avenging Nemesis. The next instance of similar degradation recorded is that of the emperor Claudius, who being corpulent and clumsy performed the ungraceful feat with the support of an arm on either side. The practice was probably of no unusual occurrence, and was deeply rooted, we may believe, in ancient and popular prejudices. A remnant of it still exists, and may be witnessed by the curious, even at the present day, on the steps of the Ara Cœli and at the Santa Scala of the Lateran.

A Sacrificator

The days of triumph which succeeded passed over with uninterrupted good fortune. The populace were gratified with the sight of the Egyptian princess Arsinoe led as a captive at the conqueror’s wheels; but she was spared the fate of the Gallic chieftain out of favour to her sister, or perhaps out of pity to her sex. The son of the king of Numidia who followed the triumphal car was also spared, and lived to receive back his father’s crown from Augustus. Though Cæsar abstained from claiming the title of a triumph over his countrymen, he did not scruple to parade their effigies among the shows of the procession. The figures or pictures of the vanquished chiefs were carried on litters, and represented the manner of their deaths. Scipio was seen leaping desperately into the sea; Cato plunging the sword into his own bowels; Juba and Petreius engaged in mortal duel; Lentulus stabbed by the Egyptian assassin; Domitius pierced perhaps in the back, in token of his flight. The figure of Pompey alone was withheld for fear of the commiseration it might excite among the people whose favourite he had so lately been. Nor, as it was, were the spectators unmoved. Upon the unfeeling display of Roman defeat and disaster they reflected with becoming sensibility. But the pictures of Achillas and Pothinus were received with unmingled acclamations, and loud was the cry of scorn at the exhibition of Pharnaces flying in confusion from the field. After all, the most impressive part of the ceremony must have been the appearance of the rude veterans whose long files closed the procession. With what ignorant wonder must the children of Gaul and Iberia, of Epirus and Africa, have gazed at the splendour of the city, of which the fame resounded in their native cabins! What contempt must they have felt for the unarmed multitudes grinning around them! How reckless must they have been of the dignity of the consuls and senators, they who claimed the license of shouting derisive songs in the ears of their own commander! Little did they think that grave historians would sum up their coarse camp jokes in evidence against the fame of their illustrious leader; still less did they dream of the new power which the military class was thenceforth to constitute in the state. Rome in fact was their own; but it was a secret they were not yet to discover.

The satisfaction of his armed supporters, however, was the first condition on which the supreme power of the dictator must henceforth be maintained in the city. It was a matter, indeed, of hardly less importance to secure the good humour of the urban population. While the soldiers receive each a donative of twenty thousand sesterces, the claims of the much larger multitude of the free citizens were not undervalued severally at four hundred; especially as they received the additional gratification of one year’s remission of house rent. It does not appear how this indulgence differed from that for which Cælius and Dolabella had raised their commotions; but the dictator had so strenuously resisted every attempt to set aside the just claims of creditors on all previous occasions, that it can hardly be doubted that in this case he gave the landlords compensation from the public treasury. The mass of the citizens was feasted at a magnificent banquet, at which the Chian and Falernian wines, the choicest produce of Greece and Italy, flowed freely from the hogshead, and towards which six thousand lampreys, the most exquisite delicacy of the Roman epicure, were furnished by a single breeder. The mighty multitude reclined before twenty-two thousand tables; each table having its three couches, and each couch, we may suppose, its three guests; so that the whole number feasted may have amounted to nearly two hundred thousand. When Cæsar undertook the functions of his censorship, the number of recipients of the public distributions of corn was estimated at 320,000. Upon a scrutiny into their claims as genuine and resident citizens, he was enabled to strike off as many as 150,000 from this list. Adding to the remainder the senators and knights, and the few wealthy individuals who might have scorned to partake of a state provision, the sum will correspond pretty accurately with the number of the imperial guests as above computed.

The public shows with which these gratifications were accompanied were carried out on a scale of greater magnificence than even those recently exhibited by Pompey. There was nothing in which the magistrates of the republic vied more ostentatiously with one another than in the number of wild beasts and gladiators which they brought into the arena. The natural taste of the Italian people for shows and mummery degenerated more and more into an appetite for blood; but in this, as in every other respect, it was Cæsar’s ambition to outdo his predecessors, and the extraordinary ferocity and carnage of the exhibitions which he complacently witnessed excited a shudder even in the brutal multitude. The combatants in the games of the Circus were either professional gladiators, who sold their services for a certain term of years, or captives taken in war, or lastly public criminals. But Cæsar was, perhaps, the first to encourage private citizens to make an exhibition of their skill and valour in these mortal combats. He allowed several men of equestrian rank, and one the son of a prætor, to demean themselves in the eyes of their countrymen by this exposure to the public gaze. It was only when a senator named Fulvius Setinus asked permission thus to prostitute his dignity, that the dictator was at last roused to restrain the growing degradation.

If the people of Rome were shocked at the bloodshed which they were invited to applaud, it seems that they were offended also at the vast sums which were lavished on these ostentatious spectacles. They would have preferred, perhaps, that the donative to themselves should have been greater, and the soldiers even exhibited symptoms of discontent and mutiny in consequence. No instance of Cæsar’s profuse expenditure excited greater admiration than his stretching a silken awning over the heads of the spectators in the Circus. This beautiful material was brought only from the farthest extremity of India, and was extremely rare and precious at Rome at that time. Three centuries later it was still so costly that a Roman emperor forbade his wife the luxury of a dress of the finest silk unmixed with a baser fabric. But a more permanent and worthy object of imperial expenditure was the gorgeous Forum of which Cæsar had long since laid the foundation with the spoils of his Gallic Wars. Between the old Roman Forum and the foot of the Quirinal, he caused a large space to be enclosed with rows of marble corridors, connecting in one suite halls of justice, chambers of commerce, and arcades for public recreation. In the centre was erected a temple to Venus the ancestress, the patroness for whom Cæsar had woven a breastplate of British pearls, and whose name he had used as his watchword on the days of his greatest victories. He now completed the series of his triumphal shows by the dedication of this favourite work. It remained for centuries a conspicuous monument of the fame and magnificence of the first of the Cæsars. His successors were proud to cluster new arches and columns by its side, and bestowed their names upon the edifices they erected in connection with it. Finally, Trajan cut through the elevated ridge which united the Capitoline with the Quirinal, and impeded the further extension of the imperial forums. He filled the hollow with a new range of buildings, occupying as much ground as the united works of his predecessors in this quarter. The depth of his excavation is indicated, it is said, by the height of the pillar which bears his name.

THE LAST CAMPAIGN

[46-45 B.C.]

Our review of the dictator’s proceedings in the discharge of his civil functions must be postponed, but only for a moment, to relate the short episode of his last military exploit. The despatches of his lieutenants in Spain represented that province as rapidly falling into the hands of the republican faction. Varus and Labienus had escaped from Africa, and joined the standard under which Scapula marshalled the disaffected legions in Spain. Cneius Pompeius had also issued from his retreat in the Balearic Isles, and as soon as he appeared in their camp every chief of the oligarchy waived his own pretensions to the command in deference to the man who represented the fame and fortunes of their late leader. Yet Scapula had the confidence of the soldiers, Labienus was an officer of tried ability and reputation, and Varus had at least held the highest military commands, while Cneius himself was personally unknown to the legions in Spain, and his only achievement in war had been a dashing naval exploit. So cowed by its repeated reverses was the spirit of the old Roman party, which had revived for a moment in Africa with vain exultation at finding itself relieved from the ascendency of its own military champion. Cneius, on his part, seems to have regarded the renewed contest in the light of a private quarrel. His war-cry was not “Rome,” “Liberty,” or “The Senate,” but “Pietas,” “Filial Duty.”

The disaffection among Cæsar’s soldiers had become widely spread; a large body of them had enrolled themselves under their new leaders; their numbers had been augmented by provincial enlistments; even slaves had been drafted into the ranks; while the cities and states of the peninsula lent their aid more or less openly to the cause. It was not in the remoter parts of the province or among the half-subdued native principalities, but in the centre of Roman influence and civilisation, in Corduba itself, that the standard of the adventurers was unfurled. Cæsar had completed the ceremonies of his quadruple triumph, and was deeply engaged in the arduous task of legislation for the new system of government which he had undertaken to raise, when he found it necessary to postpone every other occupation to meet his enemies once more in arms. So uncertain and tedious was the navigation of those days that he may have chosen the land route across the Alps and Pyrenees, for the sake of reaching his destination with greater speed.[123]

The details of the campaign into which he immediately plunged are given, but very obscurely, in the last of the series of contemporary memoirs which have hitherto been our guides throughout the military history of the period. In point of composition it betrays less literary accomplishment than any of its kindred works. The rude soldier who seems to have been its author had no hesitation in recording in their undisguised enormity the cruelties which disgraced the conduct of both parties. Cæsar’s character for humanity suffers more in this than in any other contemporary narrative of his actions. The campaign was, indeed, a series of butcheries on either side, but Cneius was, perhaps, the most savagely ferocious of all the captains of the civil wars. The scene of the last act of Roman liberty was laid in the valley of the Guadalquivir and the defiles of the Sierra de Tolar. After a variety of desultory movements, of which we obtain from the narrative only an indistinct notion, we find the rival armies at last drawn up in hostile array on the field of Munda. Cæsar was this time superior in numbers, and especially in cavalry; but the enemy was well posted, and fought well: never, it is said, was the great conqueror brought so near to defeat and destruction.[b]

“When the armies were going to close, Cæsar, seeing his men go on but coldly and seem to be afraid, invoked all the gods, beseeching them with hands lifted up to heaven, not to let the lustre of so many glorious actions be darkened in one day, and running through the ranks, encouraged his soldiers, taking off his head-piece that he might be better known. But do what he could, he could not raise their spirits, till snatching a buckler out of a soldier’s hand, he said to the tribunes who were about him, ‘This shall be the last day of my life, and of your engagement in the war.’ And at the same time made furiously towards the enemy; he had scarce advanced ten feet but he had above two hundred darts thrown at him, some of which he avoided by bending his body, and others received on his buckler, when the tribunes ran with emulation to get about him, and the whole army thereupon charging with all their fury, they fought all day with divers advantage, and at length towards the evening the victory fell to Cæsar, and it is reported that hereupon he was heard to say these words, ‘that he had often fought for victory, but that now he had fought for life.’

“After the defeat, Pompeius’ men flying into Corduba, Cæsar, to prevent their escape thither, lest they should rally and renew the fight, caused the place to be invested by the army, where the soldiers being so tired that they could not work in the circumvallation, heaped up together the bodies and armour of the slain, which they kept piled up with their javelins stuck into the ground, and lay all night under that kind of rampire. Next morning the city was taken. Of Pompeius’ captains, Scapula setting up on a pile of wood burned himself; the heads of Varus, Labienus, and other persons of quality were brought to Cæsar. As for Pompeius, he fled from the battle with a hundred and fifty horse, bending his course towards Carteia where his fleet lay; he entered the port in a litter, and in the habit of a private man. But seeing the seamen had likewise lost all hopes, he threw himself in a little boat, in which as he was going out to sea, his foot tangling in the cordage, one of his people going to cut the rope, by mischance cut his heel, so that to cure his wound he was forced to go ashore at a small village, where hearing that Cæsar’s horsemen were coming, he took his flight through a country covered with thorns and briers, which added to his wound, so that being tired and sitting down at last under a tree, he was found by those who gave him chase, and slain, generously defending himself; his head was carried to Cæsar, who caused it to be buried. Thus [says Appian] was this war ended by one only fight and contrary to the opinion of all the world.”[g]

Of all the leaders of the senatorial party, Sextus Pompeius was now the only survivor. He had made his escape from the field of Munda, and had an asylum in the wildest districts of the Hither Province. He had nothing to hope from the clemency of the conqueror, who had shown unusual bitterness against his family by the confiscation of their patrimonial estates, and was now preparing to celebrate his triumph over them as foreigners and enemies of the state. Thus driven to despair, he infused new spirit into the predatory habits among the tribes among whom he had taken refuge, and continued to defy the power of the provincial authorities. Cæsar occupied himself for some months in reconstituting the government of Spain, taking precautions for the entire subjugation of the party which had shown such vitality in that quarter. The battle of Munda was fought on the seventeenth of March, but the dictator was not at liberty to return to Italy till September, after an absence of ten months.

The hostile attitude of the last of the Pompeians in Spain was not the only exception to the tranquillity which prevailed generally throughout the empire. In Gaul the Bellovaci had risen in arms; but this movement was expeditiously repressed by Decimus Brutus, the proconsul of the newly conquered province. In the extreme East, however, the republican party still continued to make head, under the leadership of Cæcilius Bassus. Their champion was an obscure knight, and their forces were insignificant, consisting principally of two legions which Bassus had seduced from their allegiance to Sextus Cæsar, the commander to whose care Syria had been entrusted by his kinsman. But the proximity of the Parthians, ever on the watch for an opportunity to wound the sides of their great rivals, rendered any movement in this quarter formidable. Sextus Cæsar was murdered by his soldiers, and Bassus took possession of the city of Apamea, which, with the assistance of the national enemies, he continued to keep against the petty attempts which were made to dislodge him. The dictator kept his eye upon him, and already meditated his destruction; but for the present he was content to leave his temerity unpunished, while he applied himself to the consolidation of his power by bold and comprehensive legislation at home.[b]

THE LAST TRIUMPH

[45 B.C.]

On the 13th of September, 45, the dictator appeared once more at the gates of Rome, but he did not triumph till the commencement of October. His victory was represented as gained over the Iberians; the miserable outcasts whom Cneius had banded together were all confounded together under the common title of strangers and enemies. Two of the dictator’s lieutenants, Fabius, and Pedius who was also his kinsman, were allowed the honour of separate triumphs. These ceremonies were followed as usual with games and festivals, which kept the populace in a fever of delight and admiration. They had complained that among the numerous spectacles offered to their view each citizen could witness only a portion, while to the foreigners who flocked to this great feast of nations, the dramatic entertainments had been unintelligible. The games were now multiplied in various quarters of the city, while plays were represented in different languages for the benefit of every people. The subjects of the empire had entered Rome as conquerors in Cæsar’s train, and thus he inaugurated the union of the capital with the provinces. Kings and commonwealths sent their ambassadors to this mighty congress of nations. Among them were the Moors and the Numidians, the Gauls and the Iberians, the Britons and the Armenians, the Germans and the Syrians. The Jews, insulted by Pompey and rifled by Crassus, offered their willing homage to the champion who alone of all the Romans had spoken to them in the language of kindliness and respect. Cleopatra the queen of Egypt came, her crown in her hand, offering her treasures and her favours to her admirer and preserver. All in turn had trembled at the official caprices of the Roman knights, and Cæsar could afford them perhaps no sweeter revenge, nor represent to them more vividly the extent of his power, than in degrading before their faces these petty tyrants of the provinces. He compelled one of them, named Laberius, who was also a dramatic composer, to enact one of his own comic pieces, that is, to dance and sing upon the stage before the concourse of citizens and strangers. “Alas!” said the wretched man in his prologue, “after sixty years of honour I have left my house a knight, to return to it a mime. I have lived one day too long.” Cæsar restored to him the golden ring of knighthood, forfeited by this base but compulsory compliance. He presented him also with a large sum of money, to show perhaps more completely the prostration of his order.

Such trifling persecutions, whether personal or political in their objects, are undoubtedly pitiable enough. But it is Cæsar’s glory that his arm fell heavily upon none of his fellow-citizens. The nephew of Marius forgot the banishment of his uncle, the ruins of Carthage, and the marshes of Minturnæ; the avenger of the Sullan revolution scorned to retaliate the proscriptions; the advocate of Cethegus and Lentulus refrained from demanding blood for blood. It is worth remarking that Cicero, the most humane perhaps of his own party, the most moderate in sentiments, the fairest estimater of men and measures, could hardly persuade himself of the possibility of Cæsar abstaining from massacre. Such was the wise man’s reading of the history of his countrymen; and when at last he found that the conqueror meditated no such use of his victory, his heart, we fear, still remained untouched, and he never, perhaps, renounced the secret hope that Cæsar’s opponents would prove less merciful than himself.

Nor was the conqueror’s clemency confined to sparing the lives of his opponents. He refrained from confiscation which had been wont to accompany the edicts of his predecessors. The wealth indeed which was poured into Rome from the tribute of so many new subjects, and the plunder of so many temples, rendered it more easy to practise this unusual liberality. It was ungenerous perhaps to make the estates of his great rival the chief exception to this rule of moderation. But Cæsar intended to brand as rebels to constituted authority the men who renewed the strife after Thapsus, and this confiscation was meant, not as an insult to the dead, but as a punishment of the living opponent. The name of the Great Pompey had already passed into the shrine of history, and the victor was proud of closing the fasti of the republic with so illustrious a title. Far from approving the precipitation of his flatterers in removing the statues of Pompey and Sulla, he caused them to be restored to their places in front of the rostra, among the effigies of the noblest champions of the free state. Towards the institutions of the commonwealth he evinced a similar spirit of deference. He sought no new forms under which to develop his new policy. Sulla had attempted to revive the aristocratic spirit of the ancient constitution by overthrowing the existing framework of the laws; but the popular dictator, in laying the foundation of a more extensive revolution, studied to preserve it intact. While making himself an autocrat in every essential exercise of power, he maintained, at least in outward seeming, all the institutions most opposed to autocracy, the senate, the comitia, and the magistracies. But he had long before said that the republic was no more than a shadow, and these very institutions had long been merely the instruments by which tyrants had worked out the ends of their selfish ambition.

Cæsar now was fully aware that he could sway the Roman world unchecked by the interference of a senate, two-thirds of which perhaps were nominees of his own. Under the sanction of an organic law he had raised the number of the assembly to nine hundred, thus degrading the honour by making it cheap; and he still more degraded it in the eyes of the proudest of the citizens by pouring into it his allies from the provinces, his soldiers, and even, if we may believe their bitter sarcasms, the captives who had just followed his car of triumph. The Romans exercised their wits on these upstart strangers losing themselves amidst the forests of columns which thronged the public places, and placards were posted recommending no good citizen to guide them to the senate house. This servile council, with less respect for appearances than its chief, would have given him the right of nominating to all curule and plebeian offices, to the entire abrogation of the electoral prerogatives of the people. But Cæsar declined to destroy the last shadow of liberty, assured that no man would venture to sue for a magistracy without his consent. He contented himself with recommending certain candidates to the suffrages of the people, and these recommendations were equivalent to commands. Moreover the senate had imposed upon the elected the obligation to swear before entering on their office, that they would undertake nothing against the acts of the dictator, for every act of his was invested with the force of law. The consuls, prætors, and other officers thus continued to exercise their ordinary functions under the dictator’s superintendence; the prætors were increased in number, while the consuls, though never exceeding two at the same time, were rapidly supplanted, sometimes month by month, by fresh aspirants whom it was expedient to gratify. As the avowed champion of the people Cæsar retained the appropriate distinction of the tribunitian power, which also rendered his person inviolable;[124] while both the senators and the knights offered to surround him with a guard of honour of their own members to secure this inviolability by a stronger instrument than the law. To the reality of power he added its outward signs. In the senate, the theatre, the circus, and the hall of justice he might seat himself on his golden chair in a robe of regal magnificence, while his effigy was impressed upon the public coinage.[125] Apart from the title of king there is no outward symbol of royalty more appropriate than that of the hereditary transmission of offices and distinctions. The imperium, or military supremacy, which had been granted to Cæsar for his life, was rendered transmissible to his children, and with it the august distinction of the sovereign pontificate.

In fine, the dictatorship for life and the consulship for five years, with the right of drawing at pleasure upon the public treasury, secured to Cæsar the executive power of the state; the imperium gave him the command of its forces; the tribunate invested him with a veto upon its legislation. As prince, or first man of the senate, he guided the debates of that assembly; as controller of manners even its personal composition depended upon his will. As chief pontiff he interpreted the religion of the state, and made omens and auguries declare themselves at his bidding. Thus the finances, the army, the religious system, the executive with a portion of the judicial power, and indirectly almost the whole functions of the legislature were combined in the hands of the autocrat of the Roman commonwealth. Nevertheless he had assumed no title inconsistent with the principles of the republic, and the precedents of constitutional history.

CÆSAR’S REFORMS

[46-44 B.C.]

What then were the objects to which Cæsar proposed to direct this enormous accumulation of powers? His cherished scheme for the amalgamation of the various elements of the empire was necessarily slow in progress. He did not seek to precipitate it by violent measures.[c]

From his last triumph to his death was somewhat more than five months (October, 45 B.C.-March, 44 B.C.): from his quadruple triumph to the Spanish campaign was little more than four months (June-September, 46 B.C.). Into these two brief periods were compressed most of the laws which bear his name, and of which we will now give a brief account. The evils which he endeavoured to remedy were of old standing. His long residence at Rome, and busy engagement in all political matters from early youth to the close of his consulship, made him familiar with every sore place and with all the proposed remedies. His own clear judgment, his habits of rapid decision, and the unlimited power which he held, made it easier for him to legislate than for others to advise.

The long wars, and the liberality with which he had rewarded his soldiers and the people at his triumphs, had reduced the treasury to a low ebb. He began by revising the register of citizens, principally for the purpose of abridging the list of those who were receiving monthly donations of grain from the treasury. Numbers of foreigners had been irregularly placed on the list, and he was able to reduce the list of state paupers resident in or near Rome from 320,000 to less than half that number. The treasury felt an immediate and a permanent relief.

But though, for this purpose, Cæsar made severe distinctions between Roman citizens and the foreign subjects of the republic, no ruler ever showed himself so much alive to the claims of all classes of her subjects. Other popular leaders had advocated the cause of the Italians, and all free people of the peninsula had in the last thirty years been made Romans: but no one had as yet shown interest in the claims of the provincial subjects of Rome, except Sertorius, and his object was rather a transference of power from Italians to Spaniards, than an incorporation of Spain with Italy. Cæsar was the first acknowledged ruler of the Roman state who extended his view beyond the politics of the city and took a really imperial survey of the vast dominions subject to her sway. Towards those who were at war with Rome he was as relentless as the sternest Roman of them all; but no one so well as he knew how “to spare the submissive”; hardly any one except himself felt pleasure in sparing. All the cities of Transpadane Gaul, already Latin, were raised to the Roman franchise. The same high privilege was bestowed on many communities of Transalpine Gaul and Spain. The Gallic legion which he had raised, called Alauda from the lark which was the emblem on their arms, was rewarded for its services by the same gift. All scientific men, of whatever origin, were to be allowed to claim the Roman franchise. After his death a plan was found among his papers for raising the Sicilian communities to the rank of Latin citizens.

The imperial character of the great dictator’s government is strongly shown by his unfulfilled projects. Among these was the draining of the Pontine marshes, the opening of lakes Lucrinus and Avernus to form a harbour, a complete survey and map of the whole empire—plans afterwards executed by Agrippa, the minister of Augustus. Another and more memorable design was that of a code of laws embodying and organising the scattered judgments and precedents which at that time regulated the courts. It was several centuries before this great work was accomplished, by which Roman law became the law of civilised Europe.

The liberal tendency of the dictator’s mind was shown by the manner in which he supplied the great gaps which the Civil War had made in the benches of the senate. Of late years the number of that assembly had been increased from its original three hundred.[126] Cicero on one occasion mentions 415 members taking part in the votes, and many of course were absent. But Cæsar raised it to nine hundred, thus greatly exceeding the largest number that had ever been counted in its ranks. Many of the new senators were fortunate soldiers who had served him well. In raising such men to senatorial rank he followed the example of Sulla. Many also were enfranchised citizens of the towns of Cisalpine Gaul. The old citizens were indignant at this invasion of barbarians. “The Gauls,” said one wit, “had exchanged the trews [trousers] for the toga, and had followed the conqueror’s triumphal car into the senate.” “It were a good deed,” said another, “if no one would show the new senators the way to the house.”

The curule offices, however, were still conferred on men of Italian birth. The first foreigner who reached the consulship was Balbus, a Spaniard of Gades, the friend of Cæsar; this was four years after the dictator’s death.

To revive a military population in Italy was not so much the object of Cæsar as that of former leaders of the people. His veterans received few assignments of land in Italy. The principal settlements by which he enriched them were in the provinces. Corinth and Carthage were made military colonies, and regained somewhat of their ancient splendour and renown.

He endeavoured to restore the wasted population of Italy by more peaceful methods. The marriage tie, which had become exceedingly lax in these profligate times, was encouraged by somewhat singular means. A married matron was allowed to use more ornaments and more costly carriages than the sumptuary laws of Rome permitted to women generally. A married man who had three children born in lawful wedlock at Rome, or four born in Italy, or five born in the provinces, enjoyed freedom from certain duties.

The great abuse of slave labour was difficult to correct. It was attempted to apply remedies familiar to despotic governments. An ordinance was issued that no citizens between twenty and forty years of age should be absent from Italy for more than three years. An ancient enactment was revived that on all estates at least one-third of the labourers should be free men. No doubt these measures were of little effect.[d]

Viewing the dominions over which he presided as a whole, endowed, or speedily to be endowed with a general equality of rights, and Rome herself no longer as an isolated municipium and a mistress-city, but the centre and capital of the Roman world, he proceeded to lay the groundwork of a comprehensive scheme of universal legislation. His first care was to develop the material unity of the vast regions before him, by an elaborate survey of their local features. A commission of geographers and mathematicians was appointed, as we have just said, to construct the map of the Roman Empire, a work so novel and so full of detail, as to require the labour, as it afterwards proved, of no less than thirty-two years. Another effort, not less gigantic, was required to impress a moral unity upon this vast machine. Cæsar prepared to collect and combine in a single code the fragments of Roman law, dispersed in thousands of precedents, the edicts of the prætors, the replies of the learned, the decisions of pontiffs, and the traditions of patrician houses. Such a mighty work had already been contemplated by Cicero, as the hopeless vision of the philanthropist and philosopher; but Cæsar’s practical sagacity saw that it not only ought to be done, but could be done, and doubtless had he but lived ten or twenty years longer, he would have anticipated by six centuries the glory of the imperial legislator Justinian.

Another work of equal utility but fortunately of much smaller compass was the reformation of the calendar, and this it was given to the great Julius to effect, and to call after his own name. The Roman year, even before the time of Cæsar, ought to have equalled on the average 365 days and six hours; so near had the astronomers of the period of Numa already arrived to the real length of the earth’s revolution round the sun. This year had been calculated on a basis of 354 days, with the intercalation every second year of a month of twenty-two and twenty-three days alternately; but another day had been added to the 354 to make an odd or fortunate number, and to compensate for this superfluous insertion the number of intercalations was proportionally diminished by a very intricate process. The simplicity of the original arrangement being thus violated, great carelessness had soon prevailed in making the requisite corrections. In course of time the pontiffs, to whose superior skill the guardianship of the calendar had been entrusted, had shrouded their science in a veil of religious mystery, and turned it to political or private ends. They commanded the intercalation of a month arbitrarily, when it suited them to favour a partisan who desired the extension of his year of office, or the postponement of the day on which his debts should become due. They abstained from the requisite insertion at the instance of some provincial governor, who was anxious to hasten his return to the enjoyments of the capital. This control over the length of the civil year, as well as the power of proclaiming the days on which business might or might not be transacted, had become an engine of state in the hands of the oligarchical government, with which the pontiffs were for the most part politically connected. The grievance had lately become intolerable. In the distracted state of public affairs and amidst conflicting personal interests, the pontiffs had abstained from intercalating since the year 52, and had even then left the civil calendar some weeks in advance of the real time. Since then each year had reckoned only 355 days, and the civil equinox had got eighty days in advance of the astronomical. The consuls accordingly, who entered on their office the 1st of January, 47, really commenced their functions on the 13th of October. The confusion hence resulting may be easily imagined. The Roman seasons were marked by appropriate festivals assigned to certain fixed days, and associated with the religious worship of the people. At the period of harvest and of vintage, for instance, seasonable offerings were to be made, which it was no longer possible to offer on the days specifically assigned for them. The husbandman rejected the use of the calendar altogether, and depended on his own rude observations of the rising and setting of the constellations.

Cæsar had acquired a competent knowledge of astronomy, in which his duties as chief of the pontiffs gave him a particular interest. He composed himself a treatise on the subject, which had long retained its value as a technical exposition. With the help of the astronomer Sosigenes, he recurred again to the simple calculations of Numa, and was content to disregard the discrepancy, which he conceived perhaps with Hipparchus to be more trifling than it really is, between the length thus assigned to the year and the true period of the earth’s revolution. In the course of centuries this error has grown into importance, and in the year A.D. 1582, when the Julian calendar was corrected by Pope Gregory XIII, the civil year had got forward no less than ten days. The requisite correction was not made, as is well known, in England till the middle of the eighteenth century. The basis of Cæsar’s reform was that the commencement of the new era should coincide with the first new moon after the shortest day. In order to make the year 46 thus begin, ninety days required to be added to the current year. In the first place an intercalary month of twenty-three days was inserted between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of February, and at the end of November two new months were added comprehending sixty days, together with a supplemental addition of seven more. The period which was marked by this series of alterations received vulgarly the appellation of “the year of confusion”; but “the last year of confusion,” it has been justly remarked, would be its more appropriate title.

Besides these noble efforts of social organisation, Cæsar, like almost every other great man of his nation, had an intense passion for material construction. He had already distinguished himself by the Forum, which he called by his own name in the heart of the city; a work which was loudly demanded on account of the inconvenient narrowness of the spot on which the public business of the republic had been transacted from the period of its infancy. But among the honours now showered upon him was one which had been granted only once or twice before to conquerors who had furthest enlarged the limits of the empire, and which, it has been remarked, was alone wanting to complete the “good fortune” of Sulla. This was the permission to extend the pomœrium, the space left open about the walls of the city, partly within and partly without them, originally perhaps for the convenience of defence; but which was consecrated by solemn ceremonies, and traversed by religious processions. Cæsar proposed, it is said, to remove this line, and with it probably the walls themselves, so as to embrace the Campus Martius, which he would have enlarged by turning the Tiber westward with a bold sweep from the Milvian to the Vatican bridge. This grand project was never destined to be accomplished, and though in later times the emperor Augustus and others were allowed to extend the pomœrium, the walls of Rome were not removed beyond the lines traced by Servius till the time of Aurelian, three centuries after Cæsar. Nor was the dictator more fortunate in completing the many other works of public interest and utility which he was already meditating. He planned, it is said, the emptying of the lake Fucinus, the draining of the Pomptine marshes, the construction of a canal from Rome to Tarracina, of a new road across the Apennines, and of a magnificent harbour at Ostia, the erection of a superb temple to Mars, and the cutting of the Isthmus of Corinth. Of all these designs the temple and the harbour were alone accomplished by his successor; it is probable that Cæsar himself had commenced them. [Under his patronage the first public library was opened at Rome, and for the transaction of public business he erected the magnificent building called the Basilica Julia.]

CÆSAR’S LIFE IN ROME

Such were the subjects of meditation which engrossed Cæsar’s mind during the days and nights he devoted to public affairs. But he had also his hours of recreation, and he shone in private life among the most cultivated men of his time, the most refined in habits, the most fascinating in manners.

There is no feature of Roman life perhaps which we can regard with so much satisfaction as the tone of habitual intercourse among public men at this period. The daily conflicts at the bar or in the Forum to which they were trained, would have only embittered their feelings towards one another, had they not been accompanied by the humanising influence of social discussion on topics of literature and philosophy. The combination of these two habits seems indeed to form the best discipline of society, imparting to it earnestness without violence, and a masculine courtesy far removed from servility and adulation. The records of Roman debate present us with hardly a single scene of personal altercation, while the private reunions of the most eminent statesmen are described to us as full of modest dignity and kindly forbearance. To this pleasing result every school of philosophy contributed; but none of them perhaps studied so well as the Epicurean the science of making society agreeable. To this school both Cæsar himself and most of his personal friends professed their adherence. The circle of his intimates comprised: Cornelius Balbus, an acute man of business; Asinius Pollio, a devoted student; A. Hirtius, who like his master both fought, wrote, and talked well; C. Oppius, full of gentleness and affection; C. Matius, thoughtful, generous, and disinterested. To these may be added Vibius Pansa, a lounger and a good liver, yet neither incapable of office, nor inexperienced in action. Antony, the gayest of boon companions, has already been mentioned; but under the garb of good fellowship, he hardly concealed the most intense selfishness, and of all Cæsar’s friends he alone stands open to the suspicion of intriguing against the life of his patron. Among these men and others of similar stamp Cæsar unbent from the cares of empire, and often abandoned himself without restraint to the enjoyments of festive mirth. With little wit of his own he was amused by the witticisms of others, even when directed against himself, and treasured up every caustic remark which fell from the lips of Cicero, whose patriotism, relieved from the fear of impending proscription, now exhaled itself in malicious pleasantries against the policy of the dictator. At table indeed, surrounded by companions addicted to the grossest self-indulgence, Cæsar was distinguished for his moderation. Cato had said of him long before, that of all the revolutionists of the day he alone had come sober to the task of destruction. But his amours were numerous, and their character peculiarly scandalous; for his countrymen still professed to regard the corruption of a Roman matron as a public wrong, while his attachment to a foreigner, such as Cleopatra, was denounced as a flagrant violation of religious and social principles.

In religion the Epicureans were sceptics, and Cæsar went farther and openly professed his unbelief. The supreme pontiff of the commonwealth, the head of the college whence issued the decrees which declared the will of the gods, as inferred from the signs of the heavens, the flight of birds, and the entrails of victims, he made no scruple in asserting before the assembled fathers that the dogma of a future state, the foundation of all religion, was a vain chimera. Nor did he hesitate to defy the omens which the priests were especially appointed to observe. He gave battle at Munda in despite of the most adverse auspices, when the sacrifices assured him that no heart was found in the victim. “I will have better omens,” he said, “when I choose.” Yet Cæsar, freethinker as he was, could not escape the general thraldom of superstition. We have seen him crawling on his knees up the steps of the temple to appease an indignant Nemesis. Before the battle of Pharsalia he addressed a prayer to the gods whom he denied in the senate, and derided among his associates. He appealed to the omens before passing the Rubicon. He carried about with him in Africa a certain Cornelius, a man of no personal distinction, but whose name might be deemed auspicious on the battlefields of Scipio and Sulla.

The queen of Egypt had followed her august admirer to Italy, and scrupling perhaps to exhibit her publicly in the city, he had installed her in his house and gardens on the other side of the river.[127] There she had her levees for the reception of the noblest Romans, and her blandishments were not perhaps ineffectual in soothing the asperity of their resentments. Cicero himself condescended to solicit an interview with her. She rewarded him with the promise of some Greek volumes from Alexandria, rendered perhaps doubly precious by the recent conflagration. But the populace were shocked at the report that Cæsar meditated raising this barbarian mistress to the dignity of a Roman wife. He was married indeed already to the noble daughter of Calpurnius Piso; but divorce was easy, and might be resorted to without public scandal; Cicero himself had lately dismissed Terentia for alleged incompatibility of temper, and allied himself in her place with a youthful heiress. Besides, one of his creatures was prepared, it was said, with a measure to remove all restrictions upon the dictator’s passions, and allow him to marry as many wives as he pleased, of whatever race or station.

Roman Brazier

Though arrived, as we have seen, at the summit of real power, it was manifest that Cæsar still chafed under the restraints imposed upon him by opinion and prejudice. His firm and well-poised mind seems at last to have lost its equilibrium, and given way to fretful impatience, and a capricious longing for some unattainable object. The Roman nobles, accustomed to the most perfect equality in their intercourse with one another, were mortified at the haughtiness assumed by the chief of the republic, surrounded by a crowd of flatterers through whom the independent patrician could with difficulty force his way.

Once when the senators came in a body to communicate to him their decrees in his honour, he omitted to rise from his seat to receive them. Balbus, it was said, the upstart foreigner, had plucked him by the sleeve and bade him remember that he was their master. It was reported that he had called Sulla a fool for resigning the dictatorship. But while the lines of his domestic policy were yet hardly laid, and every institution in Rome still demanded the pressure of his moulding hand, Cæsar himself was dreaming of foreign conquests, and sighing for his accustomed place at the head of his legions. The disaster of Carrhæ, yet unavenged, might furnish a pretext for war, and the influence of Mithridates, it might be remembered, had extended from the Caspian and the Euxine to the head of the Adriatic. He conceived, we are assured, the gigantic project of first crushing the Parthians, and then returning across the Tanaïs and Borysthenes, subduing the barbarians between the Caucasus and the Carpathian Mountains, and assailing the Germans in the rear. Cleopatra, who felt herself more secure of her admirer in the provinces than in Rome, would doubtless lend her influence to urge him on. The republicans in the city were not perhaps less anxious to remove him to a distance, and launch him on a long and dangerous enterprise. At the close of the year 45 he directed his legions to cross the Adriatic, and assemble in Illyricum, there to await his own speedy arrival. He contemplated an absence of considerable duration. He provided beforehand for the succession of consuls and prætors for the two following years. On the 1st of January, 44, he entered upon his fifth consulship, in which he associated himself with Antony. At the same time he obtained the designation of Hirtius and Pansa for 43, of Decimus Brutus and Munatius Plancus for 42. The prætors appointed for the year 44 were sixteen in number, and among them were M. Brutus and Cassius.

EVENTS LEADING TO THE CONSPIRACY

[45-44 B.C.]

The destined heir of Cæsar’s imperium was already in the camp at Apollonia, taking lessons at the same time both in arts and arms under the care of the ablest teachers. This young man was Caius Octavius, the son of Cæsar’s sister’s daughter, who, now beginning his nineteenth year, gave splendid promise of future excellence, marred only by the extreme delicacy of his health, which had hitherto prevented him from seeking distinction in the field. The favour with which his great-uncle regarded him had induced him to demand the mastership of the horse, but this had been refused him as a distinction beyond his years. Cæsar, however, had promoted his family from the plebeian to the patrician class, an honour which he had accorded to a few gentes, whose names were of great antiquity, among which was the Tullian, to which the character of Cicero had imparted so much new lustre. He had allowed it, moreover, to be understood that he was about to make the young Octavius his own son by adoption, to bequeath to him the bulk of his patrimony, and the dignities which the senate had declared hereditary in his family. These dignities indeed were not associated in the mind of the Romans with any ideas of succession. It was difficult for them to conceive the descent of the dictatorship from the hands of mature experience to those of untried youth, or the establishment in the sphere of a particular family of the tribunitian power, the free gift of the sovereign people. It was natural for them to conclude that their hero was intent on securing a title, the only recognised title, on which according to their notions a dynasty could be founded. Cæsar, it was reported, desired to be hailed as king. His flatterers suggested it, his enemies readily believed it, and hoped to make him unpopular by urging him to claim it. One morning a laurel garland, with a diadem attached, was found affixed to his statue before the rostra. The tribunes, Flavius and Cæsetius, indignantly tore it down; the populace expressing great satisfaction at their conduct, and saluting them with the title of the new Bruti. Cæsar affected at least to applaud them. Shortly afterwards a second experiment was tried. As the dictator returned from the Latin festival, celebrated on the Alban Mount, officious voices were hired to salute him as king. A low and stifled murmur again indicated the disapprobation of the people. “I am no king, but Cæsar,” he hastily exclaimed; but when the tribunes punished some persons who had joined in the cry, he rebuked them for their superfluous or invidious zeal, in which he detected a scheme for bringing him under unjust suspicions.

Cæsar’s friends, however, if such were the real promoters of the intrigue, were not yet satisfied that the prize was beyond his reach. They might familiarise the people with the idea of royalty by bringing it repeatedly before them. Perchance the sight of the white linen band, the simple badge of oriental sovereignty, might disabuse them of their horror at an empty name. On the 15th of February, the day of the Lupercalia, Cæsar was seated on his golden chair before the rostra, to preside over the solemn ceremonies of that popular festival. The Julian flamens were elevated to the same rank as the priests of the god Lupercus or Pan. Antony, the consul, was at their head, and next to the dictator occupied the most conspicuous place in the eyes of the multitude. Possibly the novelty of the sight of the one consul stripped to his skin, with only a narrow girdle round his loins, waving in his hand the thong of goat’s hide, and striking with it, as he ran rapidly through the principal streets, the women who presented themselves to the blow which was supposed to avert sterility, was still more attractive than that of the other in the laurel crown and triumphal robes which use had already rendered familiar. When Antony had run his course he broke through the admiring multitude and approached the seat of the dictator. Drawing from beneath his girdle a diadem, he made as if he would offer it to him, exclaiming that it was the gift of the Roman people. The action was hailed by some clapping of hands; but it was faint and brief and manifestly preconcerted. When, however, Cæsar put away from him the proffered gift, a much louder burst of genuine applause succeeded. Antony offered it a second time; again there was a slight murmur of applause, and again on Cæsar’s rejection of it a vehement cry of satisfaction. “I am not king,” repeated Cæsar; “the only king of the Romans is Jupiter.” He ordered the diadem to be carried to the Capitol and suspended in the temple of the god, to commemorate the gracious offer of the people and his own modest refusal.

THE CONSPIRACY

[44 B.C.]

The tact with which Cæsar withdrew the claims which were thus prematurely advanced for him baffled every attempt of the republican leaders to excite a popular feeling against him. But in the upper ranks of the nobility there were many who cherished such sentiments of hostility towards him, nor were his personal enemies confined to the ranks of his political adversaries. A plot was formed for his destruction, which embraced sixty or even eighty conspirators, many of whom had been most conspicuous in their devotion to him, and seemed most to merit his confidence. Among them were doubtless some whose hopes of preferment he had disappointed. But such was not the case with Decimus Brutus, who had received from him the government of the Cisalpine, and was already designated as the consul of a future year. Such was not the case with Trebonius, who had just quitted the consulship for the administration of Asia. Basilus, Casca, and Cimber had all received greater or less marks of the dictator’s favour. Yet all these men now joined in the intrigue against his life. Had they really loved the republic better than their imperator, and regarded him as a tyrant and a traitor, they should not have accepted the highest offices at his hands. But even the chiefs of the opposite party betrayed no reluctance to profit by his generosity. It was not the needy or disappointed among them, but those whom he had honoured and promoted, who now raised their hands against him. The most active conspirator, and perhaps the author of the design, was C. Cassius, who had recently been appointed prætor. The cry of liberty and the republic, which was in the mouths of all his associates, could have little real influence on the sentiments of Cassius, whose avowed Epicurean principles, no less than his late political conduct, might vouch for his indifference to party. “I prefer,” he had written to Cicero, “our old and clement master Cæsar to the ferocious upstart, the son of Pompey.” But he was by nature vain and vindictive; his temper fluctuated between mean subservience and rude independence. His sharp and acrid humour had not escaped the observation of Cæsar, by whom the pale and lean were accounted dangerous, and who loved, as he said, the company of the sleek and light-hearted.

The conspirators required the charm of a popular name to sanction their projected tyrannicide. M. Junius Brutus, the nephew of Cato, pretended to trace his descent from a third son of the founder of the republic, whose elder brothers had perished, as was well known, childless by the axe of the lictor. His mother Servilia derived her lineage from the renowned Ahala, the slayer of Spurius Mælius. But far from inheriting the zeal of his progenitors, the Brutus of the expiring republic had acquiesced in Cæsar’s usurpation with less apparent reluctance than perhaps any other member of the Pompeian party. Despondent in her hour of distress, he had been the last to join, the earliest to desert the unfurled banner of the republic. After Pharsalia, he was the first to seek refuge in the camp of the victor; in the city he was the foremost to court the friendship and claim the confidence of the dictator.

He zealously served his interests by the discharge of important offices; nor did he blush to govern Cisalpine Gaul for Cæsar, while his uncle still held Utica against him. A feeble panegyric of the sturdy sage whom he had abandoned while he affected to adopt his principles and emulate his practice, seemed to Brutus a sufficient tribute to his virtues. He had divorced his consort Claudia to espouse the philosopher’s daughter Porcia, a woman of more masculine spirit than his own. But thus doubly connected with strength and virtue, Brutus had failed nevertheless to acquire the firmness which nature had denied him. While professing the character of a student he still courted public life for the sake of its emoluments. The countenance of Cæsar raised him to an eminence which pleased and dazzled him, while his uncle’s renown seemed also to shed a light upon him, and his vanity was excited by a saying, possibly a jest, ascribed to Cæsar, implying that of all the Romans he was the worthiest to succeed to supreme power. The weakness of his character may be estimated from the means employed to work upon him. A bit of paper affixed to the statue of the ancient Brutus with the words, “Would thou wert alive”; billets thrust into his hand inscribed, “Brutus, thou sleepest, thou art no longer Brutus,” shook the soul of the philosopher to its centre. Under the influence of Cassius, who had married his sister, he was led to embrace the schemes of the conspirators, and assumed the place of chief adviser, which they pretended at least to offer him.

His renowned name became at once a charm of magic potency. It raised the sick Ligarius from his bed. A pardoned partisan of Pompey, the clemency of Cæsar rankled in his bosom. “How sad for Ligarius,” said Brutus to him, “to be disabled at such a moment.” The sick man raised himself on his elbow, and replied, “If thou hast any project worthy of the name of Brutus, behold, I am well again.” Ligarius was admitted to the secret, and took an active part in the deed which followed. We learn with pleasure that the conspirators did not venture even to sound Cicero. The fatal intrigue was now ripening to its execution. As long as Cæsar remained at Rome his fearless demeanour exposed him to the daggers of assassins, for he had dismissed the guard which had at first surrounded him, and appeared daily in public with no other attendance than that of his unarmed companions.

His legions had been despatched to Illyricum. To the remonstrances of his friends, from whom perhaps the rumours of his peril were not altogether concealed, he had replied that it was better at once to die than to live always in fear of dying. But from the moment he should assume the command of his armies, his safety would be assured by the fidelity of his troops. Once intoxicated with the splendour of royalty in the provinces, he would never consent to return a citizen to Rome. He had promised, it was said, to restore the towers of Ilium, the cradle of the people of Æneas and Romulus. Possibly he might transfer thither the throne which the pride of the Romans forbade him to establish in the Capitol. Or if the charms of Cleopatra should still retain their power, he might take up his abode in Alexandria, and remove the seat of empire to the shrine of the Macedonian conqueror.

Such considerations as these forbade delay. The preparations for Cæsar’s departure were almost complete. The senate was convened for the ides of March, the 15th day of the month, and the royal name and power, it was said, were then to be conferred upon him in the provinces. On this day, as soon as he should enter the curia, it was determined to strike the blow. The prediction was already current that the ides of March should be fatal to him. Still Cæsar refused to take any precautions. He had lived, he said, enough either for nature or glory; his ambition was satisfied, or perhaps disappointed, and he was proudly indifferent to longer existence.[c]

THE ASSASSINATION

On the evening of the 14th of March, Cæsar was supping with M. Lepidus, his master of the horse, who was now at the head of a body of troops without the walls, and was preparing shortly to march with them into Transalpine Gaul, which had been assigned to him by Cæsar as his province. It happened that Cæsar was engaged in writing, when the rest of the party began to discuss the question, “What kind of death is most to be desired?” The subject on which they were talking caught his attention, and he cried out, before any one else had expressed an opinion, that the best death was a sudden one.

A coincidence so remarkable was likely to be remembered afterwards by all who had been present; but it is said, also, that he had been often warned by the augurs to beware of the ides of March; and these predictions had, probably, wrought on the mind of his wife, Calpurnia, so that, on the night that preceded that dreaded day, her rest was broken by feverish dreams, and in the morning her impression of fear was so strong, that she earnestly besought her husband not to stir from home. He himself, we are told, felt himself a little unwell; and being thus more ready to be infected by superstitious fears, he was inclined to comply with Calpurnia’s wishes, and allowed some part of the morning to pass away, and the senate to be already assembled, without having as yet quitted his house.

At such a critical moment as this the conspirators were naturally wide awake to every suspicion; and becoming uneasy at his delay, Decimus Brutus was sent to call on him, and to persuade him to attend the senate by urging to him the offence that he would naturally give if he appeared to slight that body at the very moment when they were preparing to confer on him the title of king. Decimus Brutus visited Cæsar, and being entirely in his confidence, his arguments were listened to, and Cæsar set out about eleven o’clock to go to the senate house. When he was on his way thither, Artemidorus of Cnidus, a Greek sophist, who was admitted into the houses of some of the conspirators, and had there become acquainted with some facts that had excited his suspicions, approached him with a written statement of the information which he had obtained, and putting it into his hand, begged him to read it instantly, as it was of the last importance. Cæsar, it is said, tried to look at it, but he was prevented by the crowd which pressed around him, and by the numerous writings of various sorts that were presented to him as he passed along. Still, however, he held it in his hand, and continued to keep it there when he entered the senate house.

Mark Antony, who was at this time Cæsar’s colleague in the consulship, was on the point of following him into the senate, when C. Trebonius called him aside, and detained him without, by professing to desire some conversation with him. It is said that some of the conspirators had wished to include him in the fate of Cæsar; but Brutus had objected to it as a piece of unnecessary bloodshed; and when it was remembered that he himself, not long ago, had proposed to Trebonius the very act which they were now about to perform, they consented that his life should not be endangered. Meantime, as Cæsar entered the senate house, all the senators rose to receive him. The conspirators had contrived to surround his person in the street, and they now formed his immediate train as he passed on to the curule chair, which had been prepared, as usual, for his reception. That chair had been placed near the pedestal of a statue of Pompey the Great; for the building in which the senate was assembled had been one of Pompey’s public works; and it is said, that Cassius, labouring under the strong feeling of the moment, turned himself to the image, and seemed to implore its assistance in the deed which was to be perpetrated.

DEATH OF CÆSAR

When Cæsar had taken his seat, the conspirators gathered more closely around him, and L. Tillius Cimber approached him as if to offer some petition, which he continued to press with vehemence when Cæsar seemed unwilling to grant it, and the other conspirators joined in supporting his request. At last, when Cæsar appeared impatient of further importunity, Cimber took hold of his robe and pulled it down from his shoulders; an action which was the signal agreed upon with his associates for commencing their attack. It is said that the dagger of P. Casca took the lead in the work of blood, and that Cæsar, in the first instant of surprise, attempted to resist and to force his way through the circle which surrounded him. But when the conspirators rushed upon him, and were so eager to have a share in his death, that they wounded one another in the confusion, he drew his robe closely around him, and having covered his face, fell without a struggle or a groan. He received three and twenty wounds, and it was observed that the blood, as it streamed from them, bathed the pedestal of Pompey’s statue.[128] No sooner was the murder finished, than M. Brutus, raising his gory dagger in his hand, turned round towards the assembled senators, and called on Cicero by name, congratulating him on the recovery of their country’s liberty. But to preserve order at such a moment was hopeless; the senators fled in dismay. Antony made haste to escape to his house. A universal consternation was spread through the city, till the conspirators, going in a body to the Forum, addressed the people, and by assuring them that no violence was intended to any one, but that their only object had been to assert the liberty of Rome, they succeeded in restoring comparative tranquillity. Still, however, distrusting the state of the popular feeling, they withdrew into the Capitol, which Decimus Brutus had secured with a band of gladiators whom he retained in his service; and there, having been joined by several of the nobility, they passed the first night after the murder. Meanwhile, the body of Cæsar was left for some hours, amidst the general confusion, on the spot where it fell; till at last three of his slaves placed it on a litter, and carried it home, one of the arms hanging down on the outside of the litter, and presenting a ghastly spectacle. It was asserted by the surgeon, who examined the wounds, that out of so many, one alone was mortal; that, namely, which he had received in the breast when he first attempted to break through the circle of his assassins.[e]

Such was the untimely ending of Cæsar’s dramatic and history-making career. Appian has left us a minute account of his last deeds and of the plot against him. Let us look to him for certain familiar details, beginning with Cæsar’s last military project.

APPIAN’S ACCOUNT OF CÆSAR’S LAST DAYS

“At length, whether he lost all hopes, or else for the better preservation of his health, never more afflicted with the falling sickness and sudden convulsions than when he lay idle, he resolved upon a far distant expedition against the Getæ and the Parthians. A rumour was spread that there was an oracle of the Sibyls which declared that the Parthians could not be subdued by the Romans, unless they were commanded by a king. This made some talk publicly that in regard of other nations taxed under the Roman Empire, there needed no scruple be made at the giving Cæsar that title. He having still refused it, hastened all he could to get out of the city where many envied him. But four days before the day appointed for his departure he was slain by his enemies in the palace, either out of malice to see him raised to such supreme felicity and height of command, or else (as themselves said) out of a desire to restore the commonwealth to its first estate; for they feared that, after having overcome these other nations, nothing could hinder him from making himself king; yet as it appears to me it was only for the name’s sake they attempted all things; for in the thing itself there is no difference between dictator and king.

“There were two chiefs of this conspiracy, the son of that Brutus whom Sulla put to death, M. Brutus Cæpio, who came for refuge to Cæsar himself after the battle of Pharsalia, and C. Cassius who yielded to him the galleys in the Hellespont, both of Pompey’s party, and with them was joined one of Cæsar’s most intimate friends, Decimus Brutus Albinus. He had always treated them honourably, and with great confidence, and when he was going to the war in Africa, he had given them armies, and the government of the Gauls, to Decimus Brutus of the Transalpine, and to M. Brutus of the Cisalpine. Brutus and Cassius were at this time designed prætors, and were in difference for a jurisdiction which among the citizens is accounted the most honourable of all others, whether they contended out of ambition, or only feigned to do it, lest their conspiracy should be perceived. Cæsar was arbitrator between them, and, as it is said, he acknowledged to his friends that Cassius had reason, but yet he would favour Brutus, so much he loved and honoured him, for all men believed he was his son, because he visited Servilia Cato’s sister at the time she grew with child of Brutus, wherefore it is likewise said, that in the battle of Pharsalia he ordered his captains to have a great care of Brutus’ life.

“However, whether he was ungrateful, or knew nothing of it, or did not believe it, or that he thought his mother’s incontinence of dishonour, whether love of liberty made him prefer his country before his own father, or being of the ancient race of the Bruti who had expelled the kings, and now pricked forward by the reproaches of the people, who on the statues of the old Brutus, and on his prætor’s tribunal had secretly written such words as these, ‘Brutus thou sufferest thyself to be corrupted with gifts. Brutus thou art dead, would to God thou wert now alive; either thy successors degenerate, or thou hast not begot them.’ He, I say, young as he was, chafed by these and such like things, engaged himself in this enterprise as an act worthy his predecessors.

“The discourses concerning the royalty were not then quite extinct, when just as they were going to the senate Cassius took Brutus by the hand, and said, ‘What shall we do if Cæsar’s flatterers propose to make him king?’ To which Brutus answered, that he would not be at the senate. Whereupon, the other again demanded, ‘What if they summon us as prætors, what shall we do then, my friend?’ ‘I will,’ he said, ‘defend my country, even till death.’ Whereupon, Cassius embracing him said, ‘And what persons of quality will you take for companions in so brave an attempt? Do you think there are none but tavern-people and artificers that put writings on your tribunal? Know that they are the prime men of the city, who expect from other prætors only plays and shows; but require their liberty from you as the work of your predecessors.’ Thus they discovered to each other what they had long had in their thoughts; and began to try their own friends, and some of Cæsar’s, according as they knew them capable of good things. They engaged in their design the two brothers, Cæcilius and Bucolianus, Rubrius Rex, Q. Ligarius, M. Spurius, Servilius Galba, Sextius Naso, Pontius Aquila: and of Cæsar’s friends they drew to their conspiracy Decimus, of whom I have already spoken; Caius Casca, Trebonius, Attilius Cimber, Minucius, and Basilus. When they thought they had companions enough, for it was not convenient to communicate this design to all the world, they gave their words one to another without either oath or sacrifice, and yet no one changed his mind or ever discovered the plot.

“There was nothing now wanting but choice of time and place. The time urged, for within four days Cæsar was to depart and take guards. For the place they thought the palace most convenient; for they concluded that all the senators, though they were not made privy to it, yet, seeing the action, would joyfully join with them; which, as it is said, happened at the death of Romulus, after having changed the regal power into tyranny. Wherefore this attempt would have the same success with that; especially being not privily executed, but in the palace, and for the good of the commonwealth. That they needed not to fear anything from Cæsar’s army, being all composed of Roman people; in conclusion, that the authors of this great action doing it publicly, could expect nothing but reward.

“Having all decreed the palace for the place of execution, there were divers opinions concerning the manner of doing it; some being of opinion that they should likewise make away Antony, Cæsar’s colleague, the most powerful of his friends, and well beloved of the soldiery. But Brutus opposed that, saying, that it was only by killing Cæsar, who was as a king, that they ought to seek for the glory of destroying tyrants; and that if they killed his friends too, men would impute the action to private enmity, and the faction of Pompey. This advice prevailing, they only expected the assembling of the senate. Now the day before Cæsar being invited to sup with Lepidus, carried along with him Decimus Brutus Albinus; and during supper the question being proposed what death was best for man; some desiring one kind, and some another; he alone preferred the suddenest and most unexpected. Thus divining for himself they fell to discourse of the morrow’s affairs. In the morning finding himself somewhat out of order with the night’s debauch, and his wife Calpurnia having been frightened with dismal dreams, she advised him not to go abroad and in many sacrifices he made there were none but affrightful tokens; he therefore gave order to Antony to dismiss the senate. But Decimus Brutus persuading him that it was more convenient, he went himself, to avoid the opinion that might be conceived, that he did it out of pride or scorn, he went to dismiss them himself, coming to the palace in his litter.

“There were at that time plays in Pompey’s theatre, and almost all the senators were at the windows of the neighbouring houses, as is the custom in the time of spectacles. The same morning the prætors, Brutus and Cassius, gave audience to those who made suit for it, with great tranquillity, in a gallery before the theatre. But when they had heard what happened to Cæsar in the sacrifices, and that therefore they deferred the senate, they were much troubled. One of those that stood there having taken Casca by the hand, told him: ‘You kept it close from me that am your friend, but Brutus has told me all.’ Whereupon Casca pricked in conscience, began to tremble; but the other continuing with a smile: ‘Where then will you raise the money to come to the ædility?’ Casca gave him an account. Brutus and Cassius themselves being talking together, one of the senators, called Popilius Lænas, drawing them aside said: ‘I pray God what you have in your hearts may succeed happily, but it is fit you make haste.’ At which they were so surprised that they gave him no answer.

“At the same time that Cæsar went to the palace in his litter, one of his domestics, who had understood something of the conspiracy came to find Calpurnia; but without saying anything else to her but that he must speak with Cæsar about affairs of importance, he stayed expecting his return from the senate, because he did not know all the particulars; his host of Cnidus called Artemidorus running to the palace to give him notice of it came just at the moment of his being killed; another, as he sacrificed before the gate of the senate house, gave him a note of all the conspiracy; but he going in without reading it, it was after his death found in his hands. As he came out of his litter, Lænas, the same who before had spoken to Cassius, came to him, and entertained him a long time in private; which struck a damp into the chiefs of the conspiracy, the more because their conference was long; they already began to make signs to one another that they must now kill him before he arrested them; but in the sequel of the discourse, observing Lænas to use rather the gesture of suppliant than accuser, they deferred it; till in the end, seeing him return thanks to Cæsar, they took courage.

“It is the custom of the chief magistrates entering the palace, first to consult the divine: and here as well as in the former sacrifices, Cæsar’s first victim was found without a heart, or as some say without the chief of the entrails. The divine hereupon telling him it was a mortal sign, he replied laughing, that when he went to fight against Pompeius in Spain he had seen the like; and the other having replied, that then likewise he had run hazard of losing his life; but that at present the entrails threatened him with greater danger. He commanded they should sacrifice another victim, which foreboding nothing but ill, he feared to seem tedious to the senate; and being pressed by his enemies, whom he thought to be his friends, without considering the danger, entered the palace; for it was of necessity that the misfortune to befall him should befall.

“They left Trebonius at the gate to stop Antony under pretence of discoursing some business with him; and as soon as Cæsar was seated, the other conspirators surrounded him according to custom, as friends, having each his dagger concealed. At the same time Attilius Cimber standing before him began to entreat him to grant the return of his brother who was an exile; and upon his refusal, under pretence of begging it with more humility, he took him by the robe and drawing it to him, hung about his neck, crying out, ‘Why do you delay, my friends?’ Thereupon Casca first of all reaching over his head, thought to strike his dagger into his throat, but wounded him only in the breast. Cæsar having disengaged himself from Cimber, and caught hold of Casca’s hand, leaped from his seat, and threw himself upon Casca with a wonderful force; but being at handy grips with him, another struck his dagger into his side, Cassius gave him a wound in the face, Brutus struck him quite through the thigh, Bucolianus wounded him behind the head, and he, like one enraged, and roaring like a savage beast, turned sometimes to one and sometimes to another; till strength failing him after the wound received from Brutus, he threw the skirt of his robe over his face and suffered himself gently to fall before Pompey’s statue. They forebore not to give him many stabs after he was down; so that there were three and twenty wounds found in his body. And those that slew him were so eager that some of them through vehemence, without thinking of it, wounded each other.

“After this murder committed in a hallowed place, and on a sacred person, all the assembly took their flight, both within the palace and without in the city. In the crowd there were several senators wounded, and some killed: there were slain likewise other citizens and strangers; not with design, but without knowing the authors, as happens in a public tumult; for the gladiators, who were armed in the morning to give divertisement to the people, ran from the theatre to the senators’ houses; the spectators affrighted, dispersed as fast as their legs would carry them, the commodities exposed to sale were made plunder of, the gates were shut, and many got upon the roofs of their houses to secure themselves from violence. Antony fortified himself in his house, judging that they had a design upon his life as well as upon Cæsar’s; and Lepidus, general of the horse, hearing upon the place what had passed, made haste to the island in the river, where he had a legion; which he drew into the Field of Mars, that he might be in readiness to execute the orders of Antony; for he yielded to him, both in the quality of Cæsar’s friend and consul.

“The soldiers would very willingly have revenged Cæsar’s death so basely murdered, but that they feared the senate, who favoured the murderers, and expected the issue of things. Cæsar had no soldiery with him, for he loved not guards, but contented himself with ushers; besides, he was accompanied by a great number of people of the robe, and whole troops of as well citizens as strangers, with freedmen and slaves, followed him from his house to the palace; but in a moment all these crowds were vanished, there remained with him only three unhappy slaves; who putting him in his litter, and taking it upon their shoulders, carried him, who but a little before was master of both sea and land. The conspirators after the execution had a mind to have said something to the senate; but nobody staying to hear them, they twisted their robes about their left arms instead of bucklers, and with their bloody daggers in their hands ran through the streets, crying out, that they had slain the king and the tyrant; causing to march before them a man carrying a cap on the head of a pike, which is the badge of liberty; they exhorted likewise the people to the restoring of the commonwealth; putting them in mind of the first Brutus, and the oath wherein he had engaged the citizens, and with them their posterity.”[g]