Whether or no Cæsar, in the intolerable arrogance of his last years, was now actually naming himself the fruitful Lupercus in Rome as he was the fecund Amon in Egypt, it is a fact that upon this occurrence of the festival in the year B.C. 44 he was presiding over the ceremonies, while his lieutenant Antony was enacting the part of one of the two holders of the februa. On this day Cæsar, pale and emaciated, was seated in the Forum upon a golden throne, dressed in a splendid robe, in order to witness the celebrations, when suddenly the burly Antony, hot from his run, bounded into view, striking to right and left with the februa, and indulging, no doubt, in the horse-play which he always so much enjoyed. An excited and boisterous crowd followed him, and it is probable that both he and his companions thereupon did homage to the majestic figure of the Dictator, hailing him as Lupercus and king of the festivities. Profiting by the enthusiasm of the moment, and acting according to arrangements previously made with Cleopatra or with Cæsar himself, Antony now stepped forward and held out to the Dictator a royal diadem wreathed with laurels, at the same time offering him the kingship of Rome. Cæsar, as we have seen, had already been publicly hailed as a god upon earth, and now Antony seems to have addressed him in his Lupercalian character, begging him to accept this terrestrial throne as already he had received the throne of the heavens. No sooner had he spoken than a shout of approval was raised by a number of Cæsarians who had been posted in different parts of the Forum for this purpose; but, to Cæsar’s dismay, the cheers were not taken up by the crowd, who, indeed, appear to have indulged in a little quiet booing; and the Dictator was thus obliged to refuse the proffered crown with a somewhat half-hearted show of disdain. This action was received with general applause, and the temper of the crowd was clearly demonstrated. Again Antony held the diadem towards him, and again the isolated and very artificial cheers of his supporters were heard. Thereupon Cæsar, accepting the situation with as good a grace as possible, definitely refused to receive it; and at this the applause once more broke forth. He then gave orders that the diadem should be carried into the Capitol, and that a note should be inscribed in the official calendar stating that on this day the people had offered him the crown and that he had refused it. It seems probable that Antony, appreciating the false step which had been made, now rounded off the incident in as merry a manner as possible, beginning once more to strike about him with his magical whip, and leading the crowd out of the Forum with the same noise and horse-play with which they had entered it.

The chances now in regard to the immediate assumption of the kingship became more remote. Cæsar intended to set out for Parthia in about a month’s time; and it must have been apparent to him that his hopes of a throne would probably have to be set aside until the coming war was at an end. In regard to Cleopatra nothing remained for him to do, therefore, but to bid her prepare to return to Egypt, there to await until the Orient was conquered; and during the next few weeks it seems that the disappointed and troubled Queen engaged herself in making preparation for her departure. Suetonius tells us that Cæsar loaded her with presents and honours in these last days of their companionship; and doubtless he encouraged her as best he could with the recitation of his great hopes and ambitions for the future. There was still a chance that the monarchy would be created before the war, for there was some talk that Antony and his friends would offer the crown once more to Cæsar upon the Calends of March;[70] but Cleopatra could not have dared to hope too eagerly for this event in view of the failure at the Lupercalia. To the Queen, who had expected by this time to be seated upon the Roman throne, his reassuring words can have been poor comfort; and an atmosphere of gloomy foreboding must have settled upon her as she directed the packing of her goods and chattels and prepared herself and her baby for the long journey across the Mediterranean to her now uneventful kingdom of Egypt.

CHAPTER X.
THE DEATH OF CÆSAR AND THE RETURN OF CLEOPATRA TO EGYPT.

There can be little reason for doubt that Antony, who is to play so important a part in the subsequent pages of this history, saw Cleopatra in Rome on several occasions. After his reconciliation to Cæsar in the early summer of B.C. 45, he must have been a constant visitor at the Dictator’s villa; and, as we shall presently see, his espousal of Cleopatra’s cause in regard to Cæsar’s will suggests that her charm had not been overlooked by him. It is said, as we have seen, that he had met her, and had already been attracted by her, ten years previously, when he entered Alexandria with Gabinius in order to establish her father Auletes upon his rickety throne. He was a man of impulsive and changeable character, and it is difficult to determine his exact attitude towards Cæsar at this time. While the Dictator was in Egypt Antony had been placed in charge of his affairs in Rome, but owing to a quarrel between the two men, Cæsar, on his return from Alexandria, had dismissed him from his service. Very naturally Antony had felt considerable animosity to the Dictator on this account, and it was even rumoured, as has been said, that he desired to assassinate him. After the Spanish war, however, the quarrel was forgotten; and, as we have just seen, it was Antony who had offered him the crown at the festival of the Lupercalia. In spite of this, Cæsar does not seem to have trusted him fully, although he now appears to have been recognised as the most ardent supporter of the Cæsarian party.

Cæsar had never excelled as a judge of men. Although unquestionably a genius and a man of supreme mental powers, the Dictator was ever open to flattery; and he collected around him a number of satellites who had won their way into his favour by blandishments and by countenance of their master’s many eccentricities. Balbus and Oppius, Cæsar’s two most intimate attendants, were men of mediocre standing; and Publius Cornelius Dolabella, who now comes into some prominence, was a young adventurer, whose desire for personal gain must have been concealed with difficulty. This personage, although only five-and-twenty years of age, had been appointed by Cæsar to the consulship which would become vacant upon his own departure for the East, a move that must have given grave offence to Antony; for Dolabella, a few years previously, had fallen in love with Antony’s wife, Antonia, who had consequently been divorced, the outraged husband thereafter finding consolation in the marriage to his present wife Fulvia. The various favours conferred by Cæsar on this young scamp must therefore have caused considerable irritation to Antony; and it is not easy to suppose that the latter’s apparent devotion to the cause of the Dictator was altogether genuine. Indeed, the rumour once more passed into circulation that Antony nursed designs upon Cæsar’s life, this time, strange to say, in conjunction with Dolabella. On hearing this report the Dictator remarked that he “did not fear such fat, luxurious men as these two, but rather the pale, lean fellows.”

Of the latter type was Cassius, a sour, fanatical soldier and politician, who had fought against Cæsar at Pharsalia, and had been freely pardoned by him afterwards. From early youth Cassius entertained a particular hatred of any form of autocracy; and it is related of him that when at school the boy Faustus, the son of the famous Sulla, had boasted of his father’s autocratic powers, Cassius had promptly punched his head. Cæsar’s attempts to obtain the throne excited this man’s ferocity, and he was probably the originator of the plot which terminated the Dictator’s life. The plot was hatched in February B.C. 44, and, when Cassius and his friends had prevailed upon the influential and studious Marcus Brutus to join them, it rapidly developed into a widespread conspiracy. “I don’t like Cassius,” Cæsar was once heard to remark; “he looks so pale. What can he be aiming at?”

For Brutus, however, the Dictator entertained the greatest affection and esteem, and there was a time when he regarded him as his probable successor in office. One cannot view without distress, even after the passage of so many centuries, the devotion of the irritable old autocrat to this scholarly and promising young man who was now plotting against him; for, in spite of his manifold faults, Cæsar ever remains a character which all men esteem and with which all must largely sympathise. On one occasion somebody warned him that Brutus was plotting against him, to which the Dictator replied, “What, do you think Brutus will not wait out the appointed time of this little body of mine?” It is probable that Cæsar thought it not at all unlikely that Brutus was his own son, for his mother, Servilia, as early as the year of his birth, and for long afterwards, had been on such terms of intimacy with Cæsar as would justify this belief. Brutus, on the other hand, thought himself to be the son of Servilia’s legal husband, and through him claimed descent from the famous Junius Brutus who had expelled the Tarquins. Servilia was the sister of Cato, whose suicide had followed his defeat by Cæsar in North Africa, and Porcia, the wife of Brutus, was Cato’s daughter. It might have been supposed, therefore, that Brutus would have felt considerable antipathy towards the Dictator, more especially after the publication of his venomous Anti-Cato. There was, however, equally reasonable cause for Brutus to have sympathised with Cæsar, for his supposed father had been put to death by Pompey, an execution which Cæsar had, as it were, been instrumental in avenging. As a matter of fact, Brutus was a young man who lived upon high principles, as a cow does upon grass; and such family incidents as the seduction of his mother, or the destruction of his mother’s brother and his wife’s father, or the bloodthirsty warfare between his father’s executioner and his father-in-law’s enemy and calumniator, were not permitted to influence his righteous brain. In his early years he had, very naturally, refused on principle to speak to Pompey, but when the civil war broke out he set aside all those petty feelings of dislike which, in memory of his legal father, he had entertained towards the Pompeian faction, and, on principle, he ranged himself upon that side in the conflict, believing it to be the juster cause. Pompey is said to have been so surprised at the arrival of this good young man in his camp, whither nobody had asked him to come, and where nobody particularly desired his presence, that he stood up and embraced him as though he were a lost lamb come back to the fold. Then followed the battle of Pharsalia, and Brutus had been obliged to fly for his life. He need not, however, have feared for his safety, for Cæsar had given the strictest orders that nobody was to hurt him either in the battle or in the subsequent chase of the fugitives. From Larissa, whither he had fled, he wrote, on principle, to Cæsar, stating that he was prepared to surrender; and the Dictator, in memory, it is said, of many a pleasant hour with Servilia, at once pardoned him and heaped honours upon him. Brutus, then, on principle, laid information against Pompey, telling Cæsar whither he had fled; and thus it came about that the Dictator arrived in Egypt on that October morning of which we have read.

Brutus was an intellectual young man, whose writings and orations were filled with maxims and pithy axioms. He had, however, a certain vivacity and fire; and once when Cæsar had listened, a trifle bewildered, to one of his vigorous speeches, the Dictator was heard to remark, “I don’t know what this young man means, but, whatever he means, he means it vehemently.” He believed himself to be, and indeed was, very firm and just, and he had schooled himself to resist flattery, ignoring all requests made to him by such means. He was wont to declare that a man who, in mature years, could not say “no” to his friends, must have been very badly behaved in the flower of his youth. Cassius, who was the brother-in-law of Brutus, deemed it very advisable to introduce this exemplary young man into the conspiracy, and he therefore invited him, as a preliminary measure, to be present in the Senate on the Calends of March, when it was rumoured that Cæsar would be made king. Brutus replied that he would most certainly absent himself on that day. Nothing daunted, Cassius asked him what he would do supposing Cæsar insisted on his being present. “In that case,” said Brutus, in the most approved style, “it will be my business not to keep silent, but to stand up boldly, and die for the liberty of my country.” Such being his views, it was apparent that there would be no difficulty in persuading him, on principle, to assist in the murder of Cæsar, who had, it is true, spared his life in Pharsalia, but who was, nevertheless, an enemy of the People. The conspirators, therefore, dropped pieces of paper on the official chair whereon he sat, inscribed with such words as “Wake up, Brutus,” or “You are not a true Brutus”; and on the statue of Junius Brutus they scribbled sentences, such as “O that we had a Brutus now!” or “O that Brutus were alive!” In this way the young man’s feelings were played upon, and, after a few days of solemn thought, he came to the conclusion that it was his painful duty, on principle, to bring Cæsar’s life to a close.