The Life and Times of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt / A Study in the Origin of the Roman Empire

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

By March 1st the conspirators numbered in their ranks some sixty or eighty senators, mostly friends of the Dictator, and had Cæsar attempted then to proclaim himself king he would at once have been assassinated. There were too many rumours current of plots against him, however, to permit him to take this step, and so the days passed in uneventfulness. He had planned to leave Rome for the East on March 17th, and it was thought possible that his last visit to the Senate on March 15th, or his departure from the capital, would be the occasion of a demonstration in his favour which would lead to his being offered the crown as a parting gift. The conspirators therefore decided to make an end of Cæsar on March 15th, the Ides of March, upon which date he would probably come for the last time to the Senate as Dictator.

Brutus, of course, was terribly troubled as the day drew near. He was at heart a good and honourable man, but the weakness of his character, combined with his intense desire to act in a high-principled manner, led him often to appear to be a turncoat. Actually his motives were patriotic and noble, but he must have asked himself many a time whether what he believed to be his duty to his country was to be regarded as entirely abrogating what he knew to be his duty to his devoted patron. The tumult in his mind caused him at night to toss and turn in his sleep in a fever of unrest, and his wife, Porcia, observing his distress, implored him to confide his troubles to her. Brutus thereupon told her of the conspiracy, and thereby risked the necks of all his comrades.

A curious gloom seems to have fallen upon Rome at this time, and an atmosphere of foreboding, due perhaps to rumours that a plot was afoot, descended upon the actors in this unforgettable drama. Cæsar went about his preparations for the Oriental campaign in his usual business-like manner, and raised money for the war with his wonted unscrupulousness and acuteness; but it does not require any pressure upon the historical imagination to observe the depression which he now felt and which must have been shared by his associates. The majority of the conspirators were his friends and fellow-workers—men, many of them, whom he had pardoned for past offences during the Civil War and had raised to positions of trust in his administration. At this time he appears to have been living with Calpurnia in his city residence, and so busy was he with his arrangements that he could not have found time to pay many visits to Cleopatra.[71] The Queen must therefore have remained in a state of distressing suspense. The Calends of March, at which date the proclamation of the monarchy had been expected, had passed; and now the Dictator could have held out to her but one last hope of the realisation of their joint ambition previous to his departure. Cæsar must have told her that, as far as the three-year-old Cæsarion was concerned, she could expect nothing until the throne had been created; for, obviously, this was no time in which to leave a baby as his heir. His nephew Octavian, an active and energetic young man, would have to succeed him in office if he were to die before he had obtained the crown, and his vast property would have to be distributed. The Dictator must have remembered the fact of the murder of the young son of Alexander the Great soon after his father’s death, and he could have had no desire that his own boy should be slaughtered in like manner by his rapacious guardians. Yet Cleopatra still delayed her departure, in the hope that the great event would take place on March 15th, so that at any rate she might return to Egypt in the knowledge that her position as Cæsar’s wife was secured.

The prevailing depression acted strangely upon people’s nerves, and stories began to spread of ominous premonitions of trouble, and menacing signs and wonders. There were unaccountable lights in the heavens, and awful noises at dead of night. Somebody said that he had seen a number of phantoms, in the guise of men, fighting with one another, and that they were all aglow as though they were red-hot; and upon another occasion it was noticed that numerous strange birds of ill omen had alighted in the Forum. Once, when Cæsar was sacrificing, the heart of the victim was found to be missing, an omen of the worst significance; and at other times the daily auguries were observed to be extremely inauspicious. An old soothsayer, who may have got wind of the plot, warned the Dictator to beware of the Ides of March; but Cæsar, whose courage was always phenomenal, did not allow the prediction to alter his movements.

Upon the evening of March 14th, the day before the dreaded Ides, Cæsar supped with his friend Marcus Lepidus, and as he was signing some letters which had been brought to him for approval the conversation happened to turn upon the subject of death, and the question was asked as to what kind of ending was to be preferred. The Dictator, quickly looking up from his papers, said decisively, “A sudden one!” the significance of which remark was to be realised by his friends a few hours later. That night, Plutarch tells us, as Cæsar lay upon his bed, suddenly, as though by a tremendous gust of wind, all the doors and windows of his house flew open, letting in the brilliant light of the moon. Calpurnia lay asleep by his side, but he noticed that she was uttering inarticulate words and was sobbing as though in the deepest distress; and upon being awakened she said that she had thought in her dreams that he was murdered. Cæsar must have realised that such a dream was probably due to her fears as to the truth of the soothsayer’s prophecy; but, at the same time, her earnest request to him not to leave his house on the following day made a considerable impression upon him.

In the morning the conspirators collected in that part of the governmental buildings where the Senate was to meet that day. The place chosen was a pillared portico adjoining the theatre, having at the back a deep recess in which stood a statue of Pompey.[72] Some of the men were public officials whose business it was to act as magistrates and to hear cases which had been brought to them for judgment; and it is said that not one of them betrayed by his manner any nervousness or lack of interest in these public concerns. In the case of Brutus this was particularly noticeable; and it is related that upon one of the plaintiffs before him refusing to stand to his award and declaring that he would appeal to Cæsar, Brutus calmly remarked, “Cæsar does not hinder me, nor will he hinder me, from acting according to the laws.”

This composure, however, began to desert them when it was found that the Dictator was delaying his departure from his house. The report spread that he had decided not to come to the Senate that day, and it was soon realised that this might be interpreted as meaning that he had discovered the plot. Their agitation was such that at length they sent a certain Decimus Brutus Albinus, a very trusted friend of the Dictator, to Cæsar’s house to urge him to make haste. Decimus found him just preparing to postpone the meeting of the Senate, his feelings having been worked upon by Calpurnia’s fears, and also by the fact that he had received a report from the augurs stating that the sacrifices for the day had been inauspicious. In this dilemma Decimus made a statement to Cæsar, the truth of which is now not able to be ascertained. He told the Dictator that the Senate had decided unanimously to confer upon him that day the title of King of all the Roman Dominions outside Italy, and to authorise him to wear a royal diadem in any place on land or sea except in Italy.[73] He added that Cæsar should not give the Senate so fair a justification for saying that he had put a slight upon them by adjourning the meeting on so important an occasion owing to the bad dreams of a woman.

At this piece of news Cæsar must have been filled with triumphant excitement. The wished-for moment had come. At last he was to be made king, and the dominions to be delivered over to him were obviously but the first instalment of the vaster gift which assuredly he would receive in due course. The doubt and the gloom of the last few weeks in a moment were banished, for this day he would be monarch of an empire such as had never before been seen. What did it matter that in Rome itself he would be but Dictator? He would establish his royal capital elsewhere: in Alexandria, perhaps, or on the site of Troy. He would be able at once to marry Cleopatra and to incorporate her dominions with his own. Calpurnia might remain for the present the wife of the childless Dictator in Rome, and his nephew Octavian might be his official heir; but outside his fatherland, Queen Cleopatra should be his consort, and his own little son should be his heir and successor. The incongruities of the situation would so soon be felt that Rome would speedily acknowledge him king in Italy as well as out of it. Probably he had often discussed with Cleopatra the possibilities of this solution of the problem, for the idea of making him king outside Italy had been proposed some weeks previously;[74] and he must now have thought how amused and delighted the Queen would be by this unexpected decision of the Senate to adopt the rather absurd scheme. As soon as he had married the Sovereign of Egypt and had made Alexandria one of his capitals, his dominions would indeed be an Egypto-Roman Empire; and when at length Rome should invite him to reign also within Italy, the situation would suggest rather that Egypt had incorporated Rome than that Rome had absorbed Egypt. How that would tickle Cleopatra, whose dynasty had for so long feared extinction at the hands of the Romans!

Rising to his feet, and taking Decimus by the hand, Cæsar set out at once for the Senate, his forebodings banished and his ambitious old brain full of confidence and hope. On his way through the street two persons, one a servant and the other a teacher of logic, made attempts to acquaint him with his danger; and the soothsayer who had urged him to beware of the Ides of March once more repeated his warning. But Cæsar was now in no mood to abandon the prospective excitements of the day; and the risk of assassination may, indeed, have been to him the very element which delighted him, for he was ever inspired by the presence of danger.

Meanwhile the conspirators paced the Portico of Pompey in painful anxiety, fearing every moment to hear that the plot had been discovered. It must have been apparent to them that there were persons outside the conspiracy who knew of their designs; and when a certain Popilius Laena, a senator, not of their number, whispered to Brutus and Cassius that the secret was out, but that he wished them success, their feelings must have been hard to conceal. Then came news that Porcia had fallen into an hysterical frenzy caused by her suspense; and Brutus must have feared that in this condition she would reveal the plot.