They were still at variance in consequence of their rivalry for the urban praetorship. Cassius put his resentment aside and visited his brother-in-law. “He took him by the hand,” as Appian relates, and said: “‘What shall we do if Caesar’s flatterers propose to make him king?’ Brutus answered that he purposed not to go to the senate. ‘What?’ replied Cassius. ‘If we are summoned in our capacity as praetors, what must we do then?’ ‘I will defend the republic,’ said the other, ‘to the last.’ ‘Will you not then,’ replied Cassius, embracing him, ‘take some of the senators, as parties to your designs? Do you think it is worthless and mercenary people, or the chief citizens of Rome who place on your tribunal the writings you find there? They expect games, races or hunting spectacles from the other praetors; what they demand of you is that you should restore liberty to Rome, as your ancestors did.’”[[356]] These words completely gained over a mind that so many private and public solicitations had unsettled for so long. Still hesitating, but already almost gained, it only waited to find itself face to face with a firm resolution in order to yield.
At last the conspiracy had a leader, and there was no longer any reason to hesitate or to wait. To avoid indiscretions or weaknesses it was necessary to act quickly. Cassius had revealed everything to Brutus a short time after the feast of the Lupercalia, which was kept on February 15, and less than a month after, on March 15, Caesar was struck down in the curia of Pompey.
IV.
Brutus was in reality the head of the conspiracy, although he had not formed the first idea of it. Cassius alone, who had formed it, could dispute the right of conducting it with him, and perhaps he had for an instant the intention of doing so. We see that at first he proposed a plan in which all the violence of his character is shown. He wished that, with Caesar, they should kill his chief friends, and especially Antony. Brutus refused, and the other conspirators were of his mind. Cassius himself yielded at last, for it must be remarked that, although imperious and haughty, he submitted to the ascendency of Brutus. He tried several times to escape from it; but after many threats and fits of anger, he felt himself overcome by the cold reasoning of his friend, and it was Brutus who really conducted the whole enterprise.
This is clearly seen, and in the manner in which it was conceived and executed we find his character and turn of mind. We have not an ordinary conspiracy before us, we have not to do with professional conspirators, with men of violence and adventures. They are not vulgarly ambitious men who covet the fortune or honours of others, nor even madmen whom political hatred misleads even to frenzy. No doubt these sentiments were found in the hearts of many of the conspirators; historians say so, but Brutus forced them to lie hid. He made a point of accomplishing his action with a sort of quiet dignity. It was the system alone that he aimed at; he was animated by no hatred against the man. After having struck him he does not insult him; he permits, in spite of many objections, his funeral to be celebrated, and his will to be read to the people. What occupies his thoughts most of all is that he should not appear to work for himself or his friends, and to avoid all suspicion of personal ambition or party interest. Such was this conspiracy in which men of very different characters took part, but which bears the imprint of Brutus’ own mind. His influence is not less perceptible on the events that followed it. He did not act at random, although Cicero accused him of doing so, and everybody repeats it; he had formed in advance a rule of conduct for the future, he had a well-defined plan. Unfortunately it was found that this plan, conceived in solitary reflection, far from the intercourse and acquaintance of men, could not be followed out. It was the work of a logician who reasons, who purposes to conduct himself in the midst of a revolution as in ordinary times, and wishes to introduce the narrow respect for legality even into a work of violence. He acknowledged that he was mistaken, and he had to give up successively all his scruples; but, as he had not the pliability of the politician who knows how to submit to necessity he gave way too late, with a bad grace, and always looked back with regret to the fine projects he had been forced to abandon. Thence came his hesitation and incoherence. It has been said that he failed through not having had an exact plan in advance; I think, on the contrary, that he did not succeed through wishing to be too faithful to the chimerical plan he had conceived, notwithstanding the lessons given by events. A rapid recital of the facts will suffice to show that it was this which caused the loss of himself and his party, and made the blood that was shed useless.
After the death of Caesar, the conspirators came out of the senate house, brandishing their swords, and calling on the people. The people listened to them with surprise, without much anger, but without any sympathy. Seeing themselves alone, they went up to the Capitol, where they could defend themselves, and shut themselves in under the guard of some gladiators. They were joined only by some doubtful friends who always join parties when they are successful. If there had been little eagerness to follow them there was still less desire to attack them. Caesar’s partisans were scared. Antony had thrown off his consul’s robe and hidden himself. Dolabella affected to appear joyful, and let it be understood that he also was one of the conspirators. Many left Rome in haste, and fled into the country; yet, when they saw that all remained quiet, and that the conspirators were contented with making speeches in the Capitol, courage returned to the most timid. The fear that this bold action had caused gave place to surprise at such strange inaction. The next day Antony had resumed his consular robes, reassembled his friends, and recovered his audacity, and it was necessary to reckon with him.
“They have acted,” said Cicero, “with manly courage, but childish judgment; animo virili, consilio puerili.”[[357]] It is certain that they seemed to have prepared nothing, and to have foreseen nothing. On the evening of the Ides of March they were awaiting events without having done anything to guide them. Was it, as has been said, improvidence and levity? No, it was system and deliberate intention. Brutus had only joined the others to deliver the republic from the man who prevented the free play of the institutions. He being dead, the people regained their rights, and became free again to use them. The conspirators would have appeared to be working for themselves in keeping even for a day that authority that they had torn from Caesar. Now, to prepare decrees or laws in advance, to arrange about regulating the future, to consider the means of giving affairs the direction they wished, was not this to take upon themselves in some sort the duty of the entire republic? And what more had Caesar done? Thus, on pain of appearing to imitate him, and to have acted only through the rivalry of ambition, once the great blow struck, the conspirators had to abdicate. This is how I think their conduct must be explained. It was by a strange prejudice of disinterestedness and of legality that they remained voluntarily disarmed. They thought it glorious to act in concert only so far as to kill Caesar. That act accomplished, they were to restore to the people the direction of their affairs, and the choice of their government, leaving them free to express their gratitude to those who had delivered them, or if they so willed it, to repay them by forgetfulness.
There the illusion commenced: they thought there was only Caesar between the people and liberty, and that when Caesar no longer existed liberty would naturally reappear; but on the day that they called on the citizens to resume their rights, no one answered, and no one could answer, for there were no longer any citizens. “For a very long time,” says Appian on this occasion, “the Roman people was only a mixture of all the nations. The freedmen were confounded with the citizens, the slave had no longer anything to distinguish him from his master. In sum, the distributions of corn that were made at Rome gathered the beggars, the idle, and the scoundrels from all Italy.”[[358]] This cosmopolitan population, without a past and without traditions, was not the Roman people. The evil was old, and clear-sighted minds must have perceived it for a long time. Cicero seems to suspect it sometimes, especially when he sees with what facility they traffic in votes at the elections. Nevertheless everything continued with apparent regularity, and things went on from the impulse they had received. In such a condition of affairs, and when a state only moves through habit, all is lost if this movement is arrested for a single day. Now, with Caesar, the old machinery ceased to act. The interruption was not long, but the machine was so dilapidated that in stopping it fell to pieces entirely. Thus the conspirators could not restore what was existing before the civil war, and this last shadow of the republic, imperfect as it was, disappeared for ever.
This is why no one either listened to or followed them. Courage must have failed more than one of them in that Capitol where they were left alone, at the sight of the indifference of the populace. Cicero especially was distressed at seeing that they did nothing but make fine speeches. He wished them to act, to profit by the occasion, to die if need were: “Would not death be glorious for such a great cause?” This old man, usually irresolute, had then more resolution than all those young men who had just struck so bold a stroke. And yet, what did he suggest after all? “You must rouse the people again,” he said. We have just seen that the people would not respond. “You must convoke the senate, and take advantage of its fears, to extort some favourable decrees.”[[359]] Assuredly the senate would have voted whatever they wished: but when the decrees had been made, how were they to be executed? All these schemes were insufficient, and it was hardly possible to propose anything more practical to men who were determined not to overstep the law. The only possible chance was boldly to seize the government, to hold it by violence and illegality, not even flinching from proscription, and to replace by an aristocratic dictatorship that popular tyranny they had just destroyed; in a word, to recommence the history of Sulla. Cassius perhaps would have done this, but Brutus had a horror of violence. Tyranny, from whatever side it might come, seemed to him a crime; he would rather have perished with the republic than save it by these means.
The few succeeding days passed in strange alternations. There was a sort of interregnum during which the parties contended with varying success. The people, who had not followed the conspirators, did not support their enemies either. As they did not know on what to rely men acted on both sides at random, and frequently in a contradictory and surprising manner. One day an amnesty was proclaimed, and Brutus went to dine with Lepidus; the next, the conspirators’ houses were set on fire. After having abolished the dictatorship they ratified the acts of the dictator. The friends of Caesar erected a column and an altar to him on the Forum; another friend of Caesar had them thrown down. It was in the midst of this confusion, while the two parties were wavering, undecided and hesitating, without daring to strike, while each was looking around it to see where the real forces were, that those who henceforth were to be the masters appeared.