Ælian[110] has a charming story of Philemon, the comic poet. He was still, apparently, in the full vigour of his powers when he had a vision of nine maidens leaving his house in the Piræus and bidding him farewell. When he awoke, he told his slave the story, and set to work to finish a play with which he was then busy. After completing it to his satisfaction, he wrapped himself in his cloak and lay down upon his bed. His slave came in, and, thinking he was asleep, went to wake him, when he found that he was dead. Ælian challenges the unbelieving Epicureans to deny that the nine maidens were the nine Muses, leaving a house which was so soon to be polluted by death.
Many stories naturally gather round the great struggle for the final mastery of the Roman world which ended in the overthrow of the Republic. Shakespeare has made us familiar with the fate of the poet Cinna, who was actually mistaken for one of the conspirators against Cæsar and murdered by the crowd. He dreamt, on the night before he met his death, that Cæsar invited him to supper, and when he refused the invitation, took him by the hand and forced him down into a deep, dark abyss, which he entered with the utmost horror.
But there is a story connected with the crossing of the Rubicon by Cæsar that certainly deserves to be better known than it is.[111] It is only fitting that an event fraught with such momentous consequences should have a supernatural setting of some kind; and Suetonius relates that while Cæsar was still hesitating whether he should declare himself an enemy of his country by crossing the little river that bounded his province at the head of an army, a man of heroic size and beauty suddenly appeared, playing upon a reed-pipe. Some of the troops, several trumpeters among them, ran up to listen, when the man seized a trumpet, blew a loud blast upon it, and began to cross the Rubicon. Cæsar at once decided to advance, and the men followed him with redoubled enthusiasm after what they had just seen.
It is to Plutarch that we owe the famous story of the apparition that visited Brutus in his tent the night before the battle of Philippi, and again during the battle. Shakespeare represents it to be Cæsar's ghost, but has otherwise strictly followed Plutarch. It would be absurd to give the scene in any other words than Shakespeare's.[112]
Brutus. How ill this taper burns! Ha! who comes here?
I think it is the weakness of mine eyes
That shapes this monstrous apparition.
It comes upon me. Art thou any thing?
Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil,Ghost. Thy evil spirit, Brutus.
Brutus.Why com'st thou?
Ghost. To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.
Brutus. Well; then I shall see thee again?
Ghost.Ay, at Philippi.
Brutus. Why, I will see thee at Philippi, then.
Now I have taken heart, thou vanishest:
Ill spirit, I would hold more talk with thee.
But it had already disappeared, only to meet Brutus again on the fatal day that followed.
FOOTNOTES:
[104] Ep., vii. 27.
[105] Plutarch, Dion, ii. 55.
[106] Dio Cassius, 55. 1. Cp. Suet., Claud., i.