A Manual of Ancient History

by M. E. Thalheimer

176. Though occupying the highest rank as a general, Cæsar was more a statesman than a warrior, and desired to base his government, not upon military power, but upon the confidence of the people. He was already in his fortieth year when he first assumed the command of an army. Still, his great works as a ruler had all to be executed in the brief intervals of military affairs. The five and a half years which followed his accession to supreme power were occupied by seven important campaigns; and he was about undertaking an expedition against Parthia, to avenge the overthrow of Crassus, when a violent death ended his career. It is said that he desired, before his departure, to receive the title of king.

A conspiracy had already been formed among his personal enemies. It was now strengthened by the accession of several honest republicans, who dreamed that the death of the dictator would restore freedom to the state. At the festival of the Lupercalia, Feb. 15, B. C. 44, the crown was offered to Cæsar, by Antony, his colleague in the consulship; but, perceiving the consternation of the people, he declined it. On the 15th of the following month, in spite of many warnings, Cæsar repaired to the Senate-house. He had just taken his seat, when one of the conspirators stooped and touched his robe. At this signal, Casca stabbed him in the shoulder; the others thronged around with their drawn swords or daggers.

Instead of the flattering crowd, nothing but murderous faces and the gleam of steel met his eye on every side. Still he stood at bay, wounding one assailant with his stylus, throwing back another, and disarming a third, until he received a wound from the hand of Brutus, whom, though an adherent of Pompey, he had honored with his confidence and loaded with benefits. Then drawing his mantle about him, with the reproachful exclamation, “And thou, Brutus!” he fell at the base of Pompey’s statue and expired.

177. Brutus, raising aloft his bloody dagger, cried aloud to Cicero, “Rejoice, father of our country, for Rome is free!” Never was rejoicing more unfounded. If Brutus and his accomplices could have restored to the Roman people the simple and self-denying virtues of the olden time, Rome would indeed have been free. But Cæsar understood the times better than his assassins. In cutting off the only man who was capable of ruling with clear insight, firmness, and beneficence, they had plunged the state again into the horrors of civil war, and made it the easy prey of a less able and less liberal despot. Senate and people were at first paralyzed by the suddenness of the change, and by fear of a return to the old scenes of proscription. Antony, now sole consul, had time to possess himself of Cæsar’s papers and treasures; and by his funeral oration over the body of the dictator—especially by reading his will, in which all the Roman people were remembered with great liberality—he roused the indignant passions of the crowd against the murderers.

Antony was for a time the most popular man in Rome, but a rival soon appeared in the person of Octavia´nus, the grand-nephew and adopted son of Julius Cæsar. This young man, who had been educated with great care under the eye of his adoptive father, arrived from the camp at Apollonia and claimed his inheritance, out of which he carefully distributed the legacies to soldiers and people. Cicero was led to look upon him as the hope of the state, and in his third great series of orations, called the Philip´pics, he destroyed the popularity of Antony and his influence with the Senate. Two of Antony’s legions deserted to Octavian, and Antony himself, in two battles, was routed and driven across the Alps.

178. The two consuls for the year 43 B. C. were slain in the battle before Mu´tina. Octavian, returning to Rome, compelled the popular assembly to elect him to that office, though he was only nineteen years of age. He was appointed to carry on the war against Antony, who had now been joined by Lepidus—formerly master of the horse to Julius Cæsar—and was now descending from the Alps with a formidable army of seventeen legions. But the Senate, almost equally afraid of Antony and Octavian, revoked the outlawry of the former; and the latter, disgusted with its vacillations, resolved upon a league with the two commanders, whose forces alone could give him victory over the assassins.

On a small island in the Reno, near Bono´nia (Bologna), the three met, and the Second Triumvirate, of Antony, Cæsar Octavianus, and Lepidus, was then formed, B. C. 43, proposing to share between them for five years the government of the Roman world. A proscription followed, in which Cicero, though the friend of Cæsar, was sacrificed to the hatred of Antony. The illustrious orator was murdered near his own villa at For´miæ, and his head and right hand were nailed to the rostrum at Rome, from which he had so often discoursed of the sacred rights of citizens. Two thousand knights and three hundred senators perished in this proscription. Those who could escape took refuge with Sextus Pompey in Sicily, or with Brutus and Cassius in Greece.

179. Antony and Octavian crossed the Adriatic, and defeated the last of the conspirators in two battles at Philippi, in the autumn of 42 B. C. Both Brutus and Cassius ended their lives by suicide. Cæsar returned to Italy, where a new civil war was stirred up by Fulvia, the wife of Antony, and Lucius, his brother. Lucius Antonius threw himself into Perusia, where he was besieged and taken by Octavian. The common citizens were spared, but 300 or 400 nobles were slain at the altar of Julius Cæsar, on the anniversary of his death, March 15, B. C. 40. Fulvia died in Greece, and a new agreement between the triumvirs, called the Peace of Brundisium, was sealed by the marriage of Antony with Octavia, the sister of the younger Cæsar.

In the new division of the civilized world, Antony received the East; Octavian, Italy and Spain; and Lepidus, Africa. Sextus Pompey, whose fleets, commanding the sea, threatened the capital with famine, was admitted, next year, to a sort of partnership with the triumvirate, in which he received the islands of the western Mediterranean, on condition of his supplying Rome with grain. The conditions of this treaty were never fulfilled, and a two years’ war between Pompey and Octavian was the result. It was ended B. C. 36, by a great sea-fight off Nau´lochus. Agrippa, the intimate friend of Cæsar, routed the forces of Pompey, who fled in despair to Asia, and the following year was captured and put to death. His land forces, deserted by their leader, prevailed upon Lepidus to become their general, and declare war against Octavian. But the young Cæsar acted with an intrepidity worthy of his name. He went unarmed and almost alone into the camp of Lepidus, and by his eloquence persuaded them to desert their unworthy commander and be faithful to himself.