The chief conspirator was Cassius, who like Brutus had fought for Pompey, and had been pardoned and even favoured by Cæsar.
Cassius was crafty and ambitious, and his dark lean face smiled as he thought how soon Cæsar’s power would now be at an end. Brutus, too, was one of the most active conspirators.
Before long the plot was complete, and the conspirators determined that it should be carried out quickly, lest it should be discovered. For already more than sixty or seventy people had been told the terrible secret.
CHAPTER CXVI
THE ASSASSINATION OF CÆSAR
An important meeting was arranged to be held in the Senate house on the 15th March 44 B.C. The conspirators fixed this, the Ides of March, as the day on which they would assassinate the Dictator. They knew that he would come to the Senate unarmed and without guards, as was his custom.
On the evening of the 14th, as Cæsar sat at supper, the conversation, strangely enough, was about the kind of death that one would wish to die.
The Dictator glanced up from the letters he was reading and said abruptly, ‘A sudden one,’ and then went on with his reading.
Rumours of the plot may have got abroad, but whether that was so or not, Cæsar had for some days been told of evil omens, and had been warned to beware of danger.
Among other warnings, a soothsayer had told him that evil would befal him on the Ides of March. Now the Ides of March fell on the 15th of the month.