[605] It was usual for the Romans in their wills to substitute an heres, one or more (in the Roman sense), to take the property in case the person who was first named in the will for any reason did not take it. Cæsar's first heres was his great nephew, C. Octavius, afterwards Augustus.
[606] It was the general opinion that some roll or writing was put into Cæsar's hands, which informed him of the conspiracy; but, as is usual in such cases, there were different statements current about the particulars of this circumstance. Compare Dion Cassius, 44. c. 18.
[607] According to Dion Cassius (41. c. 52) the Senate was assembled in the curia (συνέδριον), which Pompeius had built.
[608] The two sects of Greek philosophy that had most adherents among the Romans were those of the Epicureans and the Stoics. Cassius, as an Epicurean, would have no faith in any superhuman powers; but in the moments of danger a man's speculative principles give way to the common feelings of all mankind. I have kept Plutarch's word "enthusiasm," which is here to be understood not in our sense, but in the Greek sense of a person under some superhuman influence.
[609] This is a mistake of Plutarch, who has stated the fact correctly in his Life of Brutus (c. 17). It was Caius Trebonius who kept Antonius engaged in talk, as we learn from Dion Cassius (44. c. 10), Appianus (Civil War, ii. 117), and Cicero, who in a Letter to Trebonius (Ad Diversos, x. 28) complains that Trebonius had taken Antonius aside, and so saved his life.
[610] Some would write Tullius Cimber. See the note of Sintenis. Atilius may be the true name.
[611] P. Servilius Casca was at this time a tribune of the Plebs (Dion Cassius, 44. c. 52).
[612] Dion Cassius adds (44. c. 19) that Cæsar said to M. Brutus, "And you too, my son." Probably the story of Cæsar's death received many embellishments. Of his three and twenty wounds, only one was mortal according to the physician Antistius (Suetonius, Cæsar, 82): but though the wounds severally might not have been mortal, the loss of blood from all might have caused death. Suetonius (c. 82) adds, that Cæsar pierced the arm of Cassius (he mentions two Cassii among the conspirators) with his graphium (stylus). See the notes in Burmann's edition of Suetonius.
The circumstances of the death of Cæsar are minutely stated by Drumann, Geschichte Roms, Julii, p. 728, &c. The reflections of Dion Cassius (44. c. 1, 2) on the death of Cæsar are worth reading. He could not see that any public good was accomplished by this murder; nor can anybody else.
[613] Cicero was among them. He saw, as he says himself (Ad Attic. xiv. 10), the tyrant fall, and he rejoiced. In his letters he speaks with exultation of the murder, and commends the murderers. But he was not let into the secret. They were afraid to trust him. If he had been in the conspiracy, he says (Philipp. ii. 14) he would have made clean work; he would have assassinated all the enemies of liberty; in other words, all the chief men of Cæsar's party. He had abjectly humbled himself before Cæsar, who treated him with kind respect. Like all genuine cowards he was cruel when he had power.