THE END OF THE AFRICAN WAR
The suicide of Cato was the consistent act of a heathen philosopher,
determined at least to maintain the purity of his soul uncontaminated by
base compliances. Assuredly the calm dignity of its execution demands
our respect and compassion, if not the principle on which it was based.
Far different was the manner in which the rude barbarian Juba and the
coarse soldier Petreius ran forward to meet their ends. They had escaped
together from the field of battle, and the Numidian offered to provide
shelter for his companion in one of his own strongholds. The Roman
province was so ill-disposed towards the barbarian chief that he was
obliged to hide himself by day in the most secluded villages, and roam
the country on his homeward flight during the hours of darkness. In this
way he reached Zama, his second capital, where his wives and children,
together with his most valuable treasures, were deposited. This place he
had taken pains to fortify at the commencement of the war, with works
of great extent and magnitude. But on his appearance before the walls,
the inhabitants deliberately shut their gates against him and refused to
admit the enemy of the victorious Roman. Before setting out on his last
expedition, Juba had constructed an immense pyre in the centre of the
city, declaring his intention, if fortune went ill with him, of heaping
upon it everything he held most dear and precious, together with the
murdered bodies of the principal citizens, and then taking his own place
on the summit, and consuming the whole in one solemn conflagration.
But the Numidians had no sympathy with this demonstration of their
sovereign’s despair, and resolved not to admit him within their walls.
Juba having tried in vain every kind of menace and entreaty, to which no
reply was vouchsafed, at last retired, but only to experience a similar
reception in every other quarter to which he resorted. He at least had
little to hope from the clemency which the victor had extended to his
conquered countrymen. His companion, hard as his own iron corslet,
scorned to accept it. The fugitives supped together, and, flushed with
the fumes of the banquet, challenged each other to mutual slaughter. They
were but unequally matched; the old veteran was soon despatched by his
more active antagonist, but Juba was constant in his resolution, and only
demanded the assistance of an attendant to give himself the last fatal
stroke.
Nor was the fate of Considius, of Afranius, and Faustus Sulla less
disastrous. The first of these had abandoned the defence of Thysdrus
at the approach of the forces which Cæsar despatched against it, and
attempted to make his escape with the treasures he had amassed into
the territories, until now friendly, of the Numidian chieftains. He
was destroyed, for the sake of his hoarded booty, by the Gætulians who
accompanied him in his flight. The others had retained the command of
a squadron of Scipio’s cavalry, and after burning one town which had
shut its gates against them had made a desperate attack on the military
post which Cato maintained outside the walls of Utica, to wreak an
unworthy vengeance on the Cæsarian partisans there kept in custody.
Baffled in this object they had made their way into Utica, while Cato
still commanded there, and had added bitterness to his last days by the
violence and ferocity of their behaviour. From thence they led their
ruffians along the coast in the hope of finding means of transporting
them into Spain. But on their way they fell in with Sittius, who was
advancing to join Cæsar; their men were routed and themselves taken. The
bands of the Roman adventurer carried on war with the same brutality as
the barbarians among whom they practised it. The captors quarrelled among
themselves; their passions were inflamed, perhaps, in the distribution of
the prisoners and the booty; and both Afranius and Faustus were killed in
the fray which ensued. But the massacre of the son of the dictator Sulla,
accidental as it was, or at least unauthorized, could hardly fail of
being charged as a deliberate act upon the representative of Marius.
While his foes were thus flying and falling, Cæsar advanced triumphantly
from the scene of his last exploit, receiving the submission of the
towns on his way, carrying off the stores and treasure collected for
his enemies’ use, and leaving garrisons to retain them in fidelity. As
he drew near to Utica he was met by L. Cæsar, whose petition for mercy
seems to have been confined to his own person, and to whom, as well
as to a long list of distinguished nobles, the conqueror extended the
promise of his protection. He lamented with every appearance of sincerity
that Cato had robbed him of the pleasure of pardoning one who, of all
his antagonists, had been the most obstinate in his opposition, and
the most inveterate in his hatred. The fatal compliance of the Utican
senators, who, not content with obeying his enemies’ commands, had
contributed money to their cause, furnished him with a specious pretence
for rifling their coffers of the treasures he now most urgently needed.
His requisitions amounted to two hundred millions of sesterces. At the
same time the city of Thapsus was mulcted in two millions, and the
company of Roman traders in three. Hadrumetum paid down three millions,
and its Roman capitalists five. Leptis and Thysdrus also suffered in due
proportion. A grand auction was held at Zama for the sale of all the
objects of Juba’s royal state, and of the goods of the Roman citizens
who had borne arms under the tyrant’s orders. Upon the people who had so
boldly defied their sovereign, and refused him admittance within their
walls, honours and largesses were munificently showered, and the taxes
heretofore demanded for the royal treasury were partially remitted by the
collectors of the republic. But the country of Numidia was deprived of
its independence, and definitely reduced to the form of a province, under
the proconsulate of Sallust. The rewarded and the punished acquiesced
equally in the conqueror’s dispositions; the submission of Africa to his
authority was from thenceforth complete. The Uticans were allowed to
commemorate with a funeral and a statue the humane and noble conduct of
their late governor.
THE RETURN TO ROME
Cæsar settled the affairs of Africa with his usual despatch, and sailed
from Utica on the fourteenth day of April, 46 B.C. On his way to Italy,
he stopped at Caralis, in Sardinia. The aid which the island had afforded
to his adversaries furnished him with a decent pretext for extorting
from the inhabitants large sums of money. At the end of the same month
he again weighed anchor; but the prevalence of easterly winds drove him
repeatedly to shore, and he at last reached Rome on the twenty-eighth day
after his departure from the Sardinian capital. The reports he received
at this time of the revival of the republican cause in Spain did not
give him much uneasiness. Cneius had been detained by sickness in the
Baleares, and the fugitives from the field of Thapsus had been almost all
cut off in their attempts to reach the point to which their last hopes
were directed. The legionaries who had mutinied against Cassius Longinus
were still either unsatisfied with their treatment under the commander
who had superseded him, or fearful of their general’s vengeance when
a fitting opportunity should arrive. It was from Cæsar’s own soldiers
that the invitation had gone forth to the republican chiefs to renew
the struggle on the soil of Spain. The spirit of the old commonwealth
still survived in many of the towns of Bætica; promises of support were
freely given; but the remnant of the African armament was contemptible
both in numbers and ability. Of all the haughty nobles who had thronged
the tent of Pompey at Luceria or Thessalonica, not one with a name
known to history remained in arms, except Labienus alone. He indeed had
succeeded in making his escape from Africa, in company with Varus; but
the insurgents had already placed themselves under the command of Scapula
and Aponius, officers of their own, nor would they suffer themselves to
be transferred from them to any other except the son of the great Pompey.
The extent to which the flame of insurrection had spread was probably
unknown at this time to Cæsar. He was impatient to reap at last the fruit
of so much bloodshed, to assume the post of honour he had won, and to
work out the principles and objects of so many years of anticipation. A
distant and contemptible outbreak might be subdued without meeting it in
person. Accordingly, C. Didius, an officer of no eminent reputation, was
sent with a naval and military force to the succour of Trebonius, whom,
however, he found already expelled from his government by the growing
force of the new movement.
Meanwhile Rome had sunk, during the conqueror’s absence, into a state
of torpid tranquillity. The universal conviction that the dictator’s
power was irresistible had quelled all further heavings of the spirit
of discontent. Dolabella had been gratified with a command in the late
campaign; while others, in whose fidelity and military skill he could
rely, had been left behind to overawe disaffection. The most illustrious
of the nobility having now no occasion to remain at Rome for the sake of
paying court to a jealous ruler, had retired generally to their country
seats; but Cicero seems to have feared giving occasion for distrust if he
withdrew himself from the broad eye of public observation. He occupied
himself, however, in his philosophical studies, and could rejoice that
he had never, like so many of his contemporaries when plunging into the
excitements of political life, abandoned the literary pursuits common to
them in youth. While he still regarded the contest in Africa with the
sentiments of a true republican, he confessed with a sigh that though the
one cause was assuredly the more just, yet the victory of either would
be equally disastrous. He probably held aloof from the proceedings of
the servile senate, which occupied itself during the months of Cæsar’s
absence in devising new honours for his acceptance. First of all it
decreed the religious ceremony of a thanksgiving of forty days, being
twice the term to which the compliance of popular gratitude had ever
previously extended, and it was by the length of the observance that
the honour was estimated. Next it appointed that the victor’s triumphal
car should be drawn by horses of white, the sacred colour, and that
the number of his attendant lictors should be doubled. He was to be
requested to undertake the office of censor for three years, under a new
title, which should not remind the citizens too closely of the times of
republican liberty, that of _præfectus morum_, or regulator of manners.
The changes which the revolutionary storm had effected in the condition
of so many of the citizens justified a resort to the old constitutional
resource for purging the senate of scandalous or impoverished members,
and infusing new blood into its veins.
The most substantial of all these tributes to Cæsar’s ascendency was the
decree by which he was appointed dictator for a period of ten years; for
thus the initiative of legal measures was united in his hands with the
command of the legions both at home and abroad. Other specious honours,
in the taste of the times, were accumulated upon him. His chair was to
be placed between those of the consuls in the assembly of the senate; he
was to preside and give the signal in the games of the circus; and his
figure in ivory was to be borne in procession among the images of the
gods, and laid up in the Capitol, opposite the seat of Jupiter himself.
A statue was to be erected to him in bronze, standing upon a globe, with
the inscription, “Cæsar the demi-god.” His name was to be engraved on
the entablature of the Capitol, in the place of that of Catulus, its
true restorer. The historian who recounts these honours assures us that
many others besides these were offered; he has only omitted to specify
them because Cæsar did not think fit to accept them. It is difficult
to imagine to what lower depth of obsequiousness the senate could have
descended, or what higher dignities the conqueror would have rejected.
CÆSAR’S TRIUMPHS
The time had now arrived for the celebration of the Gallic triumph, which
had been so long postponed. In the interval, the imperator’s victories
had been multiplied, and the ranks of his veterans had been recruited
by fresh enlistments; so that every soldier who had shared in his later
perils and successes demanded the reward of participating in his honours.
Cæsar claimed not one, but four triumphs: the first, for his conquest of
the Gauls; the second for his defeat of Ptolemy; another, for his victory
over Pharnaces; and the last, for the overthrow of Juba. But he carefully
avoided all reference to what were in reality the most brilliant of his
achievements. In Spain and Thessaly he had routed the disciplined legions
of his own countrymen; but their defeat brought no accession of honour
or territory to the republic. The glory it reflected on the victor was
dubious and barren. The four triumphs were celebrated, with intervals of
a few days between each, that the interests of the public might not pall
with satiety. The first procession formed in the Campus Martius, outside
the walls of the city. It defiled through the triumphal gate at the foot
of the Capitoline Hill, and crossed the deep hollow of the Velabrum
and Forum Boarium, on its way to the Circus Maximus, which occupied
the valley between the Palatine and Aventine. In passing through the
Velabrum, the chariot in which the imperator stood, happened to break
down; a mischance which so affected him that he never afterwards, it is
said, ascended a vehicle without repeating a charm.
The long procession wound round the base of the Palatine, skirting the
Aventine and Cælian hills, to the point where the arch of Constantine now
stands. There it began the ascent of the gentle slope which separates
the basin of the Colosseum from that of the Roman Forum. It followed
the same track which now leads under the arch of Titus, paved at this
day with solid masses of hewn stone, which may possibly have re-echoed
to the tramp of Cæsar’s legions. Inclining a little to the right at the
point where it gained the summit of the ridge and looked down upon the
comitium and rostra, in the direction of the Capitol, it passed before
the spot where the temple of Julius was afterwards built; thence it
skirted the right side of the Forum, under the arch of Fabius, till it
reached a point just beyond the existing arch of Severus, where the two
roads branched off, the one to the Capitoline temple, the other to the
Mamertine prison. Here it was that Cæsar took the route of triumph to the
left, while Vercingetorix was led away to the right, and strangled in the
subterranean dungeon. The Gallic hero doubtless met with firmness and
dignity the fate to which he had so long been doomed, while his conqueror
was exhibiting a melancholy spectacle of human infirmity, crawling up
the steps of the Capitol on his knees, to avert, by an act of childish
humiliation, the wrath of the avenging Nemesis. The next instance of
similar degradation recorded is that of the emperor Claudius, who being
corpulent and clumsy performed the ungraceful feat with the support of an
arm on either side. The practice was probably of no unusual occurrence,
and was deeply rooted, we may believe, in ancient and popular prejudices.
A remnant of it still exists, and may be witnessed by the curious, even
at the present day, on the steps of the Ara Cœli and at the Santa Scala
of the Lateran.
[Illustration: A SACRIFICATOR]
The days of triumph which succeeded passed over with uninterrupted good
fortune. The populace were gratified with the sight of the Egyptian
princess Arsinoe led as a captive at the conqueror’s wheels; but she was
spared the fate of the Gallic chieftain out of favour to her sister,
or perhaps out of pity to her sex. The son of the king of Numidia who
followed the triumphal car was also spared, and lived to receive back
his father’s crown from Augustus. Though Cæsar abstained from claiming
the title of a triumph over his countrymen, he did not scruple to parade
their effigies among the shows of the procession. The figures or pictures
of the vanquished chiefs were carried on litters, and represented the
manner of their deaths. Scipio was seen leaping desperately into the sea;
Cato plunging the sword into his own bowels; Juba and Petreius engaged
in mortal duel; Lentulus stabbed by the Egyptian assassin; Domitius
pierced perhaps in the back, in token of his flight. The figure of Pompey
alone was withheld for fear of the commiseration it might excite among
the people whose favourite he had so lately been. Nor, as it was, were
the spectators unmoved. Upon the unfeeling display of Roman defeat and
disaster they reflected with becoming sensibility. But the pictures of
Achillas and Pothinus were received with unmingled acclamations, and loud
was the cry of scorn at the exhibition of Pharnaces flying in confusion
from the field. After all, the most impressive part of the ceremony must
have been the appearance of the rude veterans whose long files closed
the procession. With what ignorant wonder must the children of Gaul and
Iberia, of Epirus and Africa, have gazed at the splendour of the city, of
which the fame resounded in their native cabins! What contempt must they
have felt for the unarmed multitudes grinning around them! How reckless
must they have been of the dignity of the consuls and senators, they
who claimed the license of shouting derisive songs in the ears of their
own commander! Little did they think that grave historians would sum up
their coarse camp jokes in evidence against the fame of their illustrious
leader; still less did they dream of the new power which the military
class was thenceforth to constitute in the state. Rome in fact was their
own; but it was a secret they were not yet to discover.
The satisfaction of his armed supporters, however, was the first
condition on which the supreme power of the dictator must henceforth
be maintained in the city. It was a matter, indeed, of hardly less
importance to secure the good humour of the urban population. While the
soldiers receive each a donative of twenty thousand sesterces, the claims
of the much larger multitude of the free citizens were not undervalued
severally at four hundred; especially as they received the additional
gratification of one year’s remission of house rent. It does not appear
how this indulgence differed from that for which Cælius and Dolabella had
raised their commotions; but the dictator had so strenuously resisted
every attempt to set aside the just claims of creditors on all previous
occasions, that it can hardly be doubted that in this case he gave the
landlords compensation from the public treasury. The mass of the citizens
was feasted at a magnificent banquet, at which the Chian and Falernian
wines, the choicest produce of Greece and Italy, flowed freely from the
hogshead, and towards which six thousand lampreys, the most exquisite
delicacy of the Roman epicure, were furnished by a single breeder.
The mighty multitude reclined before twenty-two thousand tables; each
table having its three couches, and each couch, we may suppose, its
three guests; so that the whole number feasted may have amounted to
nearly two hundred thousand. When Cæsar undertook the functions of his
censorship, the number of recipients of the public distributions of corn
was estimated at 320,000. Upon a scrutiny into their claims as genuine
and resident citizens, he was enabled to strike off as many as 150,000
from this list. Adding to the remainder the senators and knights, and
the few wealthy individuals who might have scorned to partake of a state
provision, the sum will correspond pretty accurately with the number of
the imperial guests as above computed.
The public shows with which these gratifications were accompanied were
carried out on a scale of greater magnificence than even those recently
exhibited by Pompey. There was nothing in which the magistrates of the
republic vied more ostentatiously with one another than in the number of
wild beasts and gladiators which they brought into the arena. The natural
taste of the Italian people for shows and mummery degenerated more and
more into an appetite for blood; but in this, as in every other respect,
it was Cæsar’s ambition to outdo his predecessors, and the extraordinary
ferocity and carnage of the exhibitions which he complacently witnessed
excited a shudder even in the brutal multitude. The combatants in the
games of the Circus were either professional gladiators, who sold their
services for a certain term of years, or captives taken in war, or
lastly public criminals. But Cæsar was, perhaps, the first to encourage
private citizens to make an exhibition of their skill and valour in these
mortal combats. He allowed several men of equestrian rank, and one the
son of a prætor, to demean themselves in the eyes of their countrymen
by this exposure to the public gaze. It was only when a senator named
Fulvius Setinus asked permission thus to prostitute his dignity, that the
dictator was at last roused to restrain the growing degradation.
If the people of Rome were shocked at the bloodshed which they were
invited to applaud, it seems that they were offended also at the vast
sums which were lavished on these ostentatious spectacles. They would
have preferred, perhaps, that the donative to themselves should have
been greater, and the soldiers even exhibited symptoms of discontent and
mutiny in consequence. No instance of Cæsar’s profuse expenditure excited
greater admiration than his stretching a silken awning over the heads of
the spectators in the Circus. This beautiful material was brought only
from the farthest extremity of India, and was extremely rare and precious
at Rome at that time. Three centuries later it was still so costly that a
Roman emperor forbade his wife the luxury of a dress of the finest silk
unmixed with a baser fabric. But a more permanent and worthy object of
imperial expenditure was the gorgeous Forum of which Cæsar had long since
laid the foundation with the spoils of his Gallic Wars. Between the old
Roman Forum and the foot of the Quirinal, he caused a large space to be
enclosed with rows of marble corridors, connecting in one suite halls of
justice, chambers of commerce, and arcades for public recreation. In the
centre was erected a temple to Venus the ancestress, the patroness for
whom Cæsar had woven a breastplate of British pearls, and whose name he
had used as his watchword on the days of his greatest victories. He now
completed the series of his triumphal shows by the dedication of this
favourite work. It remained for centuries a conspicuous monument of the
fame and magnificence of the first of the Cæsars. His successors were
proud to cluster new arches and columns by its side, and bestowed their
names upon the edifices they erected in connection with it. Finally,
Trajan cut through the elevated ridge which united the Capitoline with
the Quirinal, and impeded the further extension of the imperial forums.
He filled the hollow with a new range of buildings, occupying as much
ground as the united works of his predecessors in this quarter. The depth
of his excavation is indicated, it is said, by the height of the pillar
which bears his name.
THE LAST CAMPAIGN
[Sidenote: [46-45 B.C.]]
Our review of the dictator’s proceedings in the discharge of his civil
functions must be postponed, but only for a moment, to relate the short
episode of his last military exploit. The despatches of his lieutenants
in Spain represented that province as rapidly falling into the hands
of the republican faction. Varus and Labienus had escaped from Africa,
and joined the standard under which Scapula marshalled the disaffected
legions in Spain. Cneius Pompeius had also issued from his retreat in
the Balearic Isles, and as soon as he appeared in their camp every chief
of the oligarchy waived his own pretensions to the command in deference
to the man who represented the fame and fortunes of their late leader.
Yet Scapula had the confidence of the soldiers, Labienus was an officer
of tried ability and reputation, and Varus had at least held the
highest military commands, while Cneius himself was personally unknown
to the legions in Spain, and his only achievement in war had been a
dashing naval exploit. So cowed by its repeated reverses was the spirit
of the old Roman party, which had revived for a moment in Africa with
vain exultation at finding itself relieved from the ascendency of its
own military champion. Cneius, on his part, seems to have regarded the
renewed contest in the light of a private quarrel. His war-cry was not
“Rome,” “Liberty,” or “The Senate,” but “Pietas,” “Filial Duty.”
The disaffection among Cæsar’s soldiers had become widely spread; a
large body of them had enrolled themselves under their new leaders;
their numbers had been augmented by provincial enlistments; even slaves
had been drafted into the ranks; while the cities and states of the
peninsula lent their aid more or less openly to the cause. It was not
in the remoter parts of the province or among the half-subdued native
principalities, but in the centre of Roman influence and civilisation,
in Corduba itself, that the standard of the adventurers was unfurled.
Cæsar had completed the ceremonies of his quadruple triumph, and was
deeply engaged in the arduous task of legislation for the new system of
government which he had undertaken to raise, when he found it necessary
to postpone every other occupation to meet his enemies once more in arms.
So uncertain and tedious was the navigation of those days that he may
have chosen the land route across the Alps and Pyrenees, for the sake of
reaching his destination with greater speed.[123]
The details of the campaign into which he immediately plunged are
given, but very obscurely, in the last of the series of contemporary
memoirs which have hitherto been our guides throughout the military
history of the period. In point of composition it betrays less literary
accomplishment than any of its kindred works. The rude soldier who
seems to have been its author had no hesitation in recording in their
undisguised enormity the cruelties which disgraced the conduct of both
parties. Cæsar’s character for humanity suffers more in this than in
any other contemporary narrative of his actions. The campaign was,
indeed, a series of butcheries on either side, but Cneius was, perhaps,
the most savagely ferocious of all the captains of the civil wars. The
scene of the last act of Roman liberty was laid in the valley of the
Guadalquivir and the defiles of the Sierra de Tolar. After a variety
of desultory movements, of which we obtain from the narrative only an
indistinct notion, we find the rival armies at last drawn up in hostile
array on the field of Munda. Cæsar was this time superior in numbers, and
especially in cavalry; but the enemy was well posted, and fought well:
never, it is said, was the great conqueror brought so near to defeat and
destruction.[b]
“When the armies were going to close, Cæsar, seeing his men go on but
coldly and seem to be afraid, invoked all the gods, beseeching them with
hands lifted up to heaven, not to let the lustre of so many glorious
actions be darkened in one day, and running through the ranks, encouraged
his soldiers, taking off his head-piece that he might be better known.
But do what he could, he could not raise their spirits, till snatching a
buckler out of a soldier’s hand, he said to the tribunes who were about
him, ‘This shall be the last day of my life, and of your engagement in
the war.’ And at the same time made furiously towards the enemy; he had
scarce advanced ten feet but he had above two hundred darts thrown at
him, some of which he avoided by bending his body, and others received on
his buckler, when the tribunes ran with emulation to get about him, and
the whole army thereupon charging with all their fury, they fought all
day with divers advantage, and at length towards the evening the victory
fell to Cæsar, and it is reported that hereupon he was heard to say these
words, ‘that he had often fought for victory, but that now he had fought
for life.’
“After the defeat, Pompeius’ men flying into Corduba, Cæsar, to prevent
their escape thither, lest they should rally and renew the fight,
caused the place to be invested by the army, where the soldiers being
so tired that they could not work in the circumvallation, heaped up
together the bodies and armour of the slain, which they kept piled up
with their javelins stuck into the ground, and lay all night under that
kind of rampire. Next morning the city was taken. Of Pompeius’ captains,
Scapula setting up on a pile of wood burned himself; the heads of Varus,
Labienus, and other persons of quality were brought to Cæsar. As for
Pompeius, he fled from the battle with a hundred and fifty horse, bending
his course towards Carteia where his fleet lay; he entered the port in
a litter, and in the habit of a private man. But seeing the seamen had
likewise lost all hopes, he threw himself in a little boat, in which as
he was going out to sea, his foot tangling in the cordage, one of his
people going to cut the rope, by mischance cut his heel, so that to cure
his wound he was forced to go ashore at a small village, where hearing
that Cæsar’s horsemen were coming, he took his flight through a country
covered with thorns and briers, which added to his wound, so that being
tired and sitting down at last under a tree, he was found by those who
gave him chase, and slain, generously defending himself; his head was
carried to Cæsar, who caused it to be buried. Thus [says Appian] was
this war ended by one only fight and contrary to the opinion of all the
world.”[g]
Of all the leaders of the senatorial party, Sextus Pompeius was now the
only survivor. He had made his escape from the field of Munda, and had an
asylum in the wildest districts of the Hither Province. He had nothing to
hope from the clemency of the conqueror, who had shown unusual bitterness
against his family by the confiscation of their patrimonial estates, and
was now preparing to celebrate his triumph over them as foreigners and
enemies of the state. Thus driven to despair, he infused new spirit into
the predatory habits among the tribes among whom he had taken refuge, and
continued to defy the power of the provincial authorities. Cæsar occupied
himself for some months in reconstituting the government of Spain, taking
precautions for the entire subjugation of the party which had shown
such vitality in that quarter. The battle of Munda was fought on the
seventeenth of March, but the dictator was not at liberty to return to
Italy till September, after an absence of ten months.
The hostile attitude of the last of the Pompeians in Spain was not the
only exception to the tranquillity which prevailed generally throughout
the empire. In Gaul the Bellovaci had risen in arms; but this movement
was expeditiously repressed by Decimus Brutus, the proconsul of the
newly conquered province. In the extreme East, however, the republican
party still continued to make head, under the leadership of Cæcilius
Bassus. Their champion was an obscure knight, and their forces were
insignificant, consisting principally of two legions which Bassus had
seduced from their allegiance to Sextus Cæsar, the commander to whose
care Syria had been entrusted by his kinsman. But the proximity of the
Parthians, ever on the watch for an opportunity to wound the sides of
their great rivals, rendered any movement in this quarter formidable.
Sextus Cæsar was murdered by his soldiers, and Bassus took possession of
the city of Apamea, which, with the assistance of the national enemies,
he continued to keep against the petty attempts which were made to
dislodge him. The dictator kept his eye upon him, and already meditated
his destruction; but for the present he was content to leave his temerity
unpunished, while he applied himself to the consolidation of his power by
bold and comprehensive legislation at home.[b]
THE LAST TRIUMPH
[Sidenote: [45 B.C.]]
On the 13th of September, 45, the dictator appeared once more at the
gates of Rome, but he did not triumph till the commencement of October.
His victory was represented as gained over the Iberians; the miserable
outcasts whom Cneius had banded together were all confounded together
under the common title of strangers and enemies. Two of the dictator’s
lieutenants, Fabius, and Pedius who was also his kinsman, were allowed
the honour of separate triumphs. These ceremonies were followed as usual
with games and festivals, which kept the populace in a fever of delight
and admiration. They had complained that among the numerous spectacles
offered to their view each citizen could witness only a portion, while to
the foreigners who flocked to this great feast of nations, the dramatic
entertainments had been unintelligible. The games were now multiplied in
various quarters of the city, while plays were represented in different
languages for the benefit of every people. The subjects of the empire had
entered Rome as conquerors in Cæsar’s train, and thus he inaugurated the
union of the capital with the provinces. Kings and commonwealths sent
their ambassadors to this mighty congress of nations. Among them were
the Moors and the Numidians, the Gauls and the Iberians, the Britons and
the Armenians, the Germans and the Syrians. The Jews, insulted by Pompey
and rifled by Crassus, offered their willing homage to the champion who
alone of all the Romans had spoken to them in the language of kindliness
and respect. Cleopatra the queen of Egypt came, her crown in her hand,
offering her treasures and her favours to her admirer and preserver. All
in turn had trembled at the official caprices of the Roman knights, and
Cæsar could afford them perhaps no sweeter revenge, nor represent to them
more vividly the extent of his power, than in degrading before their
faces these petty tyrants of the provinces. He compelled one of them,
named Laberius, who was also a dramatic composer, to enact one of his
own comic pieces, that is, to dance and sing upon the stage before the
concourse of citizens and strangers. “Alas!” said the wretched man in his
prologue, “after sixty years of honour I have left my house a knight, to
return to it a mime. I have lived one day too long.” Cæsar restored to
him the golden ring of knighthood, forfeited by this base but compulsory
compliance. He presented him also with a large sum of money, to show
perhaps more completely the prostration of his order.
Such trifling persecutions, whether personal or political in their
objects, are undoubtedly pitiable enough. But it is Cæsar’s glory that
his arm fell heavily upon none of his fellow-citizens. The nephew of
Marius forgot the banishment of his uncle, the ruins of Carthage, and
the marshes of Minturnæ; the avenger of the Sullan revolution scorned
to retaliate the proscriptions; the advocate of Cethegus and Lentulus
refrained from demanding blood for blood. It is worth remarking that
Cicero, the most humane perhaps of his own party, the most moderate in
sentiments, the fairest estimater of men and measures, could hardly
persuade himself of the possibility of Cæsar abstaining from massacre.
Such was the wise man’s reading of the history of his countrymen; and
when at last he found that the conqueror meditated no such use of his
victory, his heart, we fear, still remained untouched, and he never,
perhaps, renounced the secret hope that Cæsar’s opponents would prove
less merciful than himself.
Nor was the conqueror’s clemency confined to sparing the lives of
his opponents. He refrained from confiscation which had been wont to
accompany the edicts of his predecessors. The wealth indeed which was
poured into Rome from the tribute of so many new subjects, and the
plunder of so many temples, rendered it more easy to practise this
unusual liberality. It was ungenerous perhaps to make the estates of
his great rival the chief exception to this rule of moderation. But
Cæsar intended to brand as rebels to constituted authority the men who
renewed the strife after Thapsus, and this confiscation was meant, not
as an insult to the dead, but as a punishment of the living opponent.
The name of the Great Pompey had already passed into the shrine of
history, and the victor was proud of closing the fasti of the republic
with so illustrious a title. Far from approving the precipitation of his
flatterers in removing the statues of Pompey and Sulla, he caused them to
be restored to their places in front of the rostra, among the effigies
of the noblest champions of the free state. Towards the institutions
of the commonwealth he evinced a similar spirit of deference. He
sought no new forms under which to develop his new policy. Sulla had
attempted to revive the aristocratic spirit of the ancient constitution
by overthrowing the existing framework of the laws; but the popular
dictator, in laying the foundation of a more extensive revolution,
studied to preserve it intact. While making himself an autocrat in every
essential exercise of power, he maintained, at least in outward seeming,
all the institutions most opposed to autocracy, the senate, the comitia,
and the magistracies. But he had long before said that the republic was
no more than a shadow, and these very institutions had long been merely
the instruments by which tyrants had worked out the ends of their selfish
ambition.
Cæsar now was fully aware that he could sway the Roman world unchecked by
the interference of a senate, two-thirds of which perhaps were nominees
of his own. Under the sanction of an organic law he had raised the number
of the assembly to nine hundred, thus degrading the honour by making it
cheap; and he still more degraded it in the eyes of the proudest of the
citizens by pouring into it his allies from the provinces, his soldiers,
and even, if we may believe their bitter sarcasms, the captives who had
just followed his car of triumph. The Romans exercised their wits on
these upstart strangers losing themselves amidst the forests of columns
which thronged the public places, and placards were posted recommending
no good citizen to guide them to the senate house. This servile council,
with less respect for appearances than its chief, would have given him
the right of nominating to all curule and plebeian offices, to the
entire abrogation of the electoral prerogatives of the people. But Cæsar
declined to destroy the last shadow of liberty, assured that no man would
venture to sue for a magistracy without his consent. He contented himself
with recommending certain candidates to the suffrages of the people, and
these recommendations were equivalent to commands. Moreover the senate
had imposed upon the elected the obligation to swear before entering on
their office, that they would undertake nothing against the acts of the
dictator, for every act of his was invested with the force of law. The
consuls, prætors, and other officers thus continued to exercise their
ordinary functions under the dictator’s superintendence; the prætors
were increased in number, while the consuls, though never exceeding two
at the same time, were rapidly supplanted, sometimes month by month,
by fresh aspirants whom it was expedient to gratify. As the avowed
champion of the people Cæsar retained the appropriate distinction of the
tribunitian power, which also rendered his person inviolable;[124] while
both the senators and the knights offered to surround him with a guard of
honour of their own members to secure this inviolability by a stronger
instrument than the law. To the reality of power he added its outward
signs. In the senate, the theatre, the circus, and the hall of justice he
might seat himself on his golden chair in a robe of regal magnificence,
while his effigy was impressed upon the public coinage.[125] Apart from
the title of king there is no outward symbol of royalty more appropriate
than that of the hereditary transmission of offices and distinctions. The
imperium, or military supremacy, which had been granted to Cæsar for his
life, was rendered transmissible to his children, and with it the august
distinction of the sovereign pontificate.
In fine, the dictatorship for life and the consulship for five years,
with the right of drawing at pleasure upon the public treasury, secured
to Cæsar the executive power of the state; the imperium gave him the
command of its forces; the tribunate invested him with a veto upon its
legislation. As prince, or first man of the senate, he guided the debates
of that assembly; as controller of manners even its personal composition
depended upon his will. As chief pontiff he interpreted the religion of
the state, and made omens and auguries declare themselves at his bidding.
Thus the finances, the army, the religious system, the executive with a
portion of the judicial power, and indirectly almost the whole functions
of the legislature were combined in the hands of the autocrat of the
Roman commonwealth. Nevertheless he had assumed no title inconsistent
with the principles of the republic, and the precedents of constitutional
history.
CÆSAR’S REFORMS
[Sidenote: [46-44 B.C.]]
What then were the objects to which Cæsar proposed to direct this
enormous accumulation of powers? His cherished scheme for the
amalgamation of the various elements of the empire was necessarily slow
in progress. He did not seek to precipitate it by violent measures.[c]
From his last triumph to his death was somewhat more than five months
(October, 45 B.C.-March, 44 B.C.): from his quadruple triumph to the
Spanish campaign was little more than four months (June-September, 46
B.C.). Into these two brief periods were compressed most of the laws
which bear his name, and of which we will now give a brief account. The
evils which he endeavoured to remedy were of old standing. His long
residence at Rome, and busy engagement in all political matters from
early youth to the close of his consulship, made him familiar with every
sore place and with all the proposed remedies. His own clear judgment,
his habits of rapid decision, and the unlimited power which he held, made
it easier for him to legislate than for others to advise.
The long wars, and the liberality with which he had rewarded his soldiers
and the people at his triumphs, had reduced the treasury to a low ebb. He
began by revising the register of citizens, principally for the purpose
of abridging the list of those who were receiving monthly donations of
grain from the treasury. Numbers of foreigners had been irregularly
placed on the list, and he was able to reduce the list of state paupers
resident in or near Rome from 320,000 to less than half that number. The
treasury felt an immediate and a permanent relief.
But though, for this purpose, Cæsar made severe distinctions between
Roman citizens and the foreign subjects of the republic, no ruler
ever showed himself so much alive to the claims of all classes of her
subjects. Other popular leaders had advocated the cause of the Italians,
and all free people of the peninsula had in the last thirty years been
made Romans: but no one had as yet shown interest in the claims of the
provincial subjects of Rome, except Sertorius, and his object was rather
a transference of power from Italians to Spaniards, than an incorporation
of Spain with Italy. Cæsar was the first acknowledged ruler of the Roman
state who extended his view beyond the politics of the city and took a
really imperial survey of the vast dominions subject to her sway. Towards
those who were at war with Rome he was as relentless as the sternest
Roman of them all; but no one so well as he knew how “to spare the
submissive”; hardly any one except himself felt pleasure in sparing. All
the cities of Transpadane Gaul, already Latin, were raised to the Roman
franchise. The same high privilege was bestowed on many communities of
Transalpine Gaul and Spain. The Gallic legion which he had raised, called
_Alauda_ from the lark which was the emblem on their arms, was rewarded
for its services by the same gift. All scientific men, of whatever
origin, were to be allowed to claim the Roman franchise. After his death
a plan was found among his papers for raising the Sicilian communities to
the rank of Latin citizens.
The imperial character of the great dictator’s government is strongly
shown by his unfulfilled projects. Among these was the draining of the
Pontine marshes, the opening of lakes Lucrinus and Avernus to form a
harbour, a complete survey and map of the whole empire--plans afterwards
executed by Agrippa, the minister of Augustus. Another and more memorable
design was that of a code of laws embodying and organising the scattered
judgments and precedents which at that time regulated the courts. It was
several centuries before this great work was accomplished, by which Roman
law became the law of civilised Europe.
The liberal tendency of the dictator’s mind was shown by the manner in
which he supplied the great gaps which the Civil War had made in the
benches of the senate. Of late years the number of that assembly had been
increased from its original three hundred.[126] Cicero on one occasion
mentions 415 members taking part in the votes, and many of course were
absent. But Cæsar raised it to nine hundred, thus greatly exceeding the
largest number that had ever been counted in its ranks. Many of the new
senators were fortunate soldiers who had served him well. In raising such
men to senatorial rank he followed the example of Sulla. Many also were
enfranchised citizens of the towns of Cisalpine Gaul. The old citizens
were indignant at this invasion of barbarians. “The Gauls,” said one wit,
“had exchanged the trews [trousers] for the toga, and had followed the
conqueror’s triumphal car into the senate.” “It were a good deed,” said
another, “if no one would show the new senators the way to the house.”
The curule offices, however, were still conferred on men of Italian
birth. The first foreigner who reached the consulship was Balbus, a
Spaniard of Gades, the friend of Cæsar; this was four years after the
dictator’s death.
To revive a military population in Italy was not so much the object of
Cæsar as that of former leaders of the people. His veterans received
few assignments of land in Italy. The principal settlements by which
he enriched them were in the provinces. Corinth and Carthage were made
military colonies, and regained somewhat of their ancient splendour and
renown.
He endeavoured to restore the wasted population of Italy by more peaceful
methods. The marriage tie, which had become exceedingly lax in these
profligate times, was encouraged by somewhat singular means. A married
matron was allowed to use more ornaments and more costly carriages than
the sumptuary laws of Rome permitted to women generally. A married man
who had three children born in lawful wedlock at Rome, or four born in
Italy, or five born in the provinces, enjoyed freedom from certain duties.
The great abuse of slave labour was difficult to correct. It was
attempted to apply remedies familiar to despotic governments. An
ordinance was issued that no citizens between twenty and forty years of
age should be absent from Italy for more than three years. An ancient
enactment was revived that on all estates at least one-third of the
labourers should be free men. No doubt these measures were of little
effect.[d]
Viewing the dominions over which he presided as a whole, endowed, or
speedily to be endowed with a general equality of rights, and Rome
herself no longer as an isolated municipium and a mistress-city, but the
centre and capital of the Roman world, he proceeded to lay the groundwork
of a comprehensive scheme of universal legislation. His first care was
to develop the material unity of the vast regions before him, by an
elaborate survey of their local features. A commission of geographers and
mathematicians was appointed, as we have just said, to construct the map
of the Roman Empire, a work so novel and so full of detail, as to require
the labour, as it afterwards proved, of no less than thirty-two years.
Another effort, not less gigantic, was required to impress a moral unity
upon this vast machine. Cæsar prepared to collect and combine in a single
code the fragments of Roman law, dispersed in thousands of precedents,
the edicts of the prætors, the replies of the learned, the decisions of
pontiffs, and the traditions of patrician houses. Such a mighty work
had already been contemplated by Cicero, as the hopeless vision of the
philanthropist and philosopher; but Cæsar’s practical sagacity saw that
it not only ought to be done, but could be done, and doubtless had he
but lived ten or twenty years longer, he would have anticipated by six
centuries the glory of the imperial legislator Justinian.
Another work of equal utility but fortunately of much smaller compass
was the reformation of the calendar, and this it was given to the great
Julius to effect, and to call after his own name. The Roman year, even
before the time of Cæsar, ought to have equalled on the average 365
days and six hours; so near had the astronomers of the period of Numa
already arrived to the real length of the earth’s revolution round the
sun. This year had been calculated on a basis of 354 days, with the
intercalation every second year of a month of twenty-two and twenty-three
days alternately; but another day had been added to the 354 to make an
odd or fortunate number, and to compensate for this superfluous insertion
the number of intercalations was proportionally diminished by a very
intricate process. The simplicity of the original arrangement being thus
violated, great carelessness had soon prevailed in making the requisite
corrections. In course of time the pontiffs, to whose superior skill
the guardianship of the calendar had been entrusted, had shrouded their
science in a veil of religious mystery, and turned it to political or
private ends. They commanded the intercalation of a month arbitrarily,
when it suited them to favour a partisan who desired the extension of
his year of office, or the postponement of the day on which his debts
should become due. They abstained from the requisite insertion at the
instance of some provincial governor, who was anxious to hasten his
return to the enjoyments of the capital. This control over the length
of the civil year, as well as the power of proclaiming the days on
which business might or might not be transacted, had become an engine
of state in the hands of the oligarchical government, with which the
pontiffs were for the most part politically connected. The grievance had
lately become intolerable. In the distracted state of public affairs
and amidst conflicting personal interests, the pontiffs had abstained
from intercalating since the year 52, and had even then left the civil
calendar some weeks in advance of the real time. Since then each year
had reckoned only 355 days, and the civil equinox had got eighty days
in advance of the astronomical. The consuls accordingly, who entered on
their office the 1st of January, 47, really commenced their functions
on the 13th of October. The confusion hence resulting may be easily
imagined. The Roman seasons were marked by appropriate festivals assigned
to certain fixed days, and associated with the religious worship of the
people. At the period of harvest and of vintage, for instance, seasonable
offerings were to be made, which it was no longer possible to offer on
the days specifically assigned for them. The husbandman rejected the use
of the calendar altogether, and depended on his own rude observations of
the rising and setting of the constellations.
Cæsar had acquired a competent knowledge of astronomy, in which his
duties as chief of the pontiffs gave him a particular interest. He
composed himself a treatise on the subject, which had long retained
its value as a technical exposition. With the help of the astronomer
Sosigenes, he recurred again to the simple calculations of Numa, and was
content to disregard the discrepancy, which he conceived perhaps with
Hipparchus to be more trifling than it really is, between the length
thus assigned to the year and the true period of the earth’s revolution.
In the course of centuries this error has grown into importance, and
in the year A.D. 1582, when the Julian calendar was corrected by Pope
Gregory XIII, the civil year had got forward no less than ten days. The
requisite correction was not made, as is well known, in England till
the middle of the eighteenth century. The basis of Cæsar’s reform was
that the commencement of the new era should coincide with the first new
moon after the shortest day. In order to make the year 46 thus begin,
ninety days required to be added to the current year. In the first place
an intercalary month of twenty-three days was inserted between the
twenty-third and twenty-fourth of February, and at the end of November
two new months were added comprehending sixty days, together with a
supplemental addition of seven more. The period which was marked by this
series of alterations received vulgarly the appellation of “the year
of confusion”; but “the last year of confusion,” it has been justly
remarked, would be its more appropriate title.
Besides these noble efforts of social organisation, Cæsar, like almost
every other great man of his nation, had an intense passion for material
construction. He had already distinguished himself by the Forum, which he
called by his own name in the heart of the city; a work which was loudly
demanded on account of the inconvenient narrowness of the spot on which
the public business of the republic had been transacted from the period
of its infancy. But among the honours now showered upon him was one which
had been granted only once or twice before to conquerors who had furthest
enlarged the limits of the empire, and which, it has been remarked, was
alone wanting to complete the “good fortune” of Sulla. This was the
permission to extend the _pomœrium_, the space left open about the walls
of the city, partly within and partly without them, originally perhaps
for the convenience of defence; but which was consecrated by solemn
ceremonies, and traversed by religious processions. Cæsar proposed, it
is said, to remove this line, and with it probably the walls themselves,
so as to embrace the Campus Martius, which he would have enlarged by
turning the Tiber westward with a bold sweep from the Milvian to the
Vatican bridge. This grand project was never destined to be accomplished,
and though in later times the emperor Augustus and others were allowed
to extend the pomœrium, the walls of Rome were not removed beyond the
lines traced by Servius till the time of Aurelian, three centuries after
Cæsar. Nor was the dictator more fortunate in completing the many other
works of public interest and utility which he was already meditating. He
planned, it is said, the emptying of the lake Fucinus, the draining of
the Pomptine marshes, the construction of a canal from Rome to Tarracina,
of a new road across the Apennines, and of a magnificent harbour at
Ostia, the erection of a superb temple to Mars, and the cutting of the
Isthmus of Corinth. Of all these designs the temple and the harbour were
alone accomplished by his successor; it is probable that Cæsar himself
had commenced them. [Under his patronage the first public library was
opened at Rome, and for the transaction of public business he erected the
magnificent building called the Basilica Julia.]
CÆSAR’S LIFE IN ROME
Such were the subjects of meditation which engrossed Cæsar’s mind
during the days and nights he devoted to public affairs. But he had
also his hours of recreation, and he shone in private life among the
most cultivated men of his time, the most refined in habits, the most
fascinating in manners.
There is no feature of Roman life perhaps which we can regard with so
much satisfaction as the tone of habitual intercourse among public
men at this period. The daily conflicts at the bar or in the Forum to
which they were trained, would have only embittered their feelings
towards one another, had they not been accompanied by the humanising
influence of social discussion on topics of literature and philosophy.
The combination of these two habits seems indeed to form the best
discipline of society, imparting to it earnestness without violence,
and a masculine courtesy far removed from servility and adulation. The
records of Roman debate present us with hardly a single scene of personal
altercation, while the private reunions of the most eminent statesmen
are described to us as full of modest dignity and kindly forbearance. To
this pleasing result every school of philosophy contributed; but none
of them perhaps studied so well as the Epicurean the science of making
society agreeable. To this school both Cæsar himself and most of his
personal friends professed their adherence. The circle of his intimates
comprised: Cornelius Balbus, an acute man of business; Asinius Pollio,
a devoted student; A. Hirtius, who like his master both fought, wrote,
and talked well; C. Oppius, full of gentleness and affection; C. Matius,
thoughtful, generous, and disinterested. To these may be added Vibius
Pansa, a lounger and a good liver, yet neither incapable of office, nor
inexperienced in action. Antony, the gayest of boon companions, has
already been mentioned; but under the garb of good fellowship, he hardly
concealed the most intense selfishness, and of all Cæsar’s friends he
alone stands open to the suspicion of intriguing against the life of his
patron. Among these men and others of similar stamp Cæsar unbent from the
cares of empire, and often abandoned himself without restraint to the
enjoyments of festive mirth. With little wit of his own he was amused
by the witticisms of others, even when directed against himself, and
treasured up every caustic remark which fell from the lips of Cicero,
whose patriotism, relieved from the fear of impending proscription,
now exhaled itself in malicious pleasantries against the policy of the
dictator. At table indeed, surrounded by companions addicted to the
grossest self-indulgence, Cæsar was distinguished for his moderation.
Cato had said of him long before, that of all the revolutionists of
the day he alone had come sober to the task of destruction. But his
amours were numerous, and their character peculiarly scandalous; for his
countrymen still professed to regard the corruption of a Roman matron as
a public wrong, while his attachment to a foreigner, such as Cleopatra,
was denounced as a flagrant violation of religious and social principles.
In religion the Epicureans were sceptics, and Cæsar went farther and
openly professed his unbelief. The supreme pontiff of the commonwealth,
the head of the college whence issued the decrees which declared the
will of the gods, as inferred from the signs of the heavens, the flight
of birds, and the entrails of victims, he made no scruple in asserting
before the assembled fathers that the dogma of a future state, the
foundation of all religion, was a vain chimera. Nor did he hesitate to
defy the omens which the priests were especially appointed to observe. He
gave battle at Munda in despite of the most adverse auspices, when the
sacrifices assured him that no heart was found in the victim. “I will
have better omens,” he said, “when I choose.” Yet Cæsar, freethinker as
he was, could not escape the general thraldom of superstition. We have
seen him crawling on his knees up the steps of the temple to appease
an indignant Nemesis. Before the battle of Pharsalia he addressed a
prayer to the gods whom he denied in the senate, and derided among
his associates. He appealed to the omens before passing the Rubicon.
He carried about with him in Africa a certain Cornelius, a man of no
personal distinction, but whose name might be deemed auspicious on the
battlefields of Scipio and Sulla.
The queen of Egypt had followed her august admirer to Italy, and
scrupling perhaps to exhibit her publicly in the city, he had installed
her in his house and gardens on the other side of the river.[127] There
she had her levees for the reception of the noblest Romans, and her
blandishments were not perhaps ineffectual in soothing the asperity of
their resentments. Cicero himself condescended to solicit an interview
with her. She rewarded him with the promise of some Greek volumes from
Alexandria, rendered perhaps doubly precious by the recent conflagration.
But the populace were shocked at the report that Cæsar meditated raising
this barbarian mistress to the dignity of a Roman wife. He was married
indeed already to the noble daughter of Calpurnius Piso; but divorce was
easy, and might be resorted to without public scandal; Cicero himself
had lately dismissed Terentia for alleged incompatibility of temper, and
allied himself in her place with a youthful heiress. Besides, one of
his creatures was prepared, it was said, with a measure to remove all
restrictions upon the dictator’s passions, and allow him to marry as many
wives as he pleased, of whatever race or station.
[Illustration: ROMAN BRAZIER]
Though arrived, as we have seen, at the summit of real power, it was
manifest that Cæsar still chafed under the restraints imposed upon him
by opinion and prejudice. His firm and well-poised mind seems at last
to have lost its equilibrium, and given way to fretful impatience, and
a capricious longing for some unattainable object. The Roman nobles,
accustomed to the most perfect equality in their intercourse with one
another, were mortified at the haughtiness assumed by the chief of
the republic, surrounded by a crowd of flatterers through whom the
independent patrician could with difficulty force his way.
Once when the senators came in a body to communicate to him their decrees
in his honour, he omitted to rise from his seat to receive them. Balbus,
it was said, the upstart foreigner, had plucked him by the sleeve and
bade him remember that he was their master. It was reported that he had
called Sulla a fool for resigning the dictatorship. But while the lines
of his domestic policy were yet hardly laid, and every institution in
Rome still demanded the pressure of his moulding hand, Cæsar himself was
dreaming of foreign conquests, and sighing for his accustomed place at
the head of his legions. The disaster of Carrhæ, yet unavenged, might
furnish a pretext for war, and the influence of Mithridates, it might
be remembered, had extended from the Caspian and the Euxine to the head
of the Adriatic. He conceived, we are assured, the gigantic project
of first crushing the Parthians, and then returning across the Tanaïs
and Borysthenes, subduing the barbarians between the Caucasus and the
Carpathian Mountains, and assailing the Germans in the rear. Cleopatra,
who felt herself more secure of her admirer in the provinces than in
Rome, would doubtless lend her influence to urge him on. The republicans
in the city were not perhaps less anxious to remove him to a distance,
and launch him on a long and dangerous enterprise. At the close of the
year 45 he directed his legions to cross the Adriatic, and assemble
in Illyricum, there to await his own speedy arrival. He contemplated
an absence of considerable duration. He provided beforehand for the
succession of consuls and prætors for the two following years. On the
1st of January, 44, he entered upon his fifth consulship, in which
he associated himself with Antony. At the same time he obtained the
designation of Hirtius and Pansa for 43, of Decimus Brutus and Munatius
Plancus for 42. The prætors appointed for the year 44 were sixteen in
number, and among them were M. Brutus and Cassius.
EVENTS LEADING TO THE CONSPIRACY
[Sidenote: [45-44 B.C.]]
The destined heir of Cæsar’s imperium was already in the camp at
Apollonia, taking lessons at the same time both in arts and arms under
the care of the ablest teachers. This young man was Caius Octavius, the
son of Cæsar’s sister’s daughter, who, now beginning his nineteenth
year, gave splendid promise of future excellence, marred only by the
extreme delicacy of his health, which had hitherto prevented him from
seeking distinction in the field. The favour with which his great-uncle
regarded him had induced him to demand the mastership of the horse, but
this had been refused him as a distinction beyond his years. Cæsar,
however, had promoted his family from the plebeian to the patrician
class, an honour which he had accorded to a few gentes, whose names were
of great antiquity, among which was the Tullian, to which the character
of Cicero had imparted so much new lustre. He had allowed it, moreover,
to be understood that he was about to make the young Octavius his own
son by adoption, to bequeath to him the bulk of his patrimony, and the
dignities which the senate had declared hereditary in his family. These
dignities indeed were not associated in the mind of the Romans with any
ideas of succession. It was difficult for them to conceive the descent
of the dictatorship from the hands of mature experience to those of
untried youth, or the establishment in the sphere of a particular family
of the tribunitian power, the free gift of the sovereign people. It was
natural for them to conclude that their hero was intent on securing a
title, the only recognised title, on which according to their notions a
dynasty could be founded. Cæsar, it was reported, desired to be hailed
as king. His flatterers suggested it, his enemies readily believed it,
and hoped to make him unpopular by urging him to claim it. One morning a
laurel garland, with a diadem attached, was found affixed to his statue
before the rostra. The tribunes, Flavius and Cæsetius, indignantly tore
it down; the populace expressing great satisfaction at their conduct, and
saluting them with the title of the new Bruti. Cæsar affected at least to
applaud them. Shortly afterwards a second experiment was tried. As the
dictator returned from the Latin festival, celebrated on the Alban Mount,
officious voices were hired to salute him as king. A low and stifled
murmur again indicated the disapprobation of the people. “I am no king,
but Cæsar,” he hastily exclaimed; but when the tribunes punished some
persons who had joined in the cry, he rebuked them for their superfluous
or invidious zeal, in which he detected a scheme for bringing him under
unjust suspicions.
Cæsar’s friends, however, if such were the real promoters of the
intrigue, were not yet satisfied that the prize was beyond his reach.
They might familiarise the people with the idea of royalty by bringing
it repeatedly before them. Perchance the sight of the white linen
band, the simple badge of oriental sovereignty, might disabuse them of
their horror at an empty name. On the 15th of February, the day of the
_Lupercalia_, Cæsar was seated on his golden chair before the rostra,
to preside over the solemn ceremonies of that popular festival. The
Julian flamens were elevated to the same rank as the priests of the
god Lupercus or Pan. Antony, the consul, was at their head, and next
to the dictator occupied the most conspicuous place in the eyes of the
multitude. Possibly the novelty of the sight of the one consul stripped
to his skin, with only a narrow girdle round his loins, waving in his
hand the thong of goat’s hide, and striking with it, as he ran rapidly
through the principal streets, the women who presented themselves to the
blow which was supposed to avert sterility, was still more attractive
than that of the other in the laurel crown and triumphal robes which use
had already rendered familiar. When Antony had run his course he broke
through the admiring multitude and approached the seat of the dictator.
Drawing from beneath his girdle a diadem, he made as if he would offer
it to him, exclaiming that it was the gift of the Roman people. The
action was hailed by some clapping of hands; but it was faint and brief
and manifestly preconcerted. When, however, Cæsar put away from him the
proffered gift, a much louder burst of genuine applause succeeded. Antony
offered it a second time; again there was a slight murmur of applause,
and again on Cæsar’s rejection of it a vehement cry of satisfaction. “I
am not king,” repeated Cæsar; “the only king of the Romans is Jupiter.”
He ordered the diadem to be carried to the Capitol and suspended in the
temple of the god, to commemorate the gracious offer of the people and
his own modest refusal.
THE CONSPIRACY
[Sidenote: [44 B.C.]]
The tact with which Cæsar withdrew the claims which were thus prematurely
advanced for him baffled every attempt of the republican leaders to
excite a popular feeling against him. But in the upper ranks of the
nobility there were many who cherished such sentiments of hostility
towards him, nor were his personal enemies confined to the ranks of his
political adversaries. A plot was formed for his destruction, which
embraced sixty or even eighty conspirators, many of whom had been most
conspicuous in their devotion to him, and seemed most to merit his
confidence. Among them were doubtless some whose hopes of preferment he
had disappointed. But such was not the case with Decimus Brutus, who
had received from him the government of the Cisalpine, and was already
designated as the consul of a future year. Such was not the case with
Trebonius, who had just quitted the consulship for the administration
of Asia. Basilus, Casca, and Cimber had all received greater or less
marks of the dictator’s favour. Yet all these men now joined in the
intrigue against his life. Had they really loved the republic better
than their imperator, and regarded him as a tyrant and a traitor, they
should not have accepted the highest offices at his hands. But even the
chiefs of the opposite party betrayed no reluctance to profit by his
generosity. It was not the needy or disappointed among them, but those
whom he had honoured and promoted, who now raised their hands against
him. The most active conspirator, and perhaps the author of the design,
was C. Cassius, who had recently been appointed prætor. The cry of
liberty and the republic, which was in the mouths of all his associates,
could have little real influence on the sentiments of Cassius, whose
avowed Epicurean principles, no less than his late political conduct,
might vouch for his indifference to party. “I prefer,” he had written
to Cicero, “our old and clement master Cæsar to the ferocious upstart,
the son of Pompey.” But he was by nature vain and vindictive; his temper
fluctuated between mean subservience and rude independence. His sharp and
acrid humour had not escaped the observation of Cæsar, by whom the pale
and lean were accounted dangerous, and who loved, as he said, the company
of the sleek and light-hearted.
The conspirators required the charm of a popular name to sanction their
projected tyrannicide. M. Junius Brutus, the nephew of Cato, pretended to
trace his descent from a third son of the founder of the republic, whose
elder brothers had perished, as was well known, childless by the axe of
the lictor. His mother Servilia derived her lineage from the renowned
Ahala, the slayer of Spurius Mælius. But far from inheriting the zeal of
his progenitors, the Brutus of the expiring republic had acquiesced in
Cæsar’s usurpation with less apparent reluctance than perhaps any other
member of the Pompeian party. Despondent in her hour of distress, he had
been the last to join, the earliest to desert the unfurled banner of the
republic. After Pharsalia, he was the first to seek refuge in the camp of
the victor; in the city he was the foremost to court the friendship and
claim the confidence of the dictator.
He zealously served his interests by the discharge of important offices;
nor did he blush to govern Cisalpine Gaul for Cæsar, while his uncle
still held Utica against him. A feeble panegyric of the sturdy sage whom
he had abandoned while he affected to adopt his principles and emulate
his practice, seemed to Brutus a sufficient tribute to his virtues. He
had divorced his consort Claudia to espouse the philosopher’s daughter
Porcia, a woman of more masculine spirit than his own. But thus doubly
connected with strength and virtue, Brutus had failed nevertheless to
acquire the firmness which nature had denied him. While professing the
character of a student he still courted public life for the sake of its
emoluments. The countenance of Cæsar raised him to an eminence which
pleased and dazzled him, while his uncle’s renown seemed also to shed
a light upon him, and his vanity was excited by a saying, possibly a
jest, ascribed to Cæsar, implying that of all the Romans he was the
worthiest to succeed to supreme power. The weakness of his character may
be estimated from the means employed to work upon him. A bit of paper
affixed to the statue of the ancient Brutus with the words, “Would
thou wert alive”; billets thrust into his hand inscribed, “Brutus, thou
sleepest, thou art no longer Brutus,” shook the soul of the philosopher
to its centre. Under the influence of Cassius, who had married his
sister, he was led to embrace the schemes of the conspirators, and
assumed the place of chief adviser, which they pretended at least to
offer him.
His renowned name became at once a charm of magic potency. It raised the
sick Ligarius from his bed. A pardoned partisan of Pompey, the clemency
of Cæsar rankled in his bosom. “How sad for Ligarius,” said Brutus to
him, “to be disabled at such a moment.” The sick man raised himself on
his elbow, and replied, “If thou hast any project worthy of the name of
Brutus, behold, I am well again.” Ligarius was admitted to the secret,
and took an active part in the deed which followed. We learn with
pleasure that the conspirators did not venture even to sound Cicero.
The fatal intrigue was now ripening to its execution. As long as Cæsar
remained at Rome his fearless demeanour exposed him to the daggers of
assassins, for he had dismissed the guard which had at first surrounded
him, and appeared daily in public with no other attendance than that of
his unarmed companions.
His legions had been despatched to Illyricum. To the remonstrances of his
friends, from whom perhaps the rumours of his peril were not altogether
concealed, he had replied that it was better at once to die than to live
always in fear of dying. But from the moment he should assume the command
of his armies, his safety would be assured by the fidelity of his troops.
Once intoxicated with the splendour of royalty in the provinces, he would
never consent to return a citizen to Rome. He had promised, it was said,
to restore the towers of Ilium, the cradle of the people of Æneas and
Romulus. Possibly he might transfer thither the throne which the pride of
the Romans forbade him to establish in the Capitol. Or if the charms of
Cleopatra should still retain their power, he might take up his abode in
Alexandria, and remove the seat of empire to the shrine of the Macedonian
conqueror.
Such considerations as these forbade delay. The preparations for Cæsar’s
departure were almost complete. The senate was convened for the ides of
March, the 15th day of the month, and the royal name and power, it was
said, were then to be conferred upon him in the provinces. On this day,
as soon as he should enter the curia, it was determined to strike the
blow. The prediction was already current that the ides of March should be
fatal to him. Still Cæsar refused to take any precautions. He had lived,
he said, enough either for nature or glory; his ambition was satisfied,
or perhaps disappointed, and he was proudly indifferent to longer
existence.[c]
THE ASSASSINATION
On the evening of the 14th of March, Cæsar was supping with M. Lepidus,
his master of the horse, who was now at the head of a body of troops
without the walls, and was preparing shortly to march with them into
Transalpine Gaul, which had been assigned to him by Cæsar as his
province. It happened that Cæsar was engaged in writing, when the rest of
the party began to discuss the question, “What kind of death is most to
be desired?” The subject on which they were talking caught his attention,
and he cried out, before any one else had expressed an opinion, that the
best death was a sudden one.
A coincidence so remarkable was likely to be remembered afterwards
by all who had been present; but it is said, also, that he had been
often warned by the augurs to beware of the ides of March; and these
predictions had, probably, wrought on the mind of his wife, Calpurnia, so
that, on the night that preceded that dreaded day, her rest was broken
by feverish dreams, and in the morning her impression of fear was so
strong, that she earnestly besought her husband not to stir from home.
He himself, we are told, felt himself a little unwell; and being thus
more ready to be infected by superstitious fears, he was inclined to
comply with Calpurnia’s wishes, and allowed some part of the morning to
pass away, and the senate to be already assembled, without having as yet
quitted his house.
At such a critical moment as this the conspirators were naturally wide
awake to every suspicion; and becoming uneasy at his delay, Decimus
Brutus was sent to call on him, and to persuade him to attend the senate
by urging to him the offence that he would naturally give if he appeared
to slight that body at the very moment when they were preparing to
confer on him the title of king. Decimus Brutus visited Cæsar, and being
entirely in his confidence, his arguments were listened to, and Cæsar set
out about eleven o’clock to go to the senate house. When he was on his
way thither, Artemidorus of Cnidus, a Greek sophist, who was admitted
into the houses of some of the conspirators, and had there become
acquainted with some facts that had excited his suspicions, approached
him with a written statement of the information which he had obtained,
and putting it into his hand, begged him to read it instantly, as it was
of the last importance. Cæsar, it is said, tried to look at it, but he
was prevented by the crowd which pressed around him, and by the numerous
writings of various sorts that were presented to him as he passed along.
Still, however, he held it in his hand, and continued to keep it there
when he entered the senate house.
Mark Antony, who was at this time Cæsar’s colleague in the consulship,
was on the point of following him into the senate, when C. Trebonius
called him aside, and detained him without, by professing to desire some
conversation with him. It is said that some of the conspirators had
wished to include him in the fate of Cæsar; but Brutus had objected to
it as a piece of unnecessary bloodshed; and when it was remembered that
he himself, not long ago, had proposed to Trebonius the very act which
they were now about to perform, they consented that his life should not
be endangered. Meantime, as Cæsar entered the senate house, all the
senators rose to receive him. The conspirators had contrived to surround
his person in the street, and they now formed his immediate train as he
passed on to the curule chair, which had been prepared, as usual, for
his reception. That chair had been placed near the pedestal of a statue
of Pompey the Great; for the building in which the senate was assembled
had been one of Pompey’s public works; and it is said, that Cassius,
labouring under the strong feeling of the moment, turned himself to the
image, and seemed to implore its assistance in the deed which was to be
perpetrated.
[Illustration: DEATH OF CÆSAR]
When Cæsar had taken his seat, the conspirators gathered more closely
around him, and L. Tillius Cimber approached him as if to offer some
petition, which he continued to press with vehemence when Cæsar seemed
unwilling to grant it, and the other conspirators joined in supporting
his request. At last, when Cæsar appeared impatient of further
importunity, Cimber took hold of his robe and pulled it down from his
shoulders; an action which was the signal agreed upon with his associates
for commencing their attack. It is said that the dagger of P. Casca took
the lead in the work of blood, and that Cæsar, in the first instant of
surprise, attempted to resist and to force his way through the circle
which surrounded him. But when the conspirators rushed upon him, and
were so eager to have a share in his death, that they wounded one another
in the confusion, he drew his robe closely around him, and having covered
his face, fell without a struggle or a groan. He received three and
twenty wounds, and it was observed that the blood, as it streamed from
them, bathed the pedestal of Pompey’s statue.[128] No sooner was the
murder finished, than M. Brutus, raising his gory dagger in his hand,
turned round towards the assembled senators, and called on Cicero by
name, congratulating him on the recovery of their country’s liberty.
But to preserve order at such a moment was hopeless; the senators
fled in dismay. Antony made haste to escape to his house. A universal
consternation was spread through the city, till the conspirators, going
in a body to the Forum, addressed the people, and by assuring them that
no violence was intended to any one, but that their only object had been
to assert the liberty of Rome, they succeeded in restoring comparative
tranquillity. Still, however, distrusting the state of the popular
feeling, they withdrew into the Capitol, which Decimus Brutus had secured
with a band of gladiators whom he retained in his service; and there,
having been joined by several of the nobility, they passed the first
night after the murder. Meanwhile, the body of Cæsar was left for some
hours, amidst the general confusion, on the spot where it fell; till at
last three of his slaves placed it on a litter, and carried it home, one
of the arms hanging down on the outside of the litter, and presenting
a ghastly spectacle. It was asserted by the surgeon, who examined the
wounds, that out of so many, one alone was mortal; that, namely, which he
had received in the breast when he first attempted to break through the
circle of his assassins.[e]
Such was the untimely ending of Cæsar’s dramatic and history-making
career. Appian has left us a minute account of his last deeds and of
the plot against him. Let us look to him for certain familiar details,
beginning with Cæsar’s last military project.
APPIAN’S ACCOUNT OF CÆSAR’S LAST DAYS
“At length, whether he lost all hopes, or else for the better
preservation of his health, never more afflicted with the falling
sickness and sudden convulsions than when he lay idle, he resolved upon a
far distant expedition against the Getæ and the Parthians. A rumour was
spread that there was an oracle of the Sibyls which declared that the
Parthians could not be subdued by the Romans, unless they were commanded
by a king. This made some talk publicly that in regard of other nations
taxed under the Roman Empire, there needed no scruple be made at the
giving Cæsar that title. He having still refused it, hastened all he
could to get out of the city where many envied him. But four days before
the day appointed for his departure he was slain by his enemies in the
palace, either out of malice to see him raised to such supreme felicity
and height of command, or else (as themselves said) out of a desire to
restore the commonwealth to its first estate; for they feared that, after
having overcome these other nations, nothing could hinder him from making
himself king; yet as it appears to me it was only for the name’s sake
they attempted all things; for in the thing itself there is no difference
between dictator and king.
“There were two chiefs of this conspiracy, the son of that Brutus whom
Sulla put to death, M. Brutus Cæpio, who came for refuge to Cæsar himself
after the battle of Pharsalia, and C. Cassius who yielded to him the
galleys in the Hellespont, both of Pompey’s party, and with them was
joined one of Cæsar’s most intimate friends, Decimus Brutus Albinus.
He had always treated them honourably, and with great confidence, and
when he was going to the war in Africa, he had given them armies, and
the government of the Gauls, to Decimus Brutus of the Transalpine, and
to M. Brutus of the Cisalpine. Brutus and Cassius were at this time
designed prætors, and were in difference for a jurisdiction which among
the citizens is accounted the most honourable of all others, whether
they contended out of ambition, or only feigned to do it, lest their
conspiracy should be perceived. Cæsar was arbitrator between them,
and, as it is said, he acknowledged to his friends that Cassius had
reason, but yet he would favour Brutus, so much he loved and honoured
him, for all men believed he was his son, because he visited Servilia
Cato’s sister at the time she grew with child of Brutus, wherefore it is
likewise said, that in the battle of Pharsalia he ordered his captains to
have a great care of Brutus’ life.
“However, whether he was ungrateful, or knew nothing of it, or did not
believe it, or that he thought his mother’s incontinence of dishonour,
whether love of liberty made him prefer his country before his own
father, or being of the ancient race of the Bruti who had expelled the
kings, and now pricked forward by the reproaches of the people, who on
the statues of the old Brutus, and on his prætor’s tribunal had secretly
written such words as these, ‘Brutus thou sufferest thyself to be
corrupted with gifts. Brutus thou art dead, would to God thou wert now
alive; either thy successors degenerate, or thou hast not begot them.’
He, I say, young as he was, chafed by these and such like things, engaged
himself in this enterprise as an act worthy his predecessors.
“The discourses concerning the royalty were not then quite extinct, when
just as they were going to the senate Cassius took Brutus by the hand,
and said, ‘What shall we do if Cæsar’s flatterers propose to make him
king?’ To which Brutus answered, that he would not be at the senate.
Whereupon, the other again demanded, ‘What if they summon us as prætors,
what shall we do then, my friend?’ ‘I will,’ he said, ‘defend my country,
even till death.’ Whereupon, Cassius embracing him said, ‘And what
persons of quality will you take for companions in so brave an attempt?
Do you think there are none but tavern-people and artificers that put
writings on your tribunal? Know that they are the prime men of the city,
who expect from other prætors only plays and shows; but require their
liberty from you as the work of your predecessors.’ Thus they discovered
to each other what they had long had in their thoughts; and began to
try their own friends, and some of Cæsar’s, according as they knew them
capable of good things. They engaged in their design the two brothers,
Cæcilius and Bucolianus, Rubrius Rex, Q. Ligarius, M. Spurius, Servilius
Galba, Sextius Naso, Pontius Aquila: and of Cæsar’s friends they drew to
their conspiracy Decimus, of whom I have already spoken; Caius Casca,
Trebonius, Attilius Cimber, Minucius, and Basilus. When they thought
they had companions enough, for it was not convenient to communicate
this design to all the world, they gave their words one to another
without either oath or sacrifice, and yet no one changed his mind or ever
discovered the plot.
“There was nothing now wanting but choice of time and place. The time
urged, for within four days Cæsar was to depart and take guards. For the
place they thought the palace most convenient; for they concluded that
all the senators, though they were not made privy to it, yet, seeing the
action, would joyfully join with them; which, as it is said, happened at
the death of Romulus, after having changed the regal power into tyranny.
Wherefore this attempt would have the same success with that; especially
being not privily executed, but in the palace, and for the good of the
commonwealth. That they needed not to fear anything from Cæsar’s army,
being all composed of Roman people; in conclusion, that the authors of
this great action doing it publicly, could expect nothing but reward.
“Having all decreed the palace for the place of execution, there were
divers opinions concerning the manner of doing it; some being of opinion
that they should likewise make away Antony, Cæsar’s colleague, the most
powerful of his friends, and well beloved of the soldiery. But Brutus
opposed that, saying, that it was only by killing Cæsar, who was as
a king, that they ought to seek for the glory of destroying tyrants;
and that if they killed his friends too, men would impute the action
to private enmity, and the faction of Pompey. This advice prevailing,
they only expected the assembling of the senate. Now the day before
Cæsar being invited to sup with Lepidus, carried along with him Decimus
Brutus Albinus; and during supper the question being proposed what death
was best for man; some desiring one kind, and some another; he alone
preferred the suddenest and most unexpected. Thus divining for himself
they fell to discourse of the morrow’s affairs. In the morning finding
himself somewhat out of order with the night’s debauch, and his wife
Calpurnia having been frightened with dismal dreams, she advised him
not to go abroad and in many sacrifices he made there were none but
affrightful tokens; he therefore gave order to Antony to dismiss the
senate. But Decimus Brutus persuading him that it was more convenient, he
went himself, to avoid the opinion that might be conceived, that he did
it out of pride or scorn, he went to dismiss them himself, coming to the
palace in his litter.
“There were at that time plays in Pompey’s theatre, and almost all
the senators were at the windows of the neighbouring houses, as is
the custom in the time of spectacles. The same morning the prætors,
Brutus and Cassius, gave audience to those who made suit for it, with
great tranquillity, in a gallery before the theatre. But when they had
heard what happened to Cæsar in the sacrifices, and that therefore they
deferred the senate, they were much troubled. One of those that stood
there having taken Casca by the hand, told him: ‘You kept it close from
me that am your friend, but Brutus has told me all.’ Whereupon Casca
pricked in conscience, began to tremble; but the other continuing with
a smile: ‘Where then will you raise the money to come to the ædility?’
Casca gave him an account. Brutus and Cassius themselves being talking
together, one of the senators, called Popilius Lænas, drawing them aside
said: ‘I pray God what you have in your hearts may succeed happily, but
it is fit you make haste.’ At which they were so surprised that they gave
him no answer.
“At the same time that Cæsar went to the palace in his litter, one of
his domestics, who had understood something of the conspiracy came to
find Calpurnia; but without saying anything else to her but that he must
speak with Cæsar about affairs of importance, he stayed expecting his
return from the senate, because he did not know all the particulars;
his host of Cnidus called Artemidorus running to the palace to give him
notice of it came just at the moment of his being killed; another, as he
sacrificed before the gate of the senate house, gave him a note of all
the conspiracy; but he going in without reading it, it was after his
death found in his hands. As he came out of his litter, Lænas, the same
who before had spoken to Cassius, came to him, and entertained him a long
time in private; which struck a damp into the chiefs of the conspiracy,
the more because their conference was long; they already began to make
signs to one another that they must now kill him before he arrested them;
but in the sequel of the discourse, observing Lænas to use rather the
gesture of suppliant than accuser, they deferred it; till in the end,
seeing him return thanks to Cæsar, they took courage.
“It is the custom of the chief magistrates entering the palace, first to
consult the divine: and here as well as in the former sacrifices, Cæsar’s
first victim was found without a heart, or as some say without the chief
of the entrails. The divine hereupon telling him it was a mortal sign, he
replied laughing, that when he went to fight against Pompeius in Spain
he had seen the like; and the other having replied, that then likewise
he had run hazard of losing his life; but that at present the entrails
threatened him with greater danger. He commanded they should sacrifice
another victim, which foreboding nothing but ill, he feared to seem
tedious to the senate; and being pressed by his enemies, whom he thought
to be his friends, without considering the danger, entered the palace;
for it was of necessity that the misfortune to befall him should befall.
“They left Trebonius at the gate to stop Antony under pretence of
discoursing some business with him; and as soon as Cæsar was seated, the
other conspirators surrounded him according to custom, as friends, having
each his dagger concealed. At the same time Attilius Cimber standing
before him began to entreat him to grant the return of his brother who
was an exile; and upon his refusal, under pretence of begging it with
more humility, he took him by the robe and drawing it to him, hung about
his neck, crying out, ‘Why do you delay, my friends?’ Thereupon Casca
first of all reaching over his head, thought to strike his dagger into
his throat, but wounded him only in the breast. Cæsar having disengaged
himself from Cimber, and caught hold of Casca’s hand, leaped from his
seat, and threw himself upon Casca with a wonderful force; but being at
handy grips with him, another struck his dagger into his side, Cassius
gave him a wound in the face, Brutus struck him quite through the thigh,
Bucolianus wounded him behind the head, and he, like one enraged, and
roaring like a savage beast, turned sometimes to one and sometimes to
another; till strength failing him after the wound received from Brutus,
he threw the skirt of his robe over his face and suffered himself gently
to fall before Pompey’s statue. They forebore not to give him many stabs
after he was down; so that there were three and twenty wounds found in
his body. And those that slew him were so eager that some of them through
vehemence, without thinking of it, wounded each other.
“After this murder committed in a hallowed place, and on a sacred person,
all the assembly took their flight, both within the palace and without
in the city. In the crowd there were several senators wounded, and some
killed: there were slain likewise other citizens and strangers; not with
design, but without knowing the authors, as happens in a public tumult;
for the gladiators, who were armed in the morning to give divertisement
to the people, ran from the theatre to the senators’ houses; the
spectators affrighted, dispersed as fast as their legs would carry them,
the commodities exposed to sale were made plunder of, the gates were
shut, and many got upon the roofs of their houses to secure themselves
from violence. Antony fortified himself in his house, judging that they
had a design upon his life as well as upon Cæsar’s; and Lepidus, general
of the horse, hearing upon the place what had passed, made haste to the
island in the river, where he had a legion; which he drew into the Field
of Mars, that he might be in readiness to execute the orders of Antony;
for he yielded to him, both in the quality of Cæsar’s friend and consul.
“The soldiers would very willingly have revenged Cæsar’s death so basely
murdered, but that they feared the senate, who favoured the murderers,
and expected the issue of things. Cæsar had no soldiery with him, for
he loved not guards, but contented himself with ushers; besides, he was
accompanied by a great number of people of the robe, and whole troops
of as well citizens as strangers, with freedmen and slaves, followed
him from his house to the palace; but in a moment all these crowds were
vanished, there remained with him only three unhappy slaves; who putting
him in his litter, and taking it upon their shoulders, carried him, who
but a little before was master of both sea and land. The conspirators
after the execution had a mind to have said something to the senate; but
nobody staying to hear them, they twisted their robes about their left
arms instead of bucklers, and with their bloody daggers in their hands
ran through the streets, crying out, that they had slain the king and the
tyrant; causing to march before them a man carrying a cap on the head of
a pike, which is the badge of liberty; they exhorted likewise the people
to the restoring of the commonwealth; putting them in mind of the first
Brutus, and the oath wherein he had engaged the citizens, and with them
their posterity.”[g]
FOOTNOTES
[123] Appian[g] says that Cæsar arrived in Spain from Rome in
twenty-seven days, accompanied by a part of his army; Suetonius[i] that
he reached the Further Province in twenty-four. Strabo[j] seems to rely
on the same authorities as Appian. From Rome to Corduba or Obulco is more
than a thousand miles, a distance which it is utterly impossible for an
army to accomplish in the longest of these periods. The author of the
_Commentary on the Spanish War_ is contented with the expression _celeri
festinatione_, and Dion Cassius[k] prudently follows him.
[124] [According to Nicolaus, it was the conspirators who moved the
senate to declare Cæsar inviolable. They prompted this decree with
the cunning aim of hereby making Cæsar secure (as he would think) and
so inducing him to dismiss his bodyguard. After his return from Spain
whenever he came forth in public, not only in the country but also in
town, he had himself accompanied by a bodyguard. He did not dismiss this
bodyguard until shortly before his appointment as perpetual dictator,
which took place between the 26th of January and the 15th of February, in
the year 44 B.C.
“That this statement of Nicolaus rests on a pure invention can hardly be
assumed,” says Wiegandt, who gives it full credit, and adds:
“This is all the more probably true of the above-mentioned decree,
because it served the most vital interests of the conspirators. For, so
long as Cæsar was protected by his bodyguard any attack upon him exposed
their own lives to the hazard. Consideration of their own personal
safety, again, influenced the conspirators at every step. Even after
Cæsar had dismissed his bodyguard, the attempt was constantly being
postponed in view of the danger resulting from his numerous attendance.
In this way were rejected the various designs to murder him on the Via
Sacra, on the occasion of the meeting of electoral committees in the
Campus Martius, or during the gladiatorial games at the theatre. What
recommended the senate house to the combined choice of the conspirators
as a fit place in which to execute the blow was this, that here, secretly
armed themselves, they had nothing to fear from the unarmed friends of
Cæsar, and, moreover, might rely on the protection of the gladiators of
Decimus Brutus.
“A second argument in favour of the statement of Nicolaus is that a still
broader decree of the senate appears to have been based on the same
cunning motive. The conspirators had reckoned too little with Cæsar’s
sober practical nature when they hoped that as a man sacrosanct he would
renounce all armed attendance. As a matter of fact he attached so little
significance to the decree, that it never occurred to him to dismiss his
escort.”[h]]
[125] [“But,” says Florus,[f] “all these honours were but as decorations
laid on a victim doomed to die.”]
[126] [Sulla had raised the number of senators to six hundred; cf. page
444.]
[127] [On this much discussed question of Cæsar and Cleopatra it is
interesting to quote Froude’s opinion from his _Cæsar_: “Cleopatra is
said to have joined Cæsar at Rome after his return from Spain, and to
have resided openly with him as his mistress. Supposing that she did come
to Rome, it is still certain that Calpurnia was in Cæsar’s house when he
was killed. Cleopatra must have been Calpurnia’s guest as well as her
husband’s; and her presence, however commented upon in society, could not
possibly have borne the avowed complexion which tradition assigned to
it. On the other hand, it is quite intelligible that the young queen of
Egypt, who owed her position to Cæsar, might have come, as other princes
came, on a visit of courtesy, and that Cæsar, after their acquaintance at
Alexandria, should have invited her to stay with him. But was Cleopatra
at Rome at all? The only real evidence for her presence there is to be
found in a few words of Cicero: ‘Reginæ fuga mihi non molesta.’ (‘I am
not sorry to hear of the flight of the queen.’) There is nothing to show
that the ‘queen’ was the Egyptian queen. Granting that the word Egyptian
is to be understood, Cicero may have referred to Arsinoe, who was called
queen as well as her sister, and had been sent to Rome to be shown at
Cæsar’s triumph.”]
[128] [“Thus,” says Florus,[f] “he who had deluged the world with the
blood of his countrymen, deluged the senate house at last with his own.”]
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