Cæsar triumphed a fifth time over Spain. Very many and high honours were
decreed him by the senate; among others, that he should be styled Father
of his country, and Sacred, and also that he should be perpetual
dictator, [Y. R. 708. B. C. 44.] It afforded cause of odium against him,
that he rose not to the senate when conferring these honours on him, as
he was sitting before the shrine of Venus Genetrix; and that he laid
aside on a chair the diadem, placed on his head, by his colleague in the
consulship, Marcus Antonius, who was running among the Lupercalians, and
that the magistracies were taken away from Epidius Marullus and
Cassetius Flavus, the tribunes of the people, who excited envy against
him for aiming at the imperial dignity. For these reasons, a conspiracy
was formed against him; the chiefs of which were, Marcus Brutus and
Caius Cassius, with two of his own partisans, Decimus Brutus and Caius
Trebonius. He was slain in Pompey’s senate-house with three-and-twenty
wounds; and the Capitol was seized on by his murderers. An act of
amnesty having been passed by the senate in relation to his murder, and
the children of Antony and Lepidus having been taken as hostages, the
conspirators came down from the Capitol. Octavius, Cæsar’s nephew, was
by his will made heir of half his possessions. Cæsar’s body was burnt by
the people, in the Campus Martius, opposite the rostrum. The office of
dictator was abolished for ever. Caius Amatius, one of the lowest of the
people, giving himself out for the son of Caius Marius, having excited
some seditious movements among the credulous vulgar, was slain.