History of Julius Caesar by Jacob Abbott (books that read to you TXT) 📖

prisoner there, and Caesar, instead of executing him as a traitor, as most victorious generals in a civil war would have done, spared his life, forgave him for his hostility, received him into his own service, and afterward raised him to very high and honorable stations. He gave him the government of the richest province, and, after his return from it, loaded with wealth and honors, he made him praetor of the city. In a word, it would seem that he had done every thing which it was possible to do to make him one of his most trustworthy and devoted friends. The men, therefore, to whom Cassius first applied, perhaps thought that they were very safe in saying that they would unite in the intended conspiracy if he would get Brutus to join them. They expected Cassius himself to make the attempt to secure the co-operation of Brutus, as Cassius was on terms of intimacy with him on account of a family connection. Cassius's wife was the sister of Brutus. This had made the two men intimate associates and warm friends in former years, though they had been recently somewhat estranged from each other on account of having been competitors for the same offices and honors. In these contests Caesar had decided in favor of Brutus. "Cassius," said he, on one such occasion, "gives the best reasons; but I can not refuse Brutus any thing he asks for." In fact, Caesar had conceived a strong personal friendship for Brutus, and believed him to be entirely devoted to his cause.

[Sidenote: Interview between Brutus and Cassius.]

Cassius, however, sought an interview with Brutus, with a view of engaging him in his design. He easily effected his own reconciliation with him, as he had himself been the offended party in their estrangement from each other. He asked Brutus whether he intended to be present in the Senate on the Ides of March, when the friends of Caesar, as was understood, were intending to present him with the crown. Brutus said he should not be there. "But suppose," said Cassius, "we are specially summoned." "Then," said Brutus, "I shall go, and shall be ready to die if necessary to defend the liberty of my country."

[Sidenote: Arguments of Cassius.]

Cassius then assured Brutus that there were many other Roman citizens, of the highest rank, who were animated by the same determination, and that they all looked up to him to lead and direct them in the work which it was now very evident must be done. "Men look," said Cassius, "to other praetors to entertain them with games, spectacles, and shows, but they have very different ideas in respect to you. Your character, your name, your position, your ancestry, and the course of conduct which you have already always pursued, inspire the whole city with the hope that you are to be their deliverer. The citizens are all ready to aid you, and to sustain you at the hazard of their lives; but they look to you to go forward, and to act in their name and in their behalf, in the crisis which is now approaching."

[Sidenote: Effect on Brutus.] [Sidenote: Brutus engages in the conspiracy.]

Men of a very calm exterior are often susceptible of the profoundest agitations within, the emotions seeming to be sometimes all the more permanent and uncontrollable from the absence of outward display. Brutus said little, but his soul was excited and fired by Cassius's words. There was a struggle in his soul between his grateful sense of his political obligations to Caesar and his personal attachment to him on the one hand, and, on the other, a certain stern Roman conviction that every thing should be sacrificed, even friendship and gratitude, as well as fortune and life, to the welfare of his country. He acceded to the plan, and began forthwith to enter upon the necessary measures for putting it into execution.

[Sidenote: Ligurius.]

There was a certain general, named Ligurius, who had been in Pompey's army, and whose hostility to Caesar had never been really subdued. He was now sick. Brutus went to see him. He found him in his bed. The excitement in Rome was so intense, though the expressions of it were suppressed and restrained, that every one was expecting continually some great event, and every motion and look was interpreted to have some deep meaning. Ligurius read in the countenance of Brutus, as he approached his bedside, that he had not come on any trifling errand. "Ligurius," said Brutus, "this is not a time for _you_ to be sick." "Brutus," replied Ligurius, rising at once from his couch, "if you have any enterprise in mind that is worthy of you, I am well." Brutus explained to the sick man their design, and he entered into it with ardor.

[Sidenote: Consultations of the conspirators.] [Sidenote: Their bold plan.] [Sidenote: Final arrangements.]

The plan was divulged to one after another of such men as the conspirators supposed most worthy of confidence in such a desperate undertaking, and meetings for consultation were held to determine what plan to adopt for finally accomplishing their end. It was agreed that Caesar must be slain; but the time, the place, and the manner in which the deed should be performed were all yet undecided. Various plans were proposed in the consultations which the conspirators held; but there was one thing peculiar to them all, which was, that they did not any of them contemplate or provide for any thing like secrecy in the commission of the deed. It was to be performed in the most open and public manner. With a stern and undaunted boldness, which has always been considered by mankind as truly sublime, they determined that, in respect to the actual execution itself of the solemn judgment which they had pronounced, there should be nothing private or concealed. They thought over the various public situations in which they might find Caesar, and where they might strike him down, only to select the one which would be most public of all. They kept, of course, their preliminary counsels private, to prevent the adoption of measures for counteracting them; but they were to perform the deed in such a manner as that, so soon as it was performed, they should stand out to view, exposed fully to the gaze of all mankind as the authors, of it. They planned no retreat, no concealment, no protection whatever for themselves, seeming to feel that the deed which they were about to perform, of destroying the master and monarch of the world, was a deed in its own nature so grand and sublime as to raise the perpetrators of it entirely above all considerations relating to their own personal safety. Their plan, therefore, was to keep their consultations and arrangements secret until they were prepared to strike the blow, then to strike it in the most public and imposing manner possible, and calmly afterward to await the consequences.

[Sidenote: The place and the day.]

In this view of the subject, they decided that the chamber of the Roman Senate was the proper place, and the Ides of March, the day on which he was appointed to be crowned, was the propel time for Caesar to be slain.


CHAPTER XII.

THE ASSASSINATION.

[Sidenote: Caesar receives many warnings of his approaching fate.]

According to the account given by his historians, Caesar received many warnings of his approaching fate, which, however, he would not heed. Many of these warnings were strange portents and prodigies, which the philosophical writers who recorded them half believed themselves, and which they were always ready to add to their narratives even if they did not believe them, on account of the great influence which such an introduction of the supernatural and the divine had with readers in those days in enhancing the dignity and the dramatic interest of the story. These warnings were as follows:

[Sidenote: The tomb and inscription.]

At Capua, which was a great city at some distance south of Rome, the second, in fact, in Italy, and the one which Hannibal had proposed to make his capital, some workmen were removing certain ancient sepulchers to make room for the foundations of a splendid edifice which, among his other plans for the embellishment of the cities of Italy, Caesar was intending to have erected there. As the excavations advanced, the workmen came at last to an ancient tomb, which proved to be that of the original founder of Capua; and, in bringing out the sarcophagus, they found an inscription, worked upon a brass plate, and in the Greek character, predicting that if those remains were ever disturbed, a great member of the Julian family would be assassinated by his own friends, and his death would be followed by extended devastations throughout all Italy.

[Sidenote: Caesar's horses.]

The horses, too, with which Caesar had passed the Rubicon, and which had been, ever since that time, living in honorable retirement in a splendid park which Caesar had provided for them, by some mysterious instinct, or from some divine communication, had warning of the approach of their great benefactor's end. They refused their food, and walked about with melancholy and dejected looks, mourning apparently, and in a manner almost human, some impending grief.

[Sidenote: The soothsayers.]

There was a class of prophets in those days called by a name which has been translated _soothsayers_. These soothsayers were able, as was supposed, to look somewhat into futurity--dimly and doubtfully, it is true, but really, by means of certain appearances exhibited by the bodies of the animals offered in sacrifices These soothsayers were consulted on all important occasions; and if the auspices proved unfavorable when any great enterprise was about to be undertaken, it was often, on that account, abandoned or postponed. One of these soothsayers, named Spurinna, came to Caesar one day, and informed him that he had found, by means of a public sacrifice which he had just been offering, that there was a great and mysterious danger impending over him, which was connected in some way with the Ides of March, and he counseled him to be particularly cautious and circumspect until that day should have passed.

[Sidenote: The hawks and the wren.]

The Senate were to meet on the Ides of March in a new and splendid edifice, which had been erected for their use by Pompey. There was in the interior of the building, among other decorations, a statue of Pompey. The day before the Ides of March, some birds of prey from a neighboring grove came flying into this hall, pursuing a little wren with a sprig of laurel in its mouth. The birds tore the wren to pieces, the laurel dropping from its bill to the marble pavement of the floor below. Now, as Caesar had been always accustomed to wear a crown of laurel on great occasions, and had always evinced a particular fondness for that decoration, that plant had come to be considered his own proper badge, and the fall of the laurel, therefore, was naturally thought to portend some great calamity to him.

[Sidenote: Caesar's agitation of mind.] [Sidenote: His dream.] [Sidenote: Calpurnia's dream.] [Sidenote: The effect of a disturbed mind.]

The night before the Ides of March Caesar could not sleep. It would not seem, however, to be necessary to suppose any thing supernatural to account for his wakefulness. He lay upon his bed restless and excited, or if he fell into a momentary slumber, his thoughts, instead of finding repose, were only plunged into greater agitations, produced by strange, and, as he thought, supernatural dreams. He imagined that he ascended into the skies, and was received there by Jupiter, the supreme divinity, as an associate and equal. While shaking hands with the