History of Julius Caesar by Jacob Abbott
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Jacob Abbott >> History of Julius Caesar
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[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 great father of
gods and men, the sleeper was startled by a frightful sound. He awoke,
and found his wife Calpurnia groaning and struggling in her sleep. He
saw her by the moonlight which was shining into the room. He spoke to
her, and aroused her. After staring wildly for a moment till she had
recovered her thoughts, she said that she had had a dreadful dream. She
had dreamed that the roof of the house had fallen in, and that, at the
same instant, the doors had been burst open, and some robber or assassin
had stabbed her husband as he was lying in her arms. The philosophy of
those days found in these dreams mysterious and preternatural warnings
of impending danger; that of ours, however, sees nothing either in the
absurd sacrilegiousness of Caesar's thoughts, or his wife's incoherent
and inconsistent images of terror--nothing more than the natural and
proper effects, on the one hand, of the insatiable ambition of man, and,
on the other, of the conjugal affection and solicitude of woman. The
ancient sculptors carved out images of men, by the forms and lineaments
of which we see that the physical characteristics of humanity have not
changed. History seems to do the same with the affections and passions
of the soul. The dreams of Caesar and his wife on the night before the
Ides of March, as thus recorded, form a sort of spiritual statue, which
remains from generation to generation, to show us how precisely all the
inward workings of human nature are from age to age the same.
[Sidenote: Caesar hesitates.]
When the morning came Caesar and Calpurnia arose, both restless and ill
at ease. Caesar ordered the auspices to be consulted with reference to
the intended proceedings of the day. The soothsayers came in in due
time, and reported that the result was unfavorable. Calpurnia, too,
earnestly entreated her husband not to go to the senate-house that day.
She had a very strong presentiment that, if he did go, some great
calamity would ensue. Caesar himself hesitated. He was half inclined to
yield, and postpone his coronation to another occasion.
[Sidenote: Decimus Brutus.]
In the course of the day, while Caesar was in this state of doubt and
uncertainty, one of the conspirators, named Decimus Brutus, came in.
This Brutus was not a man of any extraordinary courage or energy, but he
had been invited by the other conspirators to join them, on account of
his having under his charge a large number of gladiators, who, being
desperate and reckless men, would constitute a very suitable armed force
for them to call in to their aid in case of any emergency arising which
should require it.
[Sidenote: Decimus Brutus waits upon Caesar.]
The conspirators having thus all their plans arranged, Decimus Brutus
was commissioned to call at Caesar's house when the time approached for
the assembling of the Senate, both to avert suspicion from Caesar's
mind, and to assure himself that nothing had been discovered It was in
the afternoon, the time for the meeting of the senators having been
fixed at five o'clock. Decimus Brutus found Caesar troubled and
perplexed, and uncertain what to do. After hearing what he had to say,
he replied by urging him to go by all means to the senate-house, as he
had intended. "You have formally called the Senate together," said he,
"and they are now assembling. They are all prepared to confer upon you
the rank and title of king, not only in Parthia, while you are
conducting this war but every where, by sea and land, except in Italy.
And now, while they are all in their places, waiting to consummate the
great act, how absurd will it be for you to send them word to go home
again, and come back some other day, when Calpurnia shall have had
better dreams!"
[Sidenote: He persuades him to go.]
He urged, too, that, even if Caesar was determined to put off the action
of the Senate to another day, he was imperiously bound to go himself and
adjourn the session in person. So saying, he took the hesitating
potentate by the arm, and adding to his arguments a little gentle force,
conducted him along.
[Sidenote: Artemidorus discovers the plot.]
[Sidenote: He warns Caesar.]
The conspirators supposed that all was safe The fact was, however, that
all had been discovered. There was a certain Greek, a teacher of
oratory, named Artemidorus. He had contrived to learn something of the
plot from some of the conspirators who were his pupils. He wrote a brief
statement of the leading particulars, and, having no other mode of
access to Caesar, he determined to hand it to him on the way as he went
to the senate-house. Of course, the occasion was one of great public
interest, and crowds had assembled in the streets to see the great
conqueror as he went along. As usual at such times, when powerful
officers of state appear in public, many people came up to present
petitions to him as he passed. These he received, and handed them,
without reading, to his secretary who attended him, as if to have them
preserved for future examination. Artemidorus, who was waiting for his
opportunity, when he perceived what disposition Caesar made of the
papers which were given to him, began to be afraid that his own
communication would not be attended to until it was too late. He
accordingly pressed up near to Caesar, refusing to allow any one else to
pass the paper in; and when, at last, he obtained an opportunity, he
gave it directly into Caesar's hands saying to him, "Read this
immediately: it concerns yourself, and is of the utmost importance"
Caesar took the paper and attempted to read it, but new petitions and
other interruptions constantly prevented him; finally he gave up the
attempt, and went on his way, receiving and passing to his secretary all
other papers, but retaining this paper of Artemidorus in his hand.
[Sidenote: Caesar and Spurinna.]
Caesar passed Spurinna on his way to the senate-house--the soothsayer
who had predicted some great danger connected with the Ides of March. As
soon as he recognized him, he accosted him with the words, "Well,
Spurinna, the Ides of March have come, and I am safe." "Yes," replied
Spurinna, "they have come, but they are not yet over."
[Sidenote: Caesar arrives at the senate house.]
At length he arrived at the senate-house, with the paper of Artemidorus
still unread in his hand. The senators were all convened, the leading
conspirators among them. They all rose to receive Caesar as he entered.
Caesar advanced to the seat provided for him, and, when he was seated,
the senators themselves sat down. The moment had now arrived, and the
conspirators, with pale looks and beating hearts, felt that now or never
the deed was to be done.
[Sidenote: Resolution of the Conspirators.]
It requires a very considerable degree of physical courage and
hardihood for men to come to a calm and deliberate decision that they
will kill one whom they hate, and, still more, actually to strike the
blow, even when under the immediate impulse of passion. But men who are
perfectly capable of either of these often find their resolution fail
them as the time comes for striking a dagger into the living flesh of
their victim, when he sits at ease and unconcerned before them, unarmed
and defenseless, and doing nothing to excite those feelings of
irritation and anger which are generally found so necessary to nerve the
human arm to such deeds. Utter defenselessness is accordingly,
sometimes, a greater protection than an armor of steel.
[Sidenote: Caesar and Pompey's statue.]
Even Cassius himself, the originator and the soul of the whole
enterprise, found his courage hardly adequate to the work now that the
moment had arrived; and, in order to arouse the necessary excitement in
his soul, he looked up to the statue of Pompey, Caesar's ancient and
most formidable enemy, and invoked its aid. It gave him its aid. It
inspired him with some portion of the enmity with which the soul of its
great original had burned; and thus the soul of the living assassin was
nerved to its work by a sort of sympathy with a block of stone.
[Sidenote: Plan of the conspirators.]
Foreseeing the necessity of something like a stimulus to action when the
immediate moment for action should arrive, the conspirators had agreed
that, as soon as Caesar was seated, they would approach him with a
petition, which he would probably refuse, and then, gathering around
him, they would urge him with their importunities, so as to produce, in
the confusion, a sort of excitement that would make it easier for them
to strike the blow.
[Sidenote: Marc Antony.]
There was one person, a relative and friend of Caesar's, named Marcus
Antonius, called commonly, however, in English narratives, Marc Antony,
the same who has been already mentioned as having been subsequently
connected with Cleopatra. He was a very energetic and determined man,
who, they thought, might possibly attempt to defend him. To prevent
this, one of the conspirators had been designated to take him aside, and
occupy his attention with some pretended subject of discourse, ready, at
the same time, to resist and prevent his interference if he should show
himself inclined to offer any.
[Sidenote: The petition.]
[Sidenote: Caesar assaulted.]
Things being thus arranged, the petitioner, as had been agreed, advanced
to Caesar with his petition, others coming up at the same time as if to
second the request. The object of the petition was to ask for the pardon
of the brother of one of the conspirators. Caesar declined granting it.
The others then crowded around him, urging him to grant the request with
pressing importunities, all apparently reluctant to strike the first
blow. Caesar began to be alarmed, and attempted to repel them. One of
them then pulled down his robe from his neck to lay it bare. Caesar
arose, exclaiming, "But this is violence." At the same instant, one of
the conspirators struck at him with his sword, and wounded him slightly
in the neck.
[Sidenote: He resists.]
All was now terror, outcry, and confusion Caesar had no time to draw his
sword, but fought a moment with his style, a sharp instrument of iron
with which they wrote, in those days, on waxen tablets, and which he
happened then to have in his hand. With this instrument he ran one of
his enemies through the arm.
[Illustration: POMPEY'S STATUE.]
[Sidenote: Caesar is overcome.]
[Sidenote: Pompey's statue.]
[Sidenote: Caesar's death.]
This resistance was just what was necessary to excite the conspirators,
and give them the requisite resolution to finish their work. Caesar soon
saw the swords, accordingly, gleaming all around him, and thrusting
themselves at him on every side. The senators rose in confusion and
dismay, perfectly thunderstruck at the scene, and not knowing what to
do. Antony perceived that all resistance on his part would be
unavailing, and accordingly did not attempt any. Caesar defended himself
alone for a few minutes as well as he could, looking all around him in
vain for help, and retreating at the same time toward the pedestal of
Pompey's statue. At length, when he saw Brutus among his murderers, he
exclaimed, "And you too, Brutus?" and seemed from that moment to give up
in despair. He drew his robe over his face, and soon fell under the
wounds which he received. His blood ran out upon the pavement at the
foot of Pompey's statue, as if his death were a sacrifice offered to
appease his ancient enemy's revenge.
[Sidenote: Flight of the senators.]
[Sidenote: Great commotion.]
In the midst of the scene Brutus made an attempt to address the
senators, and to vindicate what they had done, but the confusion and
excitement were so great that it was impossible that any thing could be
heard. The senators were, in fact, rapidly leaving the place, going off
in every direction, and spreading the tidings over the city. The event,
of course, produced universal commotion. The citizens began to close
their shops, and some to barricade their houses, while others hurried to
and fro about the streets, anxiously inquiring for intelligence, and
wondering what dreadful event was next to be expected. Antony and
Lepidus, who were Caesar's two most faithful and influential friends,
not knowing how extensive the conspiracy might be, nor how far the
hostility to Caesar and his party might extend, fled, and, not daring to
go to their own houses, lest the assassins or their confederates might
pursue them there, sought concealment in the houses of friends on whom
they supposed they could rely and who were willing to receive them.
[Sidenote: The Conspirators proceed to the Capitol.]
[Sidenote: They glory in their deed.]
In the mean time, the conspirators, glorying In the deed which they had
perpetrated, and congratulating each other on the successful issue of
their enterprise, sallied forth together from the senate-house, leaving
the body of their victim weltering in its blood, and marched, with drawn
swords in their hands, along the streets from the senate-house to the
Capitol. Brutus went at the head of them, preceded by a liberty cap
borne upon the point of a spear, and with his bloody dagger in his hand.
The Capitol was the citadel, built magnificently upon the Capitoline
Hill, and surrounded by temples, and other sacred and civil edifices,
which made the spot the architectural wonder of the world. As Brutus and
his company proceeded thither, they announced to the citizens, as they
went along, the great deed of deliverance which they had wrought out for
the country. Instead of seeking concealment, they gloried in the work
which they had done, and they so far succeeded in inspiring others with
a portion of their enthusiasm, that some men who had really taken no
part in the deed joined Brutus and his company in their march, to obtain
by stealth a share in the glory.
[Sidenote: Number of Caesar's wounds.]
The body of Caesar lay for some time unheeded where it had fallen, the
attention of every one being turned to the excitement, which was
extending through the city, and to the expectation of other great events
which might suddenly develop themselves in other quarters of Rome. There
were left only three of Caesar's slaves, who gathered around the body to
look at the wounds. They counted them, and found the number
twenty-three. It shows, however, how strikingly, and with what
reluctance, the actors in this tragedy came up to their work at last,
that of all these twenty-three wounds only one was a mortal one. In
fact, it is probable that, while all of the conspirators struck the
victim in their turn, to fulfill the pledge which they had given to one
another that they would every one inflict a wound, each one hoped that
the fatal blow would be given, after all, by some other hand than
his own.
[Sidenote: His slaves convey his body home.]
At last the slaves decided to convey the body home. They obtained a sort
of chair, which was made to be borne by poles, and placed the body upon
it. Then, lifting at the three handles, and allowing the fourth to hang
unsupported for want of a man, they bore the ghastly remains home to the
distracted Calpurnia.
[Sidenote: Address of the conspirators.]
The next day Brutus and his associates called an assembly of the people
in the Forum, and made an address to them, explaining the motives which
had led them to the commission of the deed, and vindicating the
necessity and the justice of it. The people received these explanations
in silence. They expressed neither approbation nor displeasure. It was
not, in fact, to be expected that they would feel or evince any
satisfaction at the loss of their master. He had been their champion,
and, as they believed, their friend. The removal of Caesar brought no
accession of power nor increase of liberty to them. It might have been a
gain to ambitious senators, or powerful generals, or high officers of
state, by removing a successful rival out of their way, but it seemed to
promise little advantage to the community at large, other than the
changing of one despotism for another. Besides, a populace who know that
they mast be governed, prefer generally, if they must submit to some
control, to yield their submission to some one master spirit whom they
can look up to as a great and acknowledged superior. They had rather
have a Caesar than a Senate to command them.
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