The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0002/00027.txt

Text File | 1992-08-14 | 27KB | 437 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00027}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Julius Caesar
Chapter XII: The Assassination}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Abbott, Jacob}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{caesar
conspirators
time
upon
brutus
found
body
day
caesar's
senate-house
hear
audio
hear
sound
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1900}
$Log{Hear To Marc Antony*51110012.aud
See Et Tu, Brute?*0002701.scf
See The Burning Of Caesar*0002702.scf
}
Title:       Julius Caesar
Author:      Abbott, Jacob
Date:        1900

Chapter XII: The Assassination

     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:

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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