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$Title{Julius Caesar
Chapter XII: The Assassination}
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$Author{Abbott, Jacob}
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$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 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!"

     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.

     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.

     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."

     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.

     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.

     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 invoke 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.

     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.

     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.

[Hear To Marc Antony]
He was a very energetic and determined man, who, the conspirators thought,
might possibly  attempt to defend Caesar.

     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.

     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.

     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.

[See Et Tu, Brute?: The senators rose in confusion and dismay, perfectly
thunderstruck at the scene.]

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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 must 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.

     The higher authorities, however, were, as might have been expected,
disposed to acquiesce in the removal of Caesar from his intended throne.  The
Senate met, and passed an act of indemnity, to shield the conspirators from
all legal liability for the deed they had done.  In order, however, to satisfy
the people too, as far as possible, they decreed divine honors to Caesar,
confirmed and ratified all that he had done while in the exercise of supreme
power, and appointed a time for the funeral, ordering arrangements to be made
for a very pompous celebration of it

     A will was soon found, which Caesar, it seems, had made some time before.
Calpurnia's father proposed that this will should be opened and read in public
at Antony's house; and this was accordingly done.  The provisions of the will
were, many of them, of such a character as renewed the feelings of interest
and sympathy which the people of Rome had begun to cherish for Caesar's
memory.  His vast estate was divided chiefly among the children of his sister,
as he had no children of his own, while the very men who had been most
prominent in his assassination were named as trustees and guardians of the
property; and one of them, Decimus Brutus, the one who had been so urgent to
conduct him to the senate-house, was a second heir.  He had some splendid
gardens near the Tiber, which he bequeathed to the citizens of Rome, and a
large amount of money also, to be divided among them, sufficient to give every
man a considerable sum.

     The time for the celebration of the funeral ceremonies was made known by
proclamation, and, as the concourse of strangers and citizens of Rome was
likely to be so great as to forbid the forming of all into one procession
without consuming more than one day, the various classes of the community were
invited to come, each in their own way, to the Field of Mars, bringing with
them such insignia, offerings, and oblations as they pleased.  The Field of
Mars was an immense parade ground, reserved for military reviews, spectacles,
and shows.  A funeral pile was erected here for the burning of the body.
There was to be a funeral discourse pronounced and Marc Antony had been
designated to perform this duty.  The body had been placed in a gilded bed,
under a magnificent canopy in the form of a temple, before the rostra where
the funeral discourse was to be pronounced.  The bed was covered with scarlet
and cloth of gold and at the head of it was laid the robe in which Caesar had
been slain.  It was stained with blood, and pierced with the holes that the
swords and daggers of the conspirators had made.

[See The Burning Of Caesar: The body had been placed in a gilded bed, under a
magnificent canopy in the form of a temple.]

     Marc Antony, instead of pronouncing a formal panegyric upon his deceased
friend, ordered a crier to read the decrees of the Senate, in which all
honors, human and divine, had been ascribed to Caesar.  He then added a few
words of his own.  The bed was then taken up, with the body upon it, and borne
out into the Forum, preparatory to conveying it to the pile which had been
prepared for it upon the Field of Mars.  A question, however, here arose among
the multitude assembled in respect to the proper place for burning the body.
The people seemed inclined to select the most honorable place which could be
found within the limits of the city.  Some proposed a beautiful temple on the
Capitoline Hill.  Others wished to take it to the senate-house, where he had
been slain.  The Senate, and those who were less inclined to pay extravagant
honors to the departed hero, were in favor of some more retired spot, under
pretense that the buildings of the city would be endangered by the fire.  This
discussion was fast becoming a dispute, when it was suddenly ended by two men,
with swords at their sides and lances in their hands, forcing their way
through the crowd with lighted torches, and setting the bed and its canopy on
fire where it lay.

     This settled the question, and the whole company were soon in the wildest
excitement with the work of building up a funeral pile upon the spot. At first
they brought fagots and threw upon the fire, then benches from the neighboring
courts and porticoes, and then any thing combustible which came to hand.  The
honor done to the memory of a deceased hero was, in some sense, in proportion
to the greatness of his funeral pile, and all the populace on this occasion
began soon to seize every thing they could find, appropriate and
unappropriate, provided that it would increase the flame.  The soldiers threw
on their lances and spears, the musicians their instruments, and others
stripped off the cloths and trappings from the furniture of the procession,
and heaped them upon the burning pile.

     So fierce and extensive was the fire, that it spread to some of the
neighboring houses, and required great efforts to prevent a general
conflagration.  The people, too, became greatly excited by the scene.  They
lighted torches by the fire, and went to the houses of Brutus and Cassius,
threatening vengeance upon them for the murder of Caesar.  The authorities
succeeded though with infinite difficulty, in protecting Brutus and Cassius
from the violence of the mob, but they seized one unfortunate citizen of the
name of Cinna, thinking it a certain Cinna who had been known as an enemy of
Caesar.  They cut off his head, notwithstanding his shrieks and cries, and
carried it about the city on the tip of a pike, a dreadful symbol of their
hostility to the enemies of Caesar.  As frequently happens, however, in such
deeds of sudden violence, these hasty and lawless avengers found afterward
that they had made a mistake, and beheaded the wrong man.

     The Roman people erected a column to the memory of Caesar, on which they
placed the inscription, "To the Father of his Country." They fixed the figure
of a star upon the summit of it, and some time afterward, while the people
were celebrating some games in honor of his memory, a great comet blazed for
seven nights in the sky, which they recognized as the mighty hero's soul
reposing in heaven.

     The End.