Music for the Mind

This made the multitude turn their thoughts to Marcus Brutus,
who, by his father's side,
was thought to be descended from that first Brutus,
and by his mother's side from the Servilii,
another noble family,
being besides nephew and son-in-law to Cato.

But the honors and favors he had received from Caesar,
took off the edge from the desires he might himself have felt
for overthrowing the new monarchy.

For he had not only been pardoned himself
after Pompey's defeat at Pharsalia,
and had procured the same grace for many of his friends,
but was one in whom Caesar had a particular confidence.

He had at that time the most honorable praetorship of the year,
and was named for the consulship four years after,
being preferred before Cassius,
his competitor.

Upon the question as to the choice,
Caesar, it is related,
said that Cassius had the fairer pretensions,
but that he could not pass by Brutus.

Nor would he afterwards listen
to some who spoke against Brutus,
when the conspiracy against him was already afoot,
but laying his hand on his body,
said to the informers,

"Brutus will wait for this skin of mine,"

intimating that he was worthy to bear rule
on account of his virtue,
but would not be base and ungrateful to gain it.

Those who desired a change,
and looked on him as the only,
or at least the most proper,
person to effect it,
did not venture to speak with him;
but in the night time laid papers about his chair of state,
where he used to sit and determine causes,
with such sentences in them as,
"You are asleep, Brutus,"
"You are no longer Brutus."

Cassius, when he perceived his ambition a little
raised upon this,
was more instant than before to work him yet further,
having himself a private grudge against Caesar,
for some reasons that we have mentioned in the Life of Brutus.

Nor was Caesar without suspicions of him,
and said once to his friends,

"What do you think Cassius is aiming at?
I don't like him, he looks so pale."

And when it was told him that Antony and Dolabella
were in a plot against him,
he said he did not fear such fat, luxurious men,
but rather the pale, lean fellows,
meaning Cassius and Brutus.

Fate, however,
is to all appearance
more unavoidable than unexpected.

For many strange prodigies and apparitions
are said to have been observed
shortly before the event.

As to the lights in the heavens,
the noises heard in the night,
and the wild birds which perched in the forum,
these are not perhaps worth taking notice of
in so great a case as this.

Strabo, the philosopher,
tells us that a number of men were seen,
looking as if they were heated through with fire,
contending with each other;
that a quantity of flame issued
from the hand of a soldier's servant,
so that they who saw it thought he must be burnt,
but that after all he had no hurt.

As Caesar was sacrificing,
the victim's heart was missing,
a very bad omen,
because no living creature can subsist without a heart.

One finds it also related by many,
that a soothsayer bade him
prepare for some great danger on the ides of March.

When the day was come,
Caesar, as he went to the senate,
met this soothsayer,
and said to him by way of raillery,

"The ides of March are come;"

who answered him calmly, "

Yes, they are come, but they are not past."

The day before this assassination,
he supped with Marcus Lepidus;
and as he was signing some letters,
according to his custom,
as he reclined at table,
there arose a question
what sort of death was the best.

At which he immediately,
before anyone could speak,
said,

"A sudden one."

After this,
as he was in bed with his wife,
all the doors and windows of the house
flew open together;

he was startled at the noise,
and the light which broke into the room,
and sat up in his bed,
where by the moonshine he perceived Calpurnia
fast asleep,
but heard her utter in her dream
some indistinct words
and inarticulate groans.

She fancied at that time she was weeping over Caesar,
and holding him butchered in her arms.

Others say this was not her dream,
but that she dreamed that a pinnacle which the senate,
as Livy relates,
had ordered to be raised on Caesar's house
by way of ornament and grandeur,
was tumbling down,
which was the occasion of her tears and ejaculations.

When it was day,
she begged of Caesar,
if it were possible,
not to stir out,
but to adjourn the senate to another time;
and if he slighted her dreams,
that he would be pleased to consult his fate by sacrifices,
and other kinds of divination.

Nor was he himself without some suspicion and fears;
for he never before discovered
any womanish superstition in Calpurnia,
whom he now saw in such great alarm.

Upon the report which the priests made to him,
that they had killed several sacrifices,
and still found them inauspicious,
he resolved to send Antony to dismiss the senate.

In this juncture,
Decimus Brutus,
surnamed Albinus,
one whom Caesar had such confidence in
that he made him his second heir,
who nevertheless was engaged in the conspiracy
with the other Brutus and Cassius,
fearing lest if Caesar should put off the senate to another day,
the business might get wind,
spoke scoffingly and in mockery of the diviners,
and blamed Caesar for giving the senate
so fair an occasion
of saying he had put a slight upon them,
for that they were met upon his summons,
and were ready to vote unanimously,
that he should be declared
king of all the provinces out of Italy,
and might wear a diadem
in any other place but Italy,
by sea or land.

If anyone should be sent to tell them
they might break up for the present,
and meet again when Calpurnia
should chance to have better dreams,
what would his enemies say?

Or who would with any patience hear his friends,
if they should presume to defend his government
as not arbitrary and tyrannical?

But if he was possessed so far
as to think this day unfortunate,
yet it were more decent
to go himself to the senate,
and to adjourn it in his own person.

Brutus, as he spoke these words,
took Caesar by the hand,
and conducted him forth.

He was not gone far from the door,
when a servant of some other person's
made towards him,
but not being able to come up to him,
on account of the crowd of those who pressed about him,
he made his way into the house,
and committed himself to Calpurnia,
begging of her to secure him till Caesar returned,
because he had matters of great importance
to communicate to him.

Artemidorus, a Cnidian,
a teacher of Greek logic,
and by that means so far acquainted
with Brutus and his friends
as to have got into the secret,
brought Caesar in a small written memorial,
the heads of what he had to depose.

He had observed that Caesar,
as he received any papers,
presently gave them to the servants
who attended on him;
and therefore came as near to him as he could,
and said,

"Read this, Caesar, alone, and quickly,
for it contains matter of great importance
which nearly concerns you."

Caesar received it,
and tried several times to read it,
but was still hindered by the crowd of those
who came to speak to him.

However, he kept it in his hand by itself
till he came into the senate.

Some say it was another who gave Caesar this note,
and that Artemidorus could not get to him,
being all along kept off by the crowd.

All these things might happen by chance.
But the place which was destined
for the scene of this murder,
in which the senate met that day,
was the same in which Pompey's statue stood,
and was one of the edifices which Pompey had raised
and dedicated with his theater to the use of the public,
plainly showing that there was
something of a supernatural influence
which guided the action,
and ordered it to that particular place.

Cassius,
just before the act,
is said to have looked towards Pompey's statue,
and silently implored his assistance,
though he had been inclined to the doctrines of Epicurus.

But this occasion,
and the instant danger,
carried him away out of all his reasonings,
and filled him for the time with a sort of inspiration.

As for Antony,
who was firm to Caesar,
and a strong man,
Brutus Albinus kept him outside the house,
and delayed him with a long conversation
contrived on purpose.

When Caesar entered,
the senate stood up to show their respect to him,
and of Brutus's confederates,
some came about his chair and stood behind it,
others met him,
pretending to add their petitions to those of Tillius Cimber,
in behalf of his brother,
who was in exile;
and they followed him with their joint supplications
till he came to his seat.

When he was sat down,
he refused to comply with their requests,
and upon their urging him further,
began to reproach them severally for their importunities,
when Tillius,
laying hold of his robe with both his hands,
pulled it down from his neck,
which was the signal for the assault.

Casca gave him the first cut,
in the neck,
which was not mortal nor dangerous,
as coming from one
who at the beginning of such a bold action
was probably very much disturbed.

Caesar immediately turned about,
and laid his hand upon the dagger
and kept hold of it.

And both of them at the same time cried out,
he that received the blow, in Latin,

"Vile Casca, what does this mean?"

and he that gave it, in Greek, to his brother,

"Brother, help!"

Upon this first onset,
those who were not privy to the design were astonished
and their horror and amazement
at what they saw were so great,
that they durst not fly nor assist Caesar,
nor so much as speak a word.

But those who came prepared for the business
enclosed him on every side,
with their naked daggers in their hands.

Which way soever he turned,
he met with blows,
and saw their swords leveled at his face and eyes,
and was encompassed,
like a wild beast in the toils,
on every side.

For it had been agreed they should each of them
make a thrust at him,
and flesh themselves with his blood;
for which reason Brutus
also gave him one stab in the groin.

Some say that he fought
and resisted all the rest,
shifting his body to avoid the blows,
and calling out for help,
but that when he saw Brutus's sword drawn,
he covered his face with his robe
and submitted,
letting himself fall,
whether it were by chance,
or that he was pushed in that direction
by his murderers,
at the foot of the pedestal
on which Pompey's statue stood,
and which was thus wetted with his blood.

So that Pompey himself
seemed to have presided,
as it were,
over the revenge done upon his adversary,
who lay here at his feet,
and breathed out his soul
through his multitude of wounds,
for they say he received three and twenty.
 
And the conspirators themselves
were many of them wounded
by each other,
whilst they all leveled their blows
at the same person.

When Caesar was dispatched,
Brutus stood forth to give a reason
for what they had done,
but the senate would not hear him,
but flew out of doors in all haste,
and filled the people
with so much alarm and distraction,
that some shut up their houses,
others left their counters and shops.

All ran one way or the other,
some to the place to see the sad spectacle,
others back again after they had seen it.

Antony and Lepidus,
Caesar's most faithful friends,
got off privately,
and hid themselves in some friends' houses.

Brutus and his followers,
being yet hot from the deed,
marched in a body
from the senate-house to the capitol
with their drawn swords,
not like persons who thought of escaping,
but with an air of confidence and assurance,
and as they went along,
called to the people to resume their liberty,
and invited the company of any more distinguished people
whom they met.

And some of these joined the procession
and went up along with them,
as if they also had been of the conspiracy,
and could claim a share in the honor of what had been done.

As, for example,
Caius Octavius and Lentulus Spinther,
who suffered afterwards for their vanity,
being taken off by Antony and the young Caesar,
and lost the honor they desired,
as well as their lives,
which it cost them,
since no one believed
they had any share in the action.

For neither did those who punished them
profess to revenge the fact,
but the ill-will.

The day after,
Brutus with the rest came down from the capitol,
and made a speech to the people,
who listened without expressing
either any pleasure or resentment,
but showed by their silence
that they pitied Caesar,
and respected Brutus.

The senate passed acts of oblivion
for what was past,
and took measures to reconcile all parties.

They ordered that Caesar
should be worshipped as a divinity,
and nothing,
even of the slightest consequence,
should be revoked,
which he had enacted during his government.

At the same time they gave Brutus
and his followers
the command of provinces,
and other considerable posts.

So that all people
now thought things were well settled,
and brought to the happiest adjustment.

But when Caesar's will was opened,
and it was found
that he had left a considerable legacy
to each one of the Roman citizens,
and when his body was seen
carried through the market-place
all mangled with wounds,
the multitude could no longer contain themselves
within the bounds of tranquillity and order,
but heaped together a pile
of benches, bars, and tables,
which they placed the corpse on,
and setting fire to it,
burnt it on them.

Then they took brands from the pile,
and ran some
to fire the houses of the conspirators,
others up and down the city,
to find out the men and tear them to pieces,
but met, however, with none of them,
they having taken effectual care to secure themselves.

One Cinna,
a friend of Caesar's,
chanced the night before to have an odd dream.

He fancied that Caesar invited him to supper,
and that upon his refusal to go with him,
Caesar took him by the hand and forced him,
though he hung back.

Upon hearing the report
that Caesar's body was burning
in the market-place,
he got up and went thither,
out of respect to his memory,
though his dream gave him some ill apprehensions,
and though he was suffering from a fever.

One of the crowd who saw him there,
asked another who that was,
and having learned his name,
told it to his next neighbor.

It presently passed for a certainty
that he was one of Caesar's murderers,
as, indeed, there was another Cinna,
a conspirator,
and they,
taking this to be the man,
immediately seized him,
and tore him limb from limb
upon the spot.

Brutus and Cassius,
frightened at this,
within a few days retired out of the city.

What they afterwards did and suffered,
and how they died,
is written in the Life of Brutus.

Caesar died in his fifty-sixth year,
not having survived Pompey above four years.

That empire and power
which he had pursued
through the whole course of his life
with so much hazard,
he did at last with much difficulty compass,
but reaped no other fruits from it
than the empty name and invidious glory.

But the great genius
which attended him through his lifetime,
even after his death
remained as the avenger of his murder,
pursuing through every sea and land
all those who were concerned in it,
and suffering none to escape,
but reaching all who in any sort or kind
were either actually engaged in the fact,
or by their counsels any way promoted it.

The most remarkable of mere human coincidences
was that which befell Cassius,
who, when he was defeated at Philippi,
killed himself with the same dagger
which he had made use of against Caesar.

The most signal preternatural appearances
were the great comet,
which shone very bright for seven nights
after Caesar's death,
and then disappeared,
and the dimness of the sun,
whose orb continued pale and dull
for the whole of that year,
never showing its ordinary radiance at its rising,
and giving but a weak and feeble heat.

The air consequently was damp and gross,
for want of stronger rays to open and rarify it.

The fruits, for that reason,
never properly ripened,
and began to wither and fall off
for want of heat,
before they were fully formed.

But above all,
the phantom which appeared to Brutus
showed the murder was not pleasing to the gods.

The story of it is this. --- "

Plutarch's Lives
Julius Caesar