In the first two months of this fated year, more than one experiment was made upon the temper of the people, but always with a discouraging result. One morning Cæsar's statue in front of the Rostra was found decorated with a diadem; and the tribunes, Marullus and Cæsetius, obtained the title of the new Brutuses by tearing it down and punishing the offender. At the great Latin festival on the 26th of January, at the Alban Mount, more than one salutation of "king" provoked the low but audible murmurs of the people, till the dictator exclaimed "I am no king, but Cæsar," unconsciously prophecying how the latter name would outshine the former.* As to the last demonstration, made by Mark Antony at the feast of the Lupercalia, on the 15th of February, it is superfluous to do more than remind the countrymen of Shakspere of the words :—

"You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown
Which he did thrice refuse."

The poet has closely followed Plutarch's account of the scene, in which the faint cheers of the people at the offer of the diadem, followed by their shout of applause at its refusal, determined Cæsar to declare, "I am not a king: the only king of the Romans is Jupiter." He hung up the offered diadem as a trophy in the Capitol, and caused the transaction to be recorded in the Fasti. But still the idea was not finally abandoned. A Sibylline oracle was quoted, that Parthia could only be conquered by a king; and it was proposed that Cæsar should be invested with the royal title and authority over the foreign subjects of the State. It seems to have been the resolution not to yield this point that matured the plot against his life.

The universal opinion among the free states of antiquity in favour of tyrannicide caused a life like Cæsar's to be held ever at the dagger's point; and some even of his chief adherents, as Antony and Dolabella, had already been accused of plotting his murder. The conspiracy to which he at length fell a victim was concocted by men of all parties in the state;-the old nobles, who had been his enemies from the first, but nearly all of whom owed their position or their life to his clemency; his own adherents, some * During the international festivities of 1851, at the fête given at St. Cloud, amidst the cries of Vive Napoleon with which the officers greeted the Prince President Charles Louis Bonaparte, an officious Englishman shouted, "Vive l'Empereur,” "Sir!" said the President of the Republic-"if that cry is repeated, I must leave the grounds." This parallel is related on the authority of one who was close by.

of whom allowed petty disappointments to outweigh all the favours he had heaped upon them, while others like Decimus Brutus and Trebonius-were still receiving honours and governments at his hands; and if there were in the number any genuine patriots, the sense of shame and gratitude might have made them hold their hands. The tradition which represents this medley knot of conspirators as a band of stern vindicators of liberty is so untrue to history, that it can only have had its source in the instinctive hatred of the principle of tyranny. The conspirators were about sixty, or as some say, eighty. The prime mover of the plot was C. Cassius Longinus, whom we have seen distinguishing himself as quæstor under Crassus in Parthia, and as commander of the Pompeian fleet, and submitting to Cæsar soon after the battle of Pharsalia. Like the knot of personal friends who surrounded Cæsar, he was an avowed Epicurean, and his political principles were no stricter than his philosophy. A narrow selfish jealousy of Cæsar's ascendancy is the only motive that can be found for his concoction of the conspiracy. The semblance of patriotic vengeance, which it would have been a mockery for Cassius to assume, was supplied by the name of Marcus Junius Brutus. "The name of Brutus forced its possessor into prominence as soon as royalty began to be discussed" (Merivale); and besides a doubtful descent from the founder of the republic, Brutus was the son-in-law and panegyrist of Cato, and an ardent student of the Stoic philosophy. But in practical life he was feeble and irresolute. Having joined the Pompeian standard with reluctance, he had been the first to submit after the battle of Pharsalia, and had been ever since distinguished by Cæsar's special favour. But hints which his patron was said to have dropped of Brutus's worthiness to fill his place aided the plausible appeals which his brother-in-law Cassius made to his vanity. The mind which could be caught by such tricks as placards hung upon the statue of the elder Brutus with the inscription "Would thou wert alive!"-by billets thrust into his own hand, bearing the words, "Brutus, thou sleepest, thou art no Brutus!"—had as little of stern principle, as the heart that could plant the last dagger in Cæsar's bosom had of gratitude. It is a relief to turn from the moral weakness and wicked inconsistency of the vain Stoic, who gave the conspirators what they wanted, a name and head, to the tribute which they paid to Cicero's integrity, by not daring even to acquaint him with their design.

It is needless to relate at length the oft-told story of the fatal

VOL. III.

S

His

IDES OF MARCH (March 15th, B.C. 44), the day for which the Senate was convened on the eve of Cæsar's departure for the East,—the day which had been marked by the warning-"Beware of the Ides of March." The conspirators had resolved to anticipate the expected motion for conferring upon Cæsar the title of king in foreign parts, by despatching him as soon as he entered the Senate-house. Hints of a plot entrusted to so many persons could not but get abroad, and some such hints reached Cæsar. His wonted magnanimity seems to have been mingled with that calm acquiescence in approaching fate, which has often marked the coming end of great men. Epicurean philosophy, confessing no terrors beyond the grave, was consistent in forbidding life to be marred by the fear of death; and on the very evening before his fall, he had replied to the question started at table-" What kind of death is the best?"—" That which is least expected." If, however, we may believe the uniform tradition of antiquity, the remnant of Roman superstition in Cæsar's mind was moved by a fearful dream of his wife Calpurnia, and by the unfavourable auspices which the victims presented in the morning. He had even resolved, it is said, to send his colleague Antony to dismiss the Senate, when the raillery of Decimus Brutus, who had come to escort him, suppressed the show of irresolution. Postponement would indeed have been ruin to the plot; for, while the conspirators were alarmed at each moment by floating hints, more than one last warning met Cæsar on his way to the Senate. In spite of the care of the conspirators who surrounded his litter, a man thrust into it a scroll, which Cæsar rolled up, taking it for a petition, and still held in his hand when he was attacked. The last warning of all, though perhaps a rhetorical invention, expresses with the very truth of nature the premature joy of escape from inevitable doom :-" The Ides of March are come!""Yes! but they are not yet passed."

The Senate was summoned to meet in the Curia of Pompey, a hall adjacent to his theatre; and those of the conspirators who were not already in attendance upon Cæsar were waiting in the portico of that edifice, with daggers concealed beneath their cloaks. They crowded about him as he entered the hall, while Trebonius detained Antony in conversation at the door. Cæsar took his seat, and Tillius Cimber approached him to present a petition for his brother's pardon. Under the pretence of joining in the supplication, the conspirators grasped Cæsar's hands, and Cimber pulled his toga over his arms. At this signal, Casca struck the first blow. It only grazed Cæsar's shoulder, and, releasing one of his

arms, he seized the hilt of Casca's dagger. For a moment he defended himself with his stilus,* and wounded one of his assailants. But at the sight of Brutus among his murderers, he exclaimed, "Et tu, Brute"-"Thou too, Brutus !"-drew his toga over his Brutus!"-drew face, and ceased resistance, while the conspirators fulfilled the oath they had sworn, that each one of them would bathe his dagger in the Dictator's blood. Supported for an instant by the blows struck at him from every side, he staggered a few paces, and fell on a spot which seemed chosen by the very irony of fate :

"Even at the base of Pompey's statuë,

Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell."

He died in his fifty-sixth year. The deeds which he had performed, and the much vaster enterprizes that he meditated, bear witness to his transcendent practical genius alike in war and peace. His intellectual qualities and habits are described by Cicero as embracing genius, understanding, memory, taste, reflection, industry, and exactness. The universal application of his powers is thus summed up by a modern historian:-" He was great in everything he undertook; as a captain, a statesman, a lawgiver, a jurist, an orator, a poet, an historian, a grammarian, a mathematician, and an architect." And the historian of the Cæsars has pointed out that "The secret of this manifold excellence was discovered by Pliny in the unparalleled energy of Cæsar's intellectual powers, which he could devote without distraction to several subjects at once, or rush at any moment from one occupation to another with the abruptness and rapidity of lightning. Cæsar could be writing and reading, dictating and listening, all at the same time; he was wont to occupy four amanuenses at once, and had been known on occasions to employ as many as seven together.§ And, as if to complete the picture of the most perfect specimen of human ability, we are assured that in all the exercises of the camp his vigour and skill were not less conspicuous. He fought at the most perilous moments in the ranks of the soldiers; he could manage his charger without the use of reins, and he saved his life at Alexan

The short piece of iron, sharpened at the end, for writing on waxen tablets, which a Roman carried in his writing case.

† Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. iii. p. 746.

So Cicero says of him: "Sed hoc répas horribili vigilantia, celeritate, diligentia est." (Ad Att. VIII. 9.)

§ At least so says Pliny (H.N. vii. 25). Perhaps there are official persons who can form some idea of the amount of attention to each clerk, which would bring the statement within the limits of possibility.

There is a bust of

dria by his address in the art of swimming."* Julius Cæsar in the British Museum, in which every lineament corresponds to this character, and which gives us a far better idea of his features than all the laboured description of his biographers.

Of his moral qualities, we have had frequent occasion to notice his generosity and affability, his marvellous power of winning friends, and his clemency to his enemies. The last quality proceeded from a mixture of genuine kindness of heart with a farsighted magnanimity of policy; for he was restrained by no scruple of conscience from using whatever means would effect his ends. His Epicurean love of the amenities of life never descended to the habit of gross self-indulgence. Though profligate in his amours from his earliest youth, and in the case of Cleopatra enslaved by love, his habitual temperance is attested by the saying of Cato, that Cæsar alone came sober to the overthrow of the Republic. In the control of his temper also he presented a striking contrast to Alexander.† These virtues were conspicuous on the surface of Cæsar's character; but, if we descend deeper, we find in him faults that are an epitome of the corruption of his age,—its want of reverence for the old foundations of social virtue, and for the first principles of truth and of self-sacrificing virtue. He was at once the product and the avenger of the deep-seated diseases which had made the longer duration of the existing state of things at Rome impossible. Cicero, in spite of his pitiable weaknesses, -Cato, notwithstanding his repulsive harshness, could live through the same age without the sacrifice of pure morality and unselfish patriotism. It is with such men that Cæsar should be compared, and not with Pompey and the faction of the nobles. That these men were utterly in the wrong does not prove Cæsar to have been in the right; nor does the useless crime of his murderers raise him to the dignity of a political martyr. The necessities which urged him on through the later stages of his careereven could "the tyrant's plea ever be admitted as valid-can plead no excuse for the deliberate choice of his earlier ambition, nor exempt him from the condemnation which history passes upon the usurper. And when the points of real greatness in his character are used to cast a false halo over each fresh attempt to imitate his political crimes, that very greatness assures us that the result must be but a wretched plagiarism :

"None but himself can be his parallel."

Merivale, Vol. II. p. 500.

"Magno illo Alexandro, sed sobrio neque iracundo, simillimus." (Vell. Paterc.)