[593] Dion Cassius (44. c. 9) speaks of the honours conferred on Cæsar and his supposed ambitious designs.
[594] The Latin word "brutus" means "senseless," "stupid." The Cumæi, the inhabitants of Cume in Æolis, were reckoned very stupid. Strabo (p. 622) gives two reasons why this opinion obtained; one of which was, that it was not till three hundred years after the foundation of the city that they thought of making some profit by the customs duties, though they had a port.
[595] Compare the Life of Brutus, c. 1, Dion Cassius (44. c. 12), and Drumann, Geschichte Roms, Junii, p. 2. This Brutus was not a descendant of him who expelled the last king.
[596] Plutarch means the office of Prætor Urbanus, the highest of the offices called prætorships. There was originally only one prætor, the Prætor Urbanus. There were now sixteen. The Prætor Urbanus was the chief person engaged in the administration of justice in Rome; and hence the allusion to the "tribunal" (βῆμα) where the Prætor sat when he did business.
[597] I have translated this according to the reading of Sintenis. Compare the Life of Brutus, c. 8. Cæsar was very lean. As to the writings compare Dion Cassius (44, c. 12).
[598] See the Life of Brutus, c. 89.
Shakspere, Julius Cæsar, Act i. Sc. 2.
[600] The passage was in the Historical Memoirs. See the Life of Sulla, c. 26; and the Life of Lucullus, c. 28. Notes.
[601] The Ides of March were the 15th, on which day Cæsar was murdered.
[602] Compare Dion Cassius (44. c. 17). Cæsar also had a dream.
[603] I have kept Plutarch's word, which is Greek. Suetonius (Cæsar, c. 81) expresses it by the Latin word "fastigium," and also Florus (iv. 2), Cicero (Philipp. ii. 43), and Julius Obsequens (c. 127), who enumerates the omens mentioned by Plutarch. The passage of Livius must have been in the 116th Book, which is lost. See the Epitome. The word here probably means a pediment. But it also signifies an ornament, such as a statue placed on the summit of a pediment.
[604] Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus was the son of Decimus Junius Brutus, Consul B.C. 77, and grandson of Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus, Consul B.C. 138. He was adopted by Aulus Postumius Albinus, Consul, B.C. 99, whence he took the name Albinus. He served under Cæsar in Gaul, during which campaign he destroyed the fleet of the Veneti. (Gallic War, iii. 12, &c.) Decimus Brutus was a great favourite with Cæsar, who by his will placed him in the second degree of succession; he also gave him the province of Cisalpine Gaul, which Brutus held after Cæsar's death, and appointed him to be consul for B.C. 42. In the year B.C. 43, after M. Antonius had united himself with M. Lepidus, the governor of Gallia Narbonensis, and L. Munatius Plancus and Asinius Pollio had also joined M. Antonius, Decimus Brutus attempted to make his escape into Macedonia to Marcus Brutus; but he was overtaken in the Alps by the cavalry of Antonius, and put to death after abjectly praying for mercy. This was the just punishment of a treacherous friend who helped Cæsar to the supreme power and then betrayed him (Vell. Paterculus, ii. 61). Like many other men, he did well enough when he was directed by others, but when he was put in command, he lost his head and threw away the opportunities that he had. There are extant several of his letters to Ciecro and letters of Cicero to him. (Dion Cassius, 43. c. 53, and the references in the notes; Drumann, Geschichte Roms, Junii.)
[605] It was usual for the Romans in their wills to substitute an heres, one or more (in the Roman sense), to take the property in case the person who was first named in the will for any reason did not take it. Cæsar's first heres was his great nephew, C. Octavius, afterwards Augustus.
[606] It was the general opinion that some roll or writing was put into Cæsar's hands, which informed him of the conspiracy; but, as is usual in such cases, there were different statements current about the particulars of this circumstance. Compare Dion Cassius, 44. c. 18.
[607] According to Dion Cassius (41. c. 52) the Senate was assembled in the curia (συνέδριον), which Pompeius had built.
[608] The two sects of Greek philosophy that had most adherents among the Romans were those of the Epicureans and the Stoics. Cassius, as an Epicurean, would have no faith in any superhuman powers; but in the moments of danger a man's speculative principles give way to the common feelings of all mankind. I have kept Plutarch's word "enthusiasm," which is here to be understood not in our sense, but in the Greek sense of a person under some superhuman influence.
[609] This is a mistake of Plutarch, who has stated the fact correctly in his Life of Brutus (c. 17). It was Caius Trebonius who kept Antonius engaged in talk, as we learn from Dion Cassius (44. c. 10), Appianus (Civil War, ii. 117), and Cicero, who in a Letter to Trebonius (Ad Diversos, x. 28) complains that Trebonius had taken Antonius aside, and so saved his life.
[610] Some would write Tullius Cimber. See the note of Sintenis. Atilius may be the true name.
[611] P. Servilius Casca was at this time a tribune of the Plebs (Dion Cassius, 44. c. 52).
[612] Dion Cassius adds (44. c. 19) that Cæsar said to M. Brutus, "And you too, my son." Probably the story of Cæsar's death received many embellishments. Of his three and twenty wounds, only one was mortal according to the physician Antistius (Suetonius, Cæsar, 82): but though the wounds severally might not have been mortal, the loss of blood from all might have caused death. Suetonius (c. 82) adds, that Cæsar pierced the arm of Cassius (he mentions two Cassii among the conspirators) with his graphium (stylus). See the notes in Burmann's edition of Suetonius.
The circumstances of the death of Cæsar are minutely stated by Drumann, Geschichte Roms, Julii, p. 728, &c. The reflections of Dion Cassius (44. c. 1, 2) on the death of Cæsar are worth reading. He could not see that any public good was accomplished by this murder; nor can anybody else.
[613] Cicero was among them. He saw, as he says himself (Ad Attic. xiv. 10), the tyrant fall, and he rejoiced. In his letters he speaks with exultation of the murder, and commends the murderers. But he was not let into the secret. They were afraid to trust him. If he had been in the conspiracy, he says (Philipp. ii. 14) he would have made clean work; he would have assassinated all the enemies of liberty; in other words, all the chief men of Cæsar's party. He had abjectly humbled himself before Cæsar, who treated him with kind respect. Like all genuine cowards he was cruel when he had power.
[614] M. Æmilius Lepidus, son of M. Lepidus, consul B.C. 78. He afterwards formed one of the Triumviri with M. Antonius and Octavianus Cæsar. This was the Lepidus with whom Cæsar supped the day before he was murdered. He was a feeble man, though something of a soldier. Shakspere has painted him in a few words:
Julius Cæsar, Act iv. Sc. 1.
There is more of him in the Lives of Brutus and Antonius.
[615] I do not know who this Caius Octavius is. There is probably some mistake in the name. Lentulus was the son of P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, consul B.C. 57. He had, like many others, experienced Cæsar's clemency. Plutarch is mistaken in saying that this Spinther was put to death, though he was probably included in the proscription. (See Drumann, Geschichte Roms, Lentuli, p. 545.) The Lentulus who is mentioned as having been put to death in Egypt (Life of Pompeius, c. 80) was L. Cornelius Lentulus Crus, consul B.C. 49.
The disturbances which followed Cæsar's death are more particularly described in the Lives of Brutus and Antonius.
[616] Cæsar made Caius Octavius, his sister's grandson, his first heres. He left a legacy to every Roman citizen, the amount of which is variously stated. He also left to the public his gardens on the Tiber. (Suetonius, Cæsar, c. 83); Dion Cassius (44. c. 35).
Shakspere has made a noble scene of the speech of Antonius over Cæsar's body on the opening of the will:
Julius Cæsar, Act iii. Sc. 2.
Antonius, according to Roman fashion, made a funeral speech over the body of Cæsar (Life of Antonius, c. 14; of Brutus, c. 20). Dion Cassius (44. c. 36-49) has put a long speech in the mouth of Antonius, mere empty declamation. Appianus (Civil Wars, ii. 144-6) gives one which is well enough suited to the character of Antonius. (Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta, ed. Mayer, p. 455.) It is probable that the speech of Antonius was preserved, and was used as materials by the historians.
[617] This man, who unluckily bore the name of Cinna, was C. Helvius Cinna, a tribune of the plebs, a poet, and a friend of Cæsar. (Dion Cassius, 44. c. 50, and the notes of Reimarus.) The conspirator Cinna was the son of L. Cornelius Cinna, who was a partisan of Marius, and was murdered in his fourth consulship (Life of Pompeius, c. 5). Cæsar's wife Cornelia, the mother of his only child Julia, was the sister of the conspirator Cinna, as Plutarch names him. But probably he was not one of the conspirators, though he approved of the deed after it was done. (Drumann, Geschichte Roms, Cinnæ, p. 591, notes, and also as to Helvius Cinna.)
[618] And also in the Life of Antonius.
[619] Suetonius (Cæsar, c. 89) observes that scarce any of his assasins survived him three years; and they all came to a violent end.
[620] This town was on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont. Compare the Life of Brutus, c. 36. 48, and Appianus (Civil Wars, iv. 134). Dion Cassius does not mention the ghost story.
[621] It has been already remarked that Niebuhr is of opinion that the introduction to the Life of Cæsar is lost. This opinion will not appear well founded to those who have got a right conception of the dramatic form in which Plutarch has cast most of his Lives, and more particularly this of Cæsar. He begins by representing him as resisting the tyrant Sulla when others yielded, and then making his way through a long series of events to the supreme power, which he had no sooner attained than he lost it. But his fortune survived him, and the faithless men, his murderers, most of whom owed to him their lives or their fortunes, were pursued by the avenging dæmon till they were all hunted down.
A just estimate of the first of all the Romans is not a difficult task. We know him from the evidence of his contemporaries, both friends and enemies. The devoted attachment of his true friends is beyond doubt; and his enemies could not deny his exalted talents. Cicero, who has in various places heaped on him every term of abuse that his copious storehouse contained, does not refuse his testimony to the great abilities and generous character of Cæsar. Drumann (Geschichte Roms, Julii) has given an elaborate examination of Cæsar's character. His faults and his vices belonged to his age, and he had them in common with nearly all his contemporaries. His most striking virtues, his magnanimity, his generosity, his mercy to the vanquished, distinguished him among all the Romans of his period. Cæsar was a combination of bodily activity, intellectual power, of literary acquirements, and administrative talent that has seldom appeared. As a soldier he was not inferior in courage and endurance to the hardiest veteran of his legions; and his military ability places him in the first rank of commanders who have contended with and overcome almost insurmountable obstacles. Cicero ranks him in the first class of orators; and his own immortal work, his History of the Gallic Campaign and the Civil War, is a literary monument which distinguishes him among all other commanders. As a speaker and a writer he had no superior among his contemporaries. His varied talents are further shown by his numerous literary labours, of which some small notices remain. His views were large and enlightened, his schemes were vast and boundless. His genius deserved a better sphere than the degenerate republic in which he lived. But the power which he acquired did not die with him. A youth of tender age succeeded to the name and the inheritance of Cæsar, and by his great talents and a long career of wonderful success consolidated that Monarchy which we call the Roman Empire.
Shakspere has founded his play of Julius Cæsar on Plutarch's Life of Cæsar and the Lives of Brutus and Antonius. The passages in North's version which he has more particularly turned to his purpose are collected in Mr. Knight's edition of Shakspere (8vo. edition). Shakspere has three Roman plays, Coriolanus, Julius Cæsar, and Antony and Cleopatra. As a drama the first is the best. The play of Julius Cæsar has been estimated very differently by different critics. Mr. Knight has many valuable remarks on these Roman plays (vol. xi.), and he has shown the way, as he conceives, in which they should be viewed. The Julius Cæsar is so constructed as to show the usurpation and death of Cæsar, and the fall of Brutus, the chief of the assassins, at the battle of Philippi. With Brutus the hopes of his party fell. The play should therefore rather be entitled Marcus Brutus than Julius Cæsar; and it is deficient in that unity without which no great dramatic effect can be produced. The name and the fame of Cæsar,
obscure the meaner talents of Brutus; and that death which in Plutarch forms a truly tragical catastrophe, here occurs in the middle of the action, which would appropriately terminate with it. But we have to follow the historical course of events; we follow Brutus to his fate at the battle of Philippi, and witness the vengeance of which Cæsar's ghost forewarns the false friends. Shakspere may have meant to represent Brutus as the last of the Romans, and the Republic as dying with him; but he also represents him as haunted by the ghost of his murdered benefactor, and losing heart before the final contest. The "great dæmon" of Cæsar avenged him on his enemies; and in this point of view the play has a unity. Brutus dies like a Roman, and that murder to which he was led by the instigation of others, only renders the Monarchy inevitable and necessary. But if the play is faulty in construction, as I venture to think it is, it has other merits of the highest order, which place it in some respects among the best works of the great master of dramatic art.