The Historians' History of the World 05

The tact with which Cæsar withdrew the claims which were thus prematurely advanced for him baffled every attempt of the republican leaders to excite a popular feeling against him. But in the upper ranks of the nobility there were many who cherished such sentiments of hostility towards him, nor were his personal enemies confined to the ranks of his political adversaries. A plot was formed for his destruction, which embraced sixty or even eighty conspirators, many of whom had been most conspicuous in their devotion to him, and seemed most to merit his confidence. Among them were doubtless some whose hopes of preferment he had disappointed. But such was not the case with Decimus Brutus, who had received from him the government of the Cisalpine, and was already designated as the consul of a future year. Such was not the case with Trebonius, who had just quitted the consulship for the administration of Asia. Basilus, Casca, and Cimber had all received greater or less marks of the dictator’s favour. Yet all these men now joined in the intrigue against his life. Had they really loved the republic better than their imperator, and regarded him as a tyrant and a traitor, they should not have accepted the highest offices at his hands. But even the chiefs of the opposite party betrayed no reluctance to profit by his generosity. It was not the needy or disappointed among them, but those whom he had honoured and promoted, who now raised their hands against him. The most active conspirator, and perhaps the author of the design, was C. Cassius, who had recently been appointed prætor. The cry of liberty and the republic, which was in the mouths of all his associates, could have little real influence on the sentiments of Cassius, whose avowed Epicurean principles, no less than his late political conduct, might vouch for his indifference to party. “I prefer,” he had written to Cicero, “our old and clement master Cæsar to the ferocious upstart, the son of Pompey.” But he was by nature vain and vindictive; his temper fluctuated between mean subservience and rude independence. His sharp and acrid humour had not escaped the observation of Cæsar, by whom the pale and lean were accounted dangerous, and who loved, as he said, the company of the sleek and light-hearted.

The conspirators required the charm of a popular name to sanction their projected tyrannicide. M. Junius Brutus, the nephew of Cato, pretended to trace his descent from a third son of the founder of the republic, whose elder brothers had perished, as was well known, childless by the axe of the lictor. His mother Servilia derived her lineage from the renowned Ahala, the slayer of Spurius Mælius. But far from inheriting the zeal of his progenitors, the Brutus of the expiring republic had acquiesced in Cæsar’s usurpation with less apparent reluctance than perhaps any other member of the Pompeian party. Despondent in her hour of distress, he had been the last to join, the earliest to desert the unfurled banner of the republic. After Pharsalia, he was the first to seek refuge in the camp of the victor; in the city he was the foremost to court the friendship and claim the confidence of the dictator.

He zealously served his interests by the discharge of important offices; nor did he blush to govern Cisalpine Gaul for Cæsar, while his uncle still held Utica against him. A feeble panegyric of the sturdy sage whom he had abandoned while he affected to adopt his principles and emulate his practice, seemed to Brutus a sufficient tribute to his virtues. He had divorced his consort Claudia to espouse the philosopher’s daughter Porcia, a woman of more masculine spirit than his own. But thus doubly connected with strength and virtue, Brutus had failed nevertheless to acquire the firmness which nature had denied him. While professing the character of a student he still courted public life for the sake of its emoluments. The countenance of Cæsar raised him to an eminence which pleased and dazzled him, while his uncle’s renown seemed also to shed a light upon him, and his vanity was excited by a saying, possibly a jest, ascribed to Cæsar, implying that of all the Romans he was the worthiest to succeed to supreme power. The weakness of his character may be estimated from the means employed to work upon him. A bit of paper affixed to the statue of the ancient Brutus with the words, “Would thou wert alive”; billets thrust into his hand inscribed, “Brutus, thou sleepest, thou art no longer Brutus,” shook the soul of the philosopher to its centre. Under the influence of Cassius, who had married his sister, he was led to embrace the schemes of the conspirators, and assumed the place of chief adviser, which they pretended at least to offer him.