Part Two
5
THE PLOT TO KILL CAESAR began when Gaius Cassius Longinus walked across town to visit his brother-in-law. He had not spoken to Marcus Junius Brutus in months, even though Cassius was married to Brutus’s sister, because he was angry over losing a plum job to him. Now, however, Cassius needed Brutus. The conversation began with a friendly exchange and an agreement to reconcile. Then came a long and serious discussion. Finally, Cassius threw his arms around Brutus in embrace. And with that, the life of Julius Caesar lay in the balance. It was February 44 B.C.
Or so the best-known source tells the story. It is plausible, but, in truth, we don’t know just how the conspiracy began or with whom. Shakespeare tells us that Brutus and Cassius were at the heart of it, but the Bard was only following one ancient tradition. Other sources state that three men, not two, headed the conspiracy—and that Decimus, in fact, stood beside Brutus and Cassius as its leaders. Our earliest in-depth source for the conspiracy even names Decimus first among the conspirators.
Decimus is no mere detail; he is the key. Brutus and Casssius fought for Pompey and the Republic but Decimus had been loyal to Caesar for more than ten years. Why change now? Although Decimus said later that he acted to save the Republic, he was a hard-nosed man, the sort to be moved by fear, honor, and self-interest. And Decimus wasn’t alone—other friends of Caesar also joined the conspiracy. That took more than a public relations misstep on Caesar’s part—it took a crisis of trust. Caesar abused their friendship by breaking the unwritten rule of Roman life, that loyalty would be rewarded. Indeed, he convinced important friends that they were better off without him.
It was predictable that the Roman nobility would never accept a perpetual dictator. Ever jealous of their own privilege, they would sooner conspire to kill him than submit, as long as they thought they had a chance of getting away with murder. In winter 44B.C.signs of the people’s discontent gave them confidence. They might have hesitated but Caesar’s imminent departure for the Parthian front forced their hand.
In 49 B.C., Caesar seemed to some like a second Hannibal—the great commander who rode in from the West and invaded Italy. In 44 B.C., Caesar seemed like a second Alexander the Great—like Pompey but more dangerous—on the cusp of a great war in the East that would bring him back in triumph as a king. Those who rode out with him, like Octavian, would reap glory and power. Those who stayed at home feared eclipse, even if they were loyalists. Caesar left several of his experienced generals at home. We do not know why, but he had a history of ditching supporters when they were no longer useful or if they threatened to outdo him.
All hope was gone that he would restore the Republic. Caesar was already Perpetual Dictator, already declared a god, already dismissive of both Senate and people, and already guilty of protesting too much that he didn’t want to be rex. Now, it seemed as if he would be Lord of Asia like Alexander. Julius Rex was a far cry from the proconsul of Gaul. Many Romans feared the man who had installed the queen of Egypt and perhaps the son she claimed was his in his villa across the Tiber, the man who planned a massive expedition to conquer the same ancient Iran that Alexander had conquered—they feared that he would replace the Republic with a monarchy. Who doubted that a man who loved blood, grandeur, and power as much as Caesar was capable of it?
SOURCES OF EVIDENCE
Before turning to the conspirators and crime, a word is needed about our sources of evidence. If there ever was a full contemporary investigation report, it has long since disappeared. Cicero’s correspondence includes a few dozen precious letters between him and a half dozen of the conspirators. They are fascinating but provide only limited evidence about the motives or the deed itself. Several of the conspirators issued coins that provide great clues. Archaeological remains in the city of Rome also add important information about the events of the Ides of March.
Several contemporaries wrote accounts of the assassination. Asinius Pollio (76 B.C.–A.D. 4) wrote what was probably the best history of the years from 60 B.C. to 44 B.C. This excellent historian was a friend of Caesar but was aware of his defects. Unfortunately, Pollio was not in Rome on the Ides of March. Livy (59 B.C.–A.D. 17) was born in Patavium (modern Padua) but came to Rome to complete his education. If he wasn’t in Rome for the Ides, he was there a few years afterward, when the tale was still fresh. He included the death of Caesar in his monumental history of Rome. Strabo (ca. 62 B.C.–ca. A.D. 23), the famous geographer and historian, was born in Anatolia (Turkey) and came to live in Augustus’s Rome. He included the death of Caesar in his history of the years ca. 145–30B.C. Caesar’s associate Oppius wrote a memoir of Caesar, and Brutus’s stepson Bibulus wrote a similar book about Brutus. Brutus’s friend Empylus wrote a short book on the death of Caesar. It would be instructive to be able to read these books today but, unfortunately, none of them survives. What remains of Livy includes only a capsule summary of his chapters on Caesar. Fortunately, some of the later ancient writers on the subject did read these books. Even more fortunately, two contemporary accounts do survive.
Cicero wrote one of those accounts in 44 B.C., possibly only a few weeks after the Ides. Cicero was an eyewitness. Unfortunately his account is just a brief paragraph. It confirms certain details in later versions while also containing several exaggerations.
Far more important, although somewhat later, is another, more detailed account by a contemporary, found in the Life of Caesar Augustus—that is, the life of the Emperor Augustus, the former Octavian, written by Nicolaus of Damascus (born in 64 B.C. and died on an unknown date but well after 4 B.C.). It is one of five surviving detailed ancient accounts of the conspiracy, the Ides, and the aftermath—our most important sources of information today. Nicolaus’s account is often perceptive but it is not without problems. Although he was an adult in 44 B.C., Nicolaus wasn’t in Rome then or even a Roman—he was a Greek from Syria. He wrote several decades afterward; exactly when is uncertain. He was biased—he drew in part on Augustus’s autobiography, and, in fact, he worked for Augustus so he had a motive to defame the conspirators. On top of that, we don’t actually have Nicolaus’s work but only a version by a later abridger. Still, what survives is fascinating. More than any other ancient source, Nicolaus promotes the idea that private grudges rather than public duty moved the conspirators, with Brutus as an exception.
Plutarch, the famous author, a native of central Greece (ca. A.D. 45–before A.D. 125) narrates the conspiracy and assassination in three of his Roman biographies, Caesar, Brutus, and Antony. Although he wrote more than a century later, Plutarch was a scholar and he consulted earlier works. But he was also a student of Greek philosophy like Brutus, whom he makes his hero. Brutus played a very large role in the conspiracy against Caesar but Plutarch probably exaggerates it. Since Plutarch looms so large in the sources, and since he was Shakespeare’s main source, we need to keep that in mind. Nicolaus, who was not under Brutus’s spell, offers a counterweight.
Suetonius (ca. A.D. 70–well after A.D. 128) wrote in Latin the famous Lives of the Twelve Caesars, including one of Julius Caesar. Alternately gossipy and astute, admiring and critical, it includes a detailed account of the conspiracy and assassination. Like Plutarch, Suetonius was widely versed in the earlier sources. He admires Caesar enormously as a general but criticizes him as a politician and a man. A brilliant writer, Suetonius is seductive but not always right.
Appian (ca. A.D. 90–A.D. 160), a Greek from Alexandria, Egypt, lived most of his life in Rome. Among his several works is a history of Rome’s civil wars. Of the five sources, his offers the longest connected historical narrative of Caesar’s assassination. Like Plutarch and Suetonius, he too probably consulted Asinius Pollio. Also a good writer, Appian sees Caesar as first and foremost a soldier.
Finally, there is the latest source, Cassius Dio (ca. A.D. 164–after A.D. 229), a Greek senator who wrote an eighty-book history of Rome. He read widely in earlier histories but displays independence and astute analysis of his own. Unfortunately, he also makes errors of fact. A strong supporter of monarchy, he has little sympathy for Caesar’s assassins.
By the standards of ancient history it’s not a bad lineup, but by modern measures it’s thin gruel. The evidence is based almost entirely on secondhand accounts and most of it is late. None of it is impartial—each author has an ax to grind. Supporters of the Roman emperors had little use for the conspirators, while the emperors’ opponents looked back to the conspirators as role models if not secular saints.
Still, the five accounts are in basic agreement about the conspiracy and the crime. They disagree about certain important details. Faced with such sources, the historian has to exercise imagination, ingenuity, and caution. Above all, he or she needs to weigh the evidence at every point. So armed, let us turn to the men who had strong motives to kill Caesar.
CASSIUS
In January 45 B.C., Cassius accepted Caesar as an “old easygoing master.” A little over a year later, in February 44 B.C., Cassius resolved to kill him. Brutus underwent a similar conversion, perhaps independently, or perhaps Cassius was the spark that set Brutus on fire.
It’s unlikely that the conspiracy was in place before February. One reason is incentive—Caesar did not depose the tribunes and turn down the diadem until February. Another reason is danger—the many conspirators could not have kept the secret for long.
Gaius Cassius Longinus was an impressive man. Slightly older than Brutus, Cassius (born on October 3, around 86 B.C.) boasted several consuls in his family’s history, including his father, a man defeated in battle by the rebel gladiator Spartacus. The name of Cassius’s mother is not known, but a politician once mentioned her advice in a public speech, suggesting that she was someone to be reckoned with.
During his teenage years, Cassius had a fistfight at school with the son of the late dictator Sulla, who boasted about his father’s power. Later writers took the fight as a sign of Cassius’s lifelong hostility to tyrants. What it also shows is that he had a temper. Cicero once described him when angry as looking like the war god Mars, eyes flashing with courage. Caesar called Cassius pale and lean, a phrase he applied to Brutus, too. Shakespeare took the description of Cassius further. His Caesar says:
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
There is nothing hungry about a Roman portrait bust that has plausibly been identified as Cassius, but it is lean, as well as vigorous and determined. The marble bust shows a commanding figure in midlife. He has close-cropped hair, a prominent nose, angular cheekbones, sunken temples, and a rounded chin. He looks straight ahead with a tight-lipped and unsmiling appearance.
As far as the schoolboy fight, Pompey patched up the quarrel, which points to the political friendship between him and Cassius. Besides Pompey, Cicero was another important influence on young Cassius, who sought the statesman’s company. Cicero described him as talented, industrious, and very brave. Also like Cicero, Cassius studied philosophy. He was a student on Rhodes and became fluent in Greek.
But Cassius thrilled to the sound of the trumpet. War was his forte. In that sense, he was more like Caesar than Brutus. Nor did Cassius suffer from any lack of interest in his own dignitas. Cicero once wrote to Cassius and called him “the bravest of men, one who, ever since you first set foot in the Forum, have done nothing unless it was filled to the brim with the most abundant dignitas.”
The man found his moment in 53 B.C. in the Roman East. Cassius served as lieutenant governor and deputy commander to Marcus Licinius Crassus, governor of Syria. Crassus was eager to fight Parthia and win glory but he blundered into disaster—a crushing defeat near Carrhae (today, Harran, Turkey). His force of around forty thousand men suffered massive casualties. The Parthians added insult to injury by capturing several legionary eagles. Crassus was murdered in a postbattle conference with the Parthians.
The only bright spot in Rome’s tarnished honor belonged to Cassius. He vainly urged caution before the battle and played a key role afterward in marching the survivors to safety in Syria. An estimated ten thousand men owed their lives to the worthy lieutenant governor.
From 53 B.C. to 51 B.C., Cassius served as virtual governor of Roman Syria. In 51 B.C. he ambushed a Parthian army raiding the province and fought a battle in which the senior Parthian general received a fatal wound. As a result, the Parthians withdrew from Syria. Cassius was able to claim victory. He wrote home that the Parthian War was over, and his report was read in the Senate.
It was vindication because earlier the senators had scoffed at him. When Cassius first wrote to them about the Parthian invasion of Syria, the general opinion was that he was concocting a cover story for his own looting. It was all a phony war, the senators said, with Cassius merely letting some neighboring Arabs into the province and then claiming they were Parthian invaders. In Rome, they said that Cassius was greedy. But then came an independent report from a Roman ally, confirming the Parthian attack, and people took Cassius seriously.
But the senators were right about Cassius’s greed. Like most Roman governors, Cassius fleeced the provincials. Roman aristocrats looked down on commerce, but Cassius bought and sold Syrian merchandise with abandon and, if we can trust a late and gossipy source, earned himself the nickname “the date,” in a reference to the fruit of the local palm tree. It was not a compliment. In this same period, Cassius invaded Judea and is said to have enslaved about thirty thousand Jews—and slaving was a big and profitable business.
When civil war came, Cassius supported Pompey. In 48 B.C. Cassius received command of a fleet that he used against Caesar’s forces in Sicily and southern Italy. Caesar describes the two campaigns in his Civil War and praises Cassius’s speed, aggressiveness, ingenuity, flexibility, energy, and overall effectiveness. By writing so warmly, perhaps Caesar was trying to attract Cassius to his camp or perhaps Cassius had already joined it. In any case, about a year after Caesar’s victory at Pharsalus, Cassius defected to him.
The reconciliation took place in southern Anatolia, eased by support from Cassius’s brother-in-law, Brutus. Later Cassius claimed that he almost assassinated Caesar then and there, but that sounds like a tall tale.
Cassius’s defection was a slap to the die-hard combatants and a mortal insult to Pompey’s sons. Yet Cassius could say that he continued to serve the Republic faithfully by promoting peace. Caesar welcomed him and appointed him as one of his generals. We don’t know what command Cassius held but it seems unlikely that Caesar entrusted an important one to so recent an enemy. The return of peace found Cassius underemployed. Caesar promoted Brutus to governor even though Cassius was more qualified after his experience in Syria. But Caesar would not entrust Italian Gaul to a man with Cassius’s military flair.
Still, Cassius did not assist Pompey’s sons when they revolted in Hispania in 46 B.C. Having defected from Pompey’s cause, he feared vengeance should Pompey’s sons take Rome. Cassius wrote to Cicero in January 45 B.C.:
I will die of anxiety and I would rather have an old and lenient master than to try out a new and cruel one. You know what a fool Cnaeus [Pompey] is; you know how he thinks cruelty is virtue; you know how he always thinks himself mocked by us. I’m afraid that he’d want to mock us à son tour [“in his turn”—Cicero uses Greek, which is rendered here in French] clumsily with his sword.
Then Caesar won and changed the equation. After he removed the danger represented by the sons of Pompey he also removed his opponents’ restraint about keeping Caesar alive.
Like many other Romans, Cassius was appalled by Caesar’s monarchical behavior. Cicero claimed that Cassius came from a family that fought not only despotism but also even merely the concentration of power. Indeed, Cassius was one of only a very few senators who voted in February 44 B.C. against awarding a long list of special honors to Caesar. The act shows courage and respect for the ideals of the Republic. If any Roman took seriously a citizen’s fundamental responsibility to defend the Republic by killing a man who wanted to be rex, it was Cassius.
But private grounds moved Cassius as well. He had his eyes set on high office, first the praetorship, then the consulship. In particular, he wanted to be urban praetor, the judge who heard cases between citizens. His main rival for this position was Brutus. In December 45 B.C., Brutus got the job. Cassius was appointed to one of the other praetorships, possibly the one who heard disputes between noncitizens.
Caesar supposedly told his friends that Cassius had a stronger case but he chose Brutus anyhow. Neither point is clear. True, Cassius excelled in the aftermath of Carrhae and the defense of Syria, but Brutus shone as governor of Italian Gaul, so why did Cassius have the stronger case? And if he did, why didn’t he get the job? Perhaps the answer, as some said at the time, was that Caesar wanted to drive a wedge between Brutus and Cassius. This is plausible since Caesar also promised Brutus the consulship for 41 B.C. He passed over Cassius at first, although possibly later he gave Cassius too the nod as the other consul of 41 B.C.
If domestic politics injured Cassius’s dignitas, perhaps foreign affairs did so, too. Cassius was Rome’s most experienced and successful general against the Parthians. It is easy to imagine him disappointed when Caesar did not give him a command in the new war. Cassius would have to settle for the governorship of Syria, which Caesar promised him for 43 B.C. It wasn’t much of a consolation, though, since Cassius had already been governor of Syria in all but name.
There was also a rumor that Caesar had an affair with Cassius’s wife. Tertia was the daughter of Servilia and half sister of Brutus. Supposedly Servilia let Caesar have her, a story that Cicero made fun of. If the liaison happened, presumably it predated Tertia’s marriage, but we have no idea of the truth of the tale or whether Cassius chafed at this gossip.
Finally, there were the lions of Megara. This small Greek city held some caged lions that Cassius was transporting to Rome to show in the games—and thereby to win political capital. When Caesar’s general took Megara in 48 B.C. he confiscated the lions. Plutarch says that this added to Cassius’s grievances against Caesar, but some think that he has confused Caius Cassius with his brother Lucius Cassius, who supported Caesar. So the story is inconclusive, although it sheds light on motives in Roman politics. (The lions got loose in a botched attempt to stop Caesar’s troops and mauled innocent civilians.)
Cassius was a Roman’s Roman. He had principles but he balanced them with pragmatism. He studied Greek philosophy but never made it his guiding star. There was a theory once that his hostility to Caesar was motivated by Epicurean philosophy—that is, by a Roman version of Epicureanism that emphasized freedom. But it’s not clear that Cassius paid anything more than lip service to Epicureanism. His ambitions ran on a time-tested track. He wanted to rise in public service and become a consul like his ancestors. He was a first-rate military tactician. One ancient writer says that he had the single-mindedness of a gladiator.
Cassius was an educated man. He peppered his letters with Greek words. He knew philosophy and how to turn an elegant phrase. He could be witty or cutting and he had an edge. He was intense. As the philosopher Seneca later said, all his life Cassius drank only water, meaning he was abstemious. True, he enjoyed a good laugh but he was too prone to jesting or scoffing.
Cassius could manage the conspiracy but he lacked the authority to lead it. In asking men to assassinate Caesar, Cassius was asking them to commit murder. They had sworn oaths to hold Caesar sacrosanct and to defend him with their lives. Cassius was asking them to break those oaths. But it didn’t matter how cogent an assassination plan Cassius put forward. Men refused to join the conspiracy unless the indispensable man joined first.
BRUTUS TURNS
Brutus was essential to the plot against Julius Caesar. No Brutus, no assassination. The conspirators insisted on him. Their principle was that to kill a king it takes a king—or at least a prince, and Brutus was practically a republican prince. He had the authority and the connections that Romans admired. Son of a Populist, nephew of one of the leading Best Men, enemy and then supporter of Pompey and Caesar in turn, son of Caesar’s mistress and object of gossip about being Caesar’s son, Brutus was all things to all people. He supposedly came from the oldest family in the Republic, the one that drove out the kings, and he also had a prominent tyrant slayer in his family tree. He had a public record going back a decade of standing for liberty and against dictatorship. Sometime during the 50s B.C. Brutus issued coins celebrating both Libertas, the goddess of liberty, and his ancestors who opposed kings and tyrants. In 54 B.C. he spoke against a proposed dictatorship for Pompey. Two years later he argued that a man who committed murder for the good of the Republic was innocent.
He was admired as a thinker and speaker. Nicolaus of Damascus puts it concisely if skeptically, “Marcus Brutus . . . was respected his whole life for his soundness of mind, for the fame of his ancestors and for his supposedly reasonable character.”
Brutus’s love for Greek philosophy calls for a balanced approach. Philosophy added depth and garnered respect. It allowed him to tap into time-honored ideals and to strike stirring poses. Brutus learned to recognize tyranny, to despise it and to rise against it. But Roman interest in Greek culture was rarely very substantial. Caesar’s killers were practical men. Their demand for Brutus had little to do with his ability to quote Plato.
The conspirators said they were fighting for the Republic, by which they meant not only the idea, but also the power that came with it. For the Romans, as for most people, principle and profit were inseparable. Politics in Rome was a way to honor, money, and power. Caesar threatened to take too much. Brutus pointed the way to regaining what Caesar took away while also rekindling the Republic’s ideals.
Above all, the conspirators wanted a leader who could keep them alive. Brutus would give them credibility in the storm sure to follow the murder. If a man of his pedigree and principles called Caesar a tyrant, then the public would believe him. Conversely, if Brutus stayed loyal to Caesar, he would cut the legs out from under the conspirators.
It also mattered that Brutus enjoyed Caesar’s favor. Caesar had made Brutus governor, urban praetor, and consul. By risking everything to kill Caesar, Brutus would demonstrate his courage and his principles. True, he would also demonstrate ingratitude, but that paled in importance when compared to the survival of the Republic. Brutus was, in short, the best endorsement of the conspiracy and the best safety net for the conspirators.
The question is: what was in it for him? As recently as August 45 B.C., the answer seemed to be: nothing. Back then, Brutus wrote to a skeptical Cicero that he believed Caesar was ready to go over to the Best Men. Seven months later, Brutus entered the Senate House with a dagger at the ready. What changed?
Few characters in ancient history appear so fully in the round as Marcus Brutus. We can almost reconstruct his thoughts at this crucial turning point. His personality, his principles, his foibles, and his key relationships (with his wife, his mother, and his brother-in-law) all leave a mark in the evidence. In the end, though, the facts are tantalizingly incomplete, and so we have to resort, as usual, to informed speculation.
Brutus is also one of history’s most misunderstood characters. For that, we can thank Shakespeare. The ancient sources make Brutus courageous, public-spirited, calculating, and ungrateful. Shakespeare makes Brutus instead into the model of ethics. In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Brutus agonizes over killing a friend he loves. The ancients say nothing about this. Plutarch’s Brutus worries about the risks of killing Caesar but not the morality.
What makes Brutus a worthy adversary is that, like Caesar, he was multifaceted and iconic. Brutus stirred people by his philosophical mind, his lineage, his courage, his principles, and his love of freedom but he was also an opportunist and an extortionist. In Caesar, egotism, ambition, talent, ruthlessness, vision, populism, and revolution came together in a way that is still today best summed up in his name—Caesar. Caesar waded through rivers of blood in Gaul while Brutus carried the bloodiest dagger of Roman history, and yet each radiated personal charm.
Four things changed between August 45 B.C. and mid-February 44—Caesar, public opinion, Cassius, and Brutus’s wife. During those critical seven months, Caesar frightened a large part of Roman public opinion into believing that he wanted to replace the Republic with a perpetual dictatorship, and possibly a kingship, in which both Senate and people would be subordinate to him. Not even the prize of the consulship could allow Brutus to continue believing that Caesar wanted to join the Best Men.
What did Caesar’s perpetual dictatorship mean for Brutus? Plutarch interpreted a remark of Caesar to mean that Caesar considered Brutus his most suitable successor. “What then? Don’t you think Brutus will wait for this bit of flesh?” Caesar said, touching his body. He was responding to people who accused Brutus of plotting against him. But this one-liner does not reveal Caesar’s expectations. Caesar did not adopt Brutus posthumously as he did Octavian, nor did Caesar mention Brutus in his will as he mentioned others. Caesar promoted Brutus to the Republic’s highest offices. Yet under Caesar power flowed away from those offices and toward Caesar and his friends. Plutarch added that Brutus could count on being the first man in Rome after Caesar’s death, but that was not a reasonable expectation, not given the competition.
Either spontaneously or by concerted effort, a public relations campaign emerged to persuade Brutus to act. Graffiti appeared both on the tribunal where he sat as urban praetor and on the famous statue on the Capitoline Hill of his supposed ancestor, Lucius Junius Brutus, who overthrew the kings. Tags like “If only now you were Brutus,” “If only Brutus were alive,” “Brutus, wake up!” and “You aren’t really Brutus!” appeared. Some thought that these words, more than anything else, moved Brutus. He had already staked his reputation on his family’s famous love of liberty, and now he had to uphold it.
Cicero may have alluded to those famous ancestors when he wrote, in his Brutus of 46 B.C., that he wished for Brutus “that Republic in which you could not only renew the fame of your two very distinguished families but also add to it.” These were stirring words but surely not a call to Brutus to take up a dagger. In 46 B.C., Cicero still hoped that Caesar would restore the Republic.
As for Cassius, he turned his considerable strategic skills to convincing Brutus to join him against Caesar. On his visit to Brutus’s house with which this chapter began, Cassius not only ended his feud over the urban praetorship, but he also asked Brutus pointedly what he would do at the upcoming Senate meeting. Cassius cited a rumor that Caesar’s friends would propose that he be made king. Brutus said he would stay home but Cassius insisted: what if they were summoned as public officials? In that case, Brutus supposedly said, he would fulfill his duty by defending his country and die on behalf of liberty if necessary. Cassius is said to have cited the graffiti in reply, assuring Brutus that the authors were members of the Roman elite and not mere artisans or merchants—a snobbery that suits documented Roman prejudices only too well. These men didn’t want Brutus to die, said Cassius, but to lead! Then came an embrace and a kiss and a conspiracy was born. Or so the story goes.
There was no polling in ancient Rome and no scientific measuring of public opinion. Brutus had no way of knowing whether the graffiti represented public opinion. He couldn’t be sure that the authors were people of quality and influence, as Cassius said. But the graffiti let him hope for the popular support that a conspiracy needed to succeed.
And then there was Porcia, Brutus’s new wife. She was a strong woman. It is hard not to suspect that she nudged Brutus in a new direction. It was one thing for Brutus to turn his back on Cato’s legacy when he was far from Cato’s household, but quite another thing when he came home to Cato’s daughter every night. No wonder that Porcia was said to be the only woman who shared in the secret of the plot. Finally, there was Servilia. There is no evidence that she knew of the plot, let alone that she opposed Caesar. Her hostility to Porcia suggests the opposite. Besides, there was no credit to be gained by Servilia for plotting the death of her former lover. In later years, Antony treated her with courtesy, which he surely would not have done if he thought that Servilia was part of the conspiracy. Still, the sources ask what anyone might wonder—whether simmering resentment over her affair with Caesar helped push Brutus to join the plot. He did not believe the rumor about Caesar being his father, because no Roman would contemplate the crime of killing his father. Believing and hearing are two different things, though, and perhaps Brutus nursed a grudge that now came out.
Self-interest moved Brutus away from Caesar. Philosophical conviction would not tolerate a tyrant. No Roman noble would ignore his family’s honor and reputation, least of all Brutus, who wrote on the theme of duties within the family. He had to live up to the reputation of a Junius Brutus and a Servilia Ahala. He had the legacy of his late uncle, Cato, who was now not only his mentor but also his posthumous father-in-law. He had his wife, Porcia. He had his brother-in-law, Cassius. And perhaps he also had a score of shame to settle in regard to his mother, Servilia, and the insult of illegitimacy via her lover, Caesar. Brutus believed in ideals that were bigger than himself—in philosophy, in the Republic, and in his family. And so, once again, Brutus betrayed an older man who trusted him, just as he had earlier betrayed first Pompey and then Cato.
DECIMUS
In Plutarch’s version, Brutus and Cassius now recruited Decimus to the conspiracy. It would not be surprising if the truth was the other way around and Decimus urged them. One thing is certain—Decimus played a central role. If Brutus was the heart of the conspiracy and Cassius the head, Decimus was the eyes and the ears. He was an insider. Of all the conspirators, only Decimus could be described as “a close friend of Caesar.” If anyone in the conspiracy might have agonized about betraying a friend, it was Decimus. But there’s not a scrap of remorse in any of the dozen surviving letters that Decimus wrote after the assassination.
Readers of Shakespeare might wonder why they have never heard of Decimus. He is misnamed in Julius Caesar as “Decius.” Except for a scene in Caesar’s house on the morning of the Ides of March, “Decius” plays very little role in the drama. That is not surprising when we consider that Shakespeare based his account on English translations of Plutarch and Appian. Decimus has some importance in Appian but Plutarch scorns him as insignificant. The ancient author who emphasizes Decimus’s role in the plot against Caesar is Nicolaus of Damascus, and Shakespeare did not read him. Nor did he read Cassius Dio or Cicero’s letters, other sources of Decimus’s importance.
It was Decimus whom Caesar chose to accompany him to dinner on March 14. He was the conspirators’ ace. Decimus was the best source of information about the dictator’s thoughts and plans and the best hope of moving Caesar in whatever direction was needed. Who better to confirm that Caesar suspected nothing?
Decimus is widely recognized in the ancient sources as a major player in the conspiracy. Both Nicolaus of Damascus and Suetonius place him on an equal footing with Brutus and Cassius among the conspiracy’s leaders. Nicolaus actually names Decimus first.Appian makes him next after Brutus and Cassius. Velleius Paterculus, a Roman soldier-statesman who wrote a history around 30 A.D., speaks of Decimus leading the conspirators along with Brutus and Cassius. Other sources name Decimus as one of the four most important conspirators. Plutarch is not very impressed with Decimus, whom he unfairly calls “neither active nor daring,” but he recognizes Decimus’s importance to the plot.
At only thirty-seven, Decimus had a brilliant record. A noble of impeccable pedigree and one of Caesar’s confidants, Decimus stood near the pinnacle of power. Having excelled as a commander in Gaul both in the Gallic War and the Civil War, Decimus governed the province for Caesar in 48–45 B.C. and added another military victory to his record, over the fierce Bellovaci. He was probably praetor in Rome in 45 B.C., certainly governor-designate of Italian Gaul for 44 B.C., and consul-designate for 42 B.C.Whether Decimus knew it or not, Caesar named him in his will as heir in the second degree, in the (unlikely) event that one of the three heirs in the first degree—Octavian and his cousins Quintus Pedius and Lucius Pinarius—was unavailable. He also named Decimus as one of the guardians of his adopted son, Octavian. Caesar unwittingly named other conspirators as guardians as well, although their names are not known to us.
Decimus brought two essential things to the conspiracy. He had Caesar’s confidence and he had a band of gladiators. Without his trust in Decimus, Caesar would never have gone to the Senate on the Ides. Without the gladiators, the conspirators might not have survived the day themselves. Looking ahead, there was a third point. Decimus was about to start a term, given to him by Caesar, as governor of Italian Gaul. It was a strategic position, close to Rome and with two legions. Such a man could be enormously useful after the Ides.
Decimus owed even more to Caesar than Brutus did. Caesar had made Decimus’s career and, until the Ides, Decimus seemingly repaid him with faithful support. In later years, no one earned more scorn for ingratitude from Caesar’s loyalists than Decimus. The sources don’t reveal his motives, so we can only engage in informed speculation.
Like Brutus and Cassius, Decimus might have felt that his first loyalty was to the Republic. When writing to Decimus in 43 B.C., Cicero portrayed him as part of a cause. For all his support of Caesar, for all his mother’s flirtation with revolution, Decimus came from a family of Best Men and claimed descent from the founder of the Republic. Both Decimus’s father and his grandfather had slaughtered Populists in the city of Rome in what they considered the defense of the Republic. Now it was Decimus’s turn.
Yet, unlike Brutus or Cassius, Decimus was no philosopher, nor do his republican sentiments run very deep. In his eleven surviving single-authored letters—all from 44 or 43 B.C., ten of them to Cicero—Decimus refers only once to “liberating the Republic”; he is much more interested in military and political affairs. Although he was admirably brief as a writer, and although he was running a military campaign, his silence about why he fought is striking. By contrast, thirteen letters by Cicero to Decimus survive from the same period and five of them refer to liberty, tyranny, the assassination of Caesar, or the Republic.
When it comes to killing Caesar, self-interest suggests itself as Decimus’s motive. Decimus was ambitious, competitive, proud, and violent. He cared very much about his dignitas, a subject that comes up frequently in his correspondence with Cicero. If Cicero was a good judge of character—and he often was—then Decimus wanted fame and greatness. Caesar being Caesar, it is easy to imagine him telling Decimus that there was no limit to his ambitions. Yet Caesar was too shrewd to believe it. He could see Decimus’s limitations.
Decimus was the right man to conquer or govern Gaul but not to rule Rome. Decimus was a tactician, not a strategist. He took things personally, which made it difficult for him to postpone revenge, as a good leader needs to be able to do. Decimus was shrewd and capable of deceit but, like the Gauls whom he spent so much time with, he was passionate. For all his youth, Octavian’s acumen and judgment made him much better suited to succeed Caesar. Decimus was a soldier while Octavian was a politician to the core.
Decimus was not the sort of person to shrug off the rise of a rival. He rose to the top by serving Caesar in the field in Gaul and the Civil War. Now others would have the chance to do the same in Parthia while Decimus stayed behind. In particular, the new man who would serve in Parthia was Octavian. After a long ride with him from Gaul to Italy in 45 B.C., Decimus had at least an inkling of Octavian’s ruthless determination. If Decimus ever dreamed of being Caesar’s heir, he had to worry about Octavian. The more Decimus valued the signs of affection bestowed on him by Caesar—the place in his second chariot, the companionship of the dining couch at Lepidus’s—the more he might have resented the rise of Octavian.
Being governor of Italian Gaul and then consul was well and good, but Decimus knew where the real power lay in Caesar’s world—with the army. And the army was closest to Decimus’s heart. The army could win him the cherished goals of being hailed imperator, celebrating a triumph, and becoming one of the first men in Rome. By the end of 45 B.C. Octavian had joined the force that would fight Parthia while Decimus was still in Rome. Decimus might have reckoned that, once Caesar, Octavian, and a troupe of new heroes rode back home in triumph, he would be swept aside. Better to get rid of Caesar now and seize power while he still could.
Style perhaps played a role as well—Decimus was a very brave man and a hard man, and he might have bristled at the courtly affectations that were accruing to Caesar. Snobbery may have played a role. Like Antony, Decimus could sneer at Octavian as the heir of a freedman and a moneychanger. As a member of the old Roman elite, Decimus might not like rubbing shoulders with Caesar’s new senators, men he thought were beneath him. With perhaps a few exceptions, they were not barbarians or ex-legionaries but, rather, wealthy citizens of northern Italy and southern Gaul, descendants of Roman immigrant families in Spain, and centurions from the urban elite of all Italy and not just Rome. Yet that might have been enough to disgust senators who traced their ancestry back to early Rome. We know the name of only one centurion whom Caesar elevated to the Senate but it is worth noting—Gaius Fuficius Fango. His was no doubt a proud name in his hometown of Acerrae, a small city near Naples, but to a Roman elitist it sounded like it came from the gutter.
Then there is Paula Valeria, Decimus’s wife. She was a member of the Roman elite and was in touch with Cicero. Her brother is plausibly identified as Valerius Triarius, a man who fought with Pompey at Pharsalus and died either in that battle or before the end of the Civil War; Cicero became his children’s guardian. Perhaps Paula, like Porcia, felt that she had family blood to avenge and so encouraged her husband to break with Caesar. Paula, remember, had divorced her first husband on the very day of his return to Rome from military service so she could marry Decimus. Such a woman would not hesitate to advise a change of allegiance.
The sources offer no trace of any personal grudge against Caesar but they give abundant evidence of other personal grudges on Decimus’s part. Decimus’s cold-blooded betrayal of his chief becomes easier to understand if emotions like fear, loathing, and resentment came into play. And so he turned on Caesar.