6
BRUTUS, CASSIUS, AND DECIMUS NOW mobilized followers. They had to decide how to kill Caesar and where and when, but first they needed to assemble a team. They had to move quickly but cautiously. Although Caesar had appointed many if not most of the 800–900 senators, quite a few senators had lost faith in the man who seemed to want to be king. Still, few were willing to commit murder, even on behalf of the Republic, and few were willing to risk their own lives. Fewer still could be trusted. Secrets did not last long in Rome. Besides, Caesar was planning to leave for the Parthian War on March 18. That left a window of about a month.
The leaders of the conspiracy wanted just the right number of followers. They needed enough men to surround Caesar and fight off his supporters but not so many men as to risk being discovered. They preferred trusted friends to new acquaintances. They wanted neither rash youths nor infirm elders. They sought men in the prime of life, like themselves. In the end, they focused on men around the age of forty, as were Brutus, Cassius, and Decimus. They screened potential recruits with well-crafted and innocent-sounding questions.
UNKINDEST CUTTERS: CAESAR’S FRIENDS
It was one thing for Caesar to lose the support of Brutus and Cassius. They owed a lot to him, but they were not really his men and had fought for Pompey. It was another thing for Caesar to lose others like Decimus, the very men who followed him for years, from Gaul to the Civil War and beyond. But that is just what happened. Writing about eighty years later, the thinker-statesman Seneca claimed that the plot had more of Caesar’s friends than his enemies in it. It’s tempting to believe that Seneca was right.
According to Nicolaus of Damascus, the conspirator-friends included Caesar’s civilian associates, his officers, and his soldiers. Nicolaus admits that some joined the plot because they were disturbed to see power go from the Republic into the hands of one man. They were also impressed by the quality of the men who led the plot, especially the Brutus family. But Nicolaus emphasizes their low, self-interested motives. They felt that Caesar hadn’t rewarded them enough or that he had given away too much to the former supporters of Pompey. Nicolaus singles out some of Caesar’s soldiers, both officers and ordinary men, for feeling this way. As for the politicians, some wanted to replace Caesar as the leading man (or men) in Rome. And then there was Caesar’s famous policy of pardon or forgiveness toward his opponents in the Civil War. The policy earned gratitude and stirred anger.
Nicolaus makes Caesar’s policy of clemency a central grievance of the conspirators. On the one hand, Caesar’s clemency angered some of his longtime supporters, who wanted to see their former enemies humbled, not raised to equality. On the other hand, it annoyed the former Pompey supporters, Nicolaus says, to have to accept as a favor what they might have won on their own. Cato protested Caesar’s arrogance in claiming the right to “pardon” his enemies. Writing in the same vein, another ancient writer sums up the case against Caesar. “His very power of granting favors,” he says, “weighed heavily on free people.”
For Nicolaus, the conspiracy was more a matter of court intrigue and petty jealousy than of liberty and the Republic. This may reflect his life experience. Before coming to the court of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, Nicolaus served at the court of the infamous King Herod in Judaea, a place that had no shortage of plots. He also served as tutor to the children of Antony and Cleopatra, also not a job to foster political innocence. Nicolaus’s outlook on the conspiracy surely also reflects the situation of his later years, when he supported Augustus’s regime, a monarchy that looked down on the conspirators as villains.
Jealousy is a primitive emotion, easily discernible in children and animals. Yet even sophisticated Romans might have felt resentful of Caesar. So much talent, so much good fortune, so much power in one man! Jealousy was surely not enough on its own to give birth to a conspiracy, but it might have emboldened the conspirators.
Nicolaus leaves out one selfish motive on the part of the conspirators—fear of Octavian’s rising star. But since Nicolaus worked for Octavian Augustus he could hardly include that motive. Many people underestimated Octavian at the time because he was young and charming, but at least some of them surely felt threatened by the young favorite, especially when he joined the army for the Parthian War.
If Caesar’s friends turned on him now, it was not the first time. In 49 B.C., at the outbreak of the Civil War, Caesar had lost his right-hand man in Gaul, Titus Labienus. The two had been political allies even earlier, and in 50 B.C. Caesar offered to support Labienus for consul. Yet Labienus chose Pompey in the Civil War. Why?
After seeing Caesar close-up in Gaul for eight years, Labienus knew how his commander operated. He knew that the real power in Caesar’s Rome would go to military men and private advisors, not to senators and public officials. To be sure, the consulship that Caesar offered him was important, but a consulship in Caesar’s Rome was not what it once was. Caesar’s success in Gaul owed much more to Labienus than Caesar was willing to admit. If Caesar became first man in Rome, how long would he want Labienus around as a reminder? No wonder Labienus chose Pompey, especially if there is anything to the report that Labienus began to insist that Caesar treat him as an equal, which Caesar wouldn’t do. Labienus fought against Caesar until the last, dying on the battlefield at Munda in March 45 B.C.
The conspirators might have considered Labienus’s fate and concluded that bad things happened to men who were once close to Caesar.
We don’t know the order in which the other conspirators were recruited. It is likely though that Gaius Trebonius, who was Caesar’s longtime lieutenant, was an early convert. Not only was he immensely important, but he had already thought of killing Caesar. He was the only ex-consul in the conspiracy.
Trebonius was born around 90 B.C., making him about forty-six in 44 B.C. A key commander in Gaul and the Civil War, Trebonius had also done yeoman labor for Caesar as urban praetor in Rome in 48 B.C. and governor of Nearer Hispania in 46 B.C. Caesar rewarded Trebonius by naming him suffect (substitute) consul in 45 B.C. and choosing him as governor of the province of Asia (western Turkey) for 43 B.C. Yet perhaps Caesar insulted Trebonius when he appointed a one-day replacement for Trebonius’s consular colleague, who died in office on December 31, 45 B.C. It suggested how little Caesar thought of the so-called high honor bestowed on Trebonius.
A great soldier under Caesar, Trebonius had a political career of his own before Gaul when he was quaestor in 60 B.C. and People’s Tribune in 55 B.C. In the latter capacity, he proposed the law that gave Pompey and Crassus five-year special commands. Trebonius was also close to Cicero. The two exchanged letters and Trebonius helped the orator on his return from exile to Italy in 57 B.C. Cicero called Trebonius’s father “an ardent patriot,” which suggests that the father supported the Best Men. Trebonius was literate, charming, and very ambitious. He once wrote a poem based on a statement of Cicero, for example, and sent it to the orator as “a little gift.” So Trebonius kept in touch with the Republic’s greatest defender.
In short, Trebonius was no mere Caesarian loyalist—he knew how to think for himself. After the Ides, Cicero said that the Republic owed Trebonius a debt of thanks for preferring the liberty of the Roman People to the friendship of one man, and for choosing to drive away despotism rather than to share in it. Indeed, no one who had the friendship of Caesar would throw it away lightly.
It seems that Trebonius already decided to kill the dictator before Caesar returned from Hispania in 45 B.C. At least that is what Cicero claimed in a speech after the Ides of March. Trebonius was the man who, said Cicero, approached Mark Antony in Narbo (modern Narbonne, France) in summer 45 B.C. to recruit him for a plot against Caesar. Nothing came of it at the time but when the plot began gelling in February and March 44 B.C., Trebonius joined it. Afterward he expressed pride in his role in the events of the Ides and the hope that Rome would, at last, enjoy liberty in peace and quiet.
The two Servilius Casca brothers, Publius and Gaius, also joined the conspiracy. Both were senators but nothing is known of Gaius’s career. Publius was elected People’s Tribune for 43 B.C., which means that he had Caesar’s support. There is a hint in one source that Publius was short of funds, while Cicero called him a true lover of the Republic. We can’t be sure of either brother’s motives.
Two of Caesar’s less successful Gallic commanders joined the conspiracy as well: Servius Sulpicius Galba and Minucius Basilus. Both had reason for grudges. Galba’s poor generalship nearly cost his legion their lives in eastern Gaul (today’s Switzerland) in winter 57–56 B.C., as Caesar claims in his Commentaries. Galba no doubt saw things differently. Caesar supported his former officer for the consulship for 49 B.C., but Galba lost. This was enough, according to one ancient theory, to drive Galba into the conspiracy. Then too, Galba quarreled with Caesar because the latter insisted that Galba make good on an old debt. When Pompey was consul in 52 B.C., Galba guaranteed a loan that Pompey made, and Caesar wanted Galba to pay even after Caesar had confiscated Pompey’s property. Galba objected in public and Caesar backed down, but Galba still owed money as late as January 45 B.C.
Judging from his one surviving letter, Galba was a man of action. His writing is efficient and to the point. He puts himself in the center of things and comes off as energetic, courageous, and important. He cared, in short, about his reputation. Caesar failed him in the polls, pinched his purse, and embarrassed him in the Commentaries.
Minucius Basilus had his moment in the Ardennes Forest in northern France in 53 B.C. when he happened on the rebel Ambiorix. He stopped a dangerous foe but then let Ambiorix escape. A frustrated Caesar attributed the whole thing to fortune and nothing else. In the Civil War, one Basilus commanded a legion for Caesar in the Illyrian campaign and was defeated—perhaps he was the same man. Caesar made Minucius Basilus one of the praetors for 45 B.C., but he didn’t give him what every praetor wanted for the year following his office—a province to govern. Instead, he made him settle for a sum of money. This was a disappointment because in Roman government the real money was made by exploiting the provincials. The monetary gift was also close to an insult. The Romans called public office an honor, a term they would not have applied to a sum of money. Minucius Basilus, who came from a senatorial family, expected more. It was this, we are told, that made him join the conspirators. In effect, Caesar gave Minucius Basilus a golden handshake—and Minucius Basilus came back with a dagger.
Last but not least was Lucius Tillius Cimber. He had a close connection to Caesar, although the nature of it does not survive. No surprise, there, because recording all of Caesar’s connections would take all the papyrus in Rome. A later source calls Cimber one of Caesar’s “fellow soldiers,” so perhaps he served in Gaul or the Civil War or both. He was praetor in 45 B.C. so he should have been at least forty then (the minimum age requirement for the job, although Caesar did not always observe the rules). Caesar assigned him the rich and important provinces of Bithynia and Pontus (in today’s Turkey) for 44 B.C., which speaks to Cimber’s favor in the dictator’s eyes. Cicero said afterward that Cimber was deeply grateful to Caesar for his personal kindnesses but, to his credit, Cimber preferred his fatherland. Actually, Cimber seems to have been thinking more of his family, specifically his brother, who fought for Pompey. He took it hard that Caesar would not let his brother come back from exile.
Cimber had a reputation as a brawler and a heavy drinker. To the philosopher Seneca, Cimber’s role in the conspiracy proves that even drunkards can be trusted with a secret. Cimber even supposedly make a joke about it. “Would I, who cannot tolerate my wine, tolerate anyone as a master?” he said.
POMPEY’S REVENGE
The names of twenty conspirators survive. They are not found on some comprehensive ancient list—none exists. Rather, the twenty names can be pieced together from various sources. We would not expect them to include all the conspirators. Indeed, the sources report a total of more than sixty or even more than eighty conspirators, although the latter number may be a scribal error. As we shall see, far fewer than sixty men actually attacked Caesar on the Ides of March. Nonetheless, as events showed, sixty is a plausible number for the total number of conspirators.
Sixty was not a small number and it raised the danger of a security risk. Still, an entourage usually accompanied Caesar, and so a considerable attack force might have been needed. No less important, the more men who joined the plot, the more backers there would be afterward to rally public opinion to their side.
Pompey supporters shared with the supporters of Caesar a common opposition to the drift toward monarchy. But they had additional motives. On the one hand, Caesar had pardoned them but, on the other hand, it was humiliating to be pardoned. The result, said Nicolaus of Damascus, was that “many people were angry at him because they had been saved by him.”
Although some of Pompey’s supporters, like Brutus and Cassius, did splendidly under Caesar, others suffered. They were men like Quintus Ligarius, forced to live in exile in North Africa until Cicero successfully pleaded his case before Caesar in 46 B.C. His brothers endured the indignity of going before the dictator on bended knees. Although Caesar personally disliked Ligarius and despite warnings to be careful who he pardoned, he decided to let Ligarius come home. Now Ligarius was so eager for revenge that he joined the conspiracy from a sickbed.
Another supporter of Pompey to join the plot was Pontius Aquila, the People’s Tribune who refused to stand during Caesar’s Spanish triumph in 45 B.C. He suffered humiliation at the dictator’s hands and possibly property confiscation. It’s likely that some of the Pompey allies in the conspiracy lost property under Caesar or knew friends or family who had, which provided another reason to want to kill him.
It’s hard to say just how much property Caesar confiscated. In principle he pardoned his enemies and spared their property but in practice he engaged in some confiscation. Since Caesar’s enemies were often rich or superrich, this potentially represented a huge transfer of wealth. But it wasn’t only Caesar’s enemies who lost their holdings, as Brutus later complained bitterly—neutrals were targeted as well. Caesar promised to pay compensation but it’s doubtful that it was adequate, if it was paid at all. Besides, for many farmers, nothing could ever make up for the loss of their land.
The other Pompey supporters among the conspirators are little more than names to us. The other names of conspirators that have survived cannot be assigned to either group in the Civil War. Perhaps they remained neutral, as some Romans did, or perhaps we just don’t know which side they had been on. They included Gaius Cassius of Parma and Decimus Turullius, both later admirals; and Pacuvius Antistius Labeo. Cassius of Parma was also a poet who did not hesitate to put his pen to political use.
Labeo was a friend of Brutus. He was present when Brutus cautiously sounded out two other prospective conspirators, both politicians with an interest in philosophy. Without revealing his intentions, Brutus probed them about political theory. One of them, Marcus Favonius, was an admirer of Brutus’s late uncle Cato. A virulent enemy of Caesar, Favonius fought for Pompey but had few good words to say about him. Favonius received a pardon from Caesar after Pompey’s death. Now he told Brutus that he thought civil war was even worse than a law-flouting monarchy.
In the same conversation, Brutus engaged one Statilius, another supporter of Cato, but, unlike him, an Epicurean and hence averse to politics. Statilius said that it was not proper for a wise and intelligent person to take on risks and worries because of bad and foolish people. Labeo disagreed. Brutus diplomatically said it was hard to decide. Afterward, he brought Labeo into the conspiracy but left Favonius and Statilius out.
CICERO AND ANTONY
The conspirators turned down two of the leading men of the day, Cicero and Antony.
It’s been suggested that Cicero was really the guiding spirit of the conspiracy. He denied the charge. Cicero flattered Caesar, served as his host, and did business with him. His written record is mixed but one wonders what he said in private. Inasmuch as Cicero mourned the death of the Republic, idealized its lost liberty, and privately called Caesar a king, he certainly stirred men’s souls. Cicero once said that Caesar had no fear of him, although Caesar knew that Cicero called him a rex, because Caesar knew that Cicero had no courage. By implication, a man with courage who believed as Cicero did would be a threat.
It’s also true that Cicero was highly regarded for trust and goodwill by both Brutus and Cassius, yet they left him out. In their judgment, Cicero lacked daring. He was too old and too likely to put safety before the speed that was needed. Compared to the leading conspirators, Cicero was indeed old. He was over sixty, while Brutus, Cassius, Decimus, and Trebonius were all around forty. As things turned out, Cicero applauded the Ides assassination, but he considered it a botched job. The old man insisted that he would have done better.
Antony, another man aged about forty, is a more interesting case. Ultimately, Antony proved to be the mortal enemy of the conspirators. And yet, his name came up among them, and for good reason. For all his support of Caesar, Antony had no intention of burying the Republic. He was not willing to turn over to the dictator the choice of Rome’s top public officials. Antony’s behavior in regard to Dolabella proves that. Dolabella was an ambitious demagogue who had caught Caesar’s eye. Caesar was determined to promote him to consul, even though, at thirty-six, Dolabella was under the required age and had not held the praetorship. Antony was determined to stop it. He hated Dolabella for having committed adultery with his wife, whom Antony promptly divorced. He violently opposed Dolabella’s radical politics and sent troops into the Roman Forum when he was Caesar’s deputy in 47 B.C. to have eight hundred of Dolabella’s supporters killed. Caesar had since reconciled with Dolabella and wanted him appointed Antony’s co-consul when Caesar left for the Parthian War on March 18. Antony was adamant. He was a member of the priesthood of the augurs, men who interpreted the gods’ will by observing the flights of birds. As an augur, Antony had the right to block the appointment of Dolabella.
Promising material for a conspirator, and Plutarch says that everyone wanted to approach Antony until Trebonius spoke up. He reported his failed attempt to recruit Antony to a plot against Caesar in Narbo the summer before. At this point, according to Plutarch, the conspirators did a 180-degree turn—now they wanted to kill Antony along with Caesar. Antony, they said, was a supporter of monarchy, an arrogant man, strong because of his easy familiarity with the soldiers, and powerful because he held the office of consul.
Like Decimus, Antony perhaps feared being eclipsed by Octavian, but there the similarities end. Antony might have reasoned that if Caesar were killed, the door would be open for the return to Rome of Pompey’s surviving son, Sextus. As the man who auctioned off Pompey’s property, Antony could not look forward to that. There was kinship, too, as Antony and Caesar were distant cousins. In addition, Antony’s wife, the powerful Fulvia, whom he married in 47 B.C., was a staunch Populist. Perhaps she encouraged her husband’s continued support of Caesar. Finally, there was Antony’s sheer talent. Of all the Roman nobles, only he had a degree of Caesar’s versatility—the combination of political cunning, oratorical fire, and battle command. Antony might simply have felt less threatened by Caesar than his peers, and more confident that he would replace him one day. So, Antony stayed loyal.
But what should the conspirators do about him?
THE PLAN
The conspirators had to work under the constraints of time, numbers, and politics. They needed to attack Caesar before he left Rome for the army on March 18, after which military security would protect him. The plotters were a loose coalition, not a tight revolutionary cell. As a mix of Best Men and Populists, they had to limit themselves to goals that everyone could agree on. They couldn’t afford to drive anyone out of the group and risk betrayal.
Security was a concern. The plotters never gathered in the open but met secretly in small groups and in each other’s houses. They never swore an oath or took pledges over sacrificial animals, as in some conspiracies, but they kept the secret. Perhaps it was the military experience of men like Cassius, Decimus, and Trebonius that allowed them to proceed so sure-footedly. Perhaps it was a kind of reverse “honor among thieves.” According to Nicolaus, every conspirator revealed his own grudge against Caesar when he joined the plot, and the fear of being exposed in turn kept each one from talking. And perhaps it was a proud hostility to oaths that kept their lips sealed. Only tyrants make men swear oaths—the old Romans never did. So Brutus is reported to have said later. By ostentatiously not swearing an oath, the conspirators were almost swearing an oath, as if to say, “I declare that I support this conspiracy against a tyrant but I won’t swear to it, not the way tyrants make men do!”
The Best Men wanted to go back to the way things were before Caesar. Doing that required killing not just Caesar but all the men around him, starting with Antony. Caesar’s supporters among the conspirators would probably not agree to a purge. They supported Caesar’s reforms and they had no intention of returning property confiscated from Pompey’s supporters. Even they, however, agreed to kill Antony, who they considered too strong and too dangerous. Perhaps Decimus remembered how, on the return to Italy that summer, Antony shared Caesar’s chariot while he was relegated to the second chariot.
Brutus disagreed. He objected that the conspirators were acting on behalf of law and justice and it would be clearly unjust to kill Antony. Killing Caesar would win them glory as tyrannicides—tyrant slayers. If they killed Antony or other friends of Caesar, people would consider the deed a private grudge and the work of the old faction of Pompey. Besides, Brutus hoped for a change of heart on Antony’s part. He had a high opinion of Antony, who, like him, came from an old and noble family. Brutus saw Antony as clever, an ambitious man and passionate for glory. He believed that once Caesar was out of the way, Antony would follow their example and fight for the liberation of the fatherland.
Brutus believed that people opposed Caesar the rex, not Caesar the reformer. For him, therefore, the best strategy was to remove Caesar but leave his program intact. Brutus believed that once Caesar’s faction was decapitated, it would fall apart. Ambitious men like Antony would accept the new reality and move on. Besides, it was absurd to think of restoring the Republic by killing a consul like Antony. A Dictator in Perpetuity was a monstrosity and had to go, but a consul was a sacred Roman office.
But what about the urban plebs? What about Caesar’s soldiers? Brutus considered it possible to keep their support by maintaining all of Caesar’s actions intact. Brutus refused to give the Best Men what they wanted. There would be no restoration of Pompey’s supporters’ property, no overturning of Caesar’s acts, and no purge. Those whose property had been confiscated would receive public funds in compensation but the new owners would keep their land. Brutus was an assassin whose goal was not revolution but peace.So he alone of the conspirators opposed killing Antony, and he got his way. Brutus was indispensable to the plan.
Roman history, alas, did not provide support for this plan. It showed, rather, that in order to stop a domestic political movement by violence, you had to kill or at least drive out a man’s followers as well as the leader. Even the founder of the Roman Republic, Marcus Brutus’s supposed ancestor, Lucius Junius Brutus, did more than drive out the king. He also got rid of the king’s wife and children, including his adult sons. Lucius Brutus also made sure that he had armed followers and that they secured the support of the Roman army.
What then, was Brutus thinking in 44 B.C.? Why did he imagine that the murder of one man would be enough to save the Roman Republic? As a Roman, he knew perfectly well that Caesar’s followers would want to avenge his death. Most Romans admired what Sulla said: “No friend ever served me and no enemy ever wronged me whom I have not repaid in full.”
Brutus knew that but he expected to win even so. He believed that both Senate and people would thank the conspirators for killing a tyrant. Anticipating that armed men would threaten vengeance, the conspirators prepared a stronghold in the heart of Rome with their own force of armed men to defend it. They did not think they would need it for long, though. They did not believe that any of Caesar’s lieutenants could rally the men as Caesar had. Without a strong leader, the army would dissolve, especially because Brutus would meet the soldiers’ demands.
The conspirators also thought that the matter of how and where they struck Caesar would make a difference. It was one thing to ambush him with hired thugs on the Appian Way, as the demagogue Clodius was killed in 52 B.C. It was another thing to kill Caesar by themselves in a public place in the heart of Rome. The very act could inform and change public opinion.
They considered other venues for the assassination. One possibility was an attack while Caesar was walking near his home on the Via Sacra, or Sacred Way, which was the oldest and most important street in the vicinity of the Forum. Another plan was to attack him during the elections for new consuls while he was crossing the bridge that voters crossed in Rome’s formal (and primitive) voting procedure. Others wanted to attack at the time of a gladiatorial game, when no one would be suspicious of armed men. Instead, they decided on a different course. In its own way the plan was very like Caesar. It depended on speed and shock. It was risky. It was spectacular. With luck, it would swing public opinion in their direction, with Brutus’s prestige and moderation taking care of the rest. If, however, that wasn’t enough, they had an ace up their sleeve. Or so we might imagine.
The conspirators might have thought that this time would be different, and for the same reason that Caesar had cited: that no one wanted a return to civil war. They might have believed that public opinion, stoked by Brutus’s oratory, would insist on a compromise between Caesar’s supporters and the men who killed him. They knew Caesar’s supporters and they were confident that they could do business with most of them.
It was a risk, but Brutus gambled that the Republic could still be saved. Like Caesar, he was willing to let the dice fly high.
DISMISSING THE BODYGUARD
Of course, security considerations came into play as well. It was best to strike when the dictator was vulnerable. It might have seemed as if he was always vulnerable because Caesar had no bodyguard, but Caesar was not without protection.
Sometime after returning to Rome in October 45 B.C., Caesar formally dismissed his Spanish bodyguard who protected him in the field. In principle, he relied solely on the informal protection of the senators and the knights. On the face of it, this was remarkable. If Roman history taught anything, it was that you could kill anyone. Assassination was not the rule in Rome but it wasn’t rare, either.
True, other plots against Caesar had not amounted to much. Cassius supposedly conspired against him in 47 B.C. In 46 B.C., Cicero worried publicly about assassination plots against Caesar. In 45 B.C., Trebonius had tried to enlist Antony in a conspiracy. The fate of Caesar’s former foe Marcus Claudius Marcellus that year—stabbed to death by a disgruntled friend—served as a warning. Meanwhile, Caesar’s slave Philemon, his secretary, promised Caesar’s enemies that he would poison his master. When the plot was discovered, Caesar showed mercy by sparing Philemon from torture; he was merely executed. Only the last plot was certainly real. The rest might have been just talk. But then, consider the case of Deiotarus.
In November 45, Deiotarus, king of the central Anatolian kingdom of Galatia, was the subject of a hearing in Rome. A former supporter of Pompey, for whom he fought in person at Pharsalus, Deiotarus was accused of plotting to murder Caesar when the dictator visited him during Caesar’s Anatolian campaign in 47 B.C. Cicero, who defended Deiotarus, gave the whole thing a comic opera air, which was not hard to do, since the accuser was none other than Deiotarus’s grandson, Castor, and the main witness for the prosecution was Deiotarus’s doctor. Less funny was the venue of the hearing—Caesar’s house, the Public Mansion, the official residence of the Chief Priest. Long ago the kings of Rome enjoyed the right of hearing cases in their palace and Caesar now insisted on no less.
The other thing that was not funny was the possibility that the charge was true. Brutus was one of Deiotarus’s friends in Rome and we can only wonder if the two communicated about the subject of killing Caesar. In any case, Caesar did not render a verdict on the matter. He certainly did not take it as a reason to increase security.
More than assassination plots, it was bad press that got to Caesar, like the scathing verses of one Pitholaus. Caesar did not suppress them but he showed his displeasure. Another case: during the Civil War, Aulus Caecina published a pamphlet that so laid into Caesar that now he refused to grant the writer a pardon, in spite of Cicero’s pleas.
Caesar’s sources in Rome denounced conspiracies and nighttime meetings. Caesar did nothing but announce that he knew what was going on. Cassius Dio makes the striking statement that Caesar refused to hear information about the conspiracy and that he severely punished those who brought any such news. All the talk of plots had not amounted to much, and that could breed complacency on Caesar’s part. “Let them talk about assassination,” he might say, thinking that talk would blow off steam. Besides, he trusted his own judgment above all. In the field he sometimes acted in the absence of reliable intelligence. He made snap judgments and dealt with stereotypes and probabilities. He took risks that most commanders would shrink from.
Military intelligence was well and good, Caesar’s career seemed to say, but it was no match for his own genius. All the more true in the case of the gossip and rumor that was the stuff of domestic political intelligence. Caesar’s problem was probably not too little information but too much. One imagines a steady stream of rumors and tips of alleged threats. The difficulty was separating fact from fiction.
Caesar heard accusations that Brutus, Mark Antony, and Dolabella were each plotting revolution. He suspected Brutus and Cassius. He made a memorable quip about the supposed plotters: “I am not much in fear of these fat, long-haired fellows”—Antony and Dolabella—“but rather of those pale, thin ones,” meaning Brutus and Cassius. He meant that Antony and Dolabella were slow, lusty, and affected, while Brutus and Cassius were intellectuals, and so they were dangerous.
Yet Caesar refused to take the risk seriously. He had too much faith in Brutus’s character, and without Brutus, Cassius could do little. Caesar complained to his friends about Cassius but did nothing. He brushed off Brutus’s accusers with a joke.
Why then did Caesar dismiss his bodyguard? Wasn’t he inviting an attack? Ancient authors asked the same questions. One school of thought says that the dictator was arrogant. He knew about the danger but he convinced himself that it couldn’t happen to him. He reasoned that the senators had all sworn oaths to guard him with their own lives. He put too much trust in the oath, some said, while others said that his enemies concocted the oath precisely in order to lure Caesar into giving up his bodyguard. As mentioned, Caesar had dismissed his Spanish bodyguard when he first arrived back in Rome.
There are those who argue that Caesar knew that killing him would only push Rome back into civil war and all its horrors. He was quoted as saying that his safety wasn’t so much in his interest as in the Republic’s. Caesar thought that no one would dare to assassinate him. As often happens, the victim engaged in what one scholar calls “the pleasure of deception.” He deceived himself by overestimating how much he and his adversaries had in common.
One ancient theory says that Caesar was so depressed that he didn’t care whether he lived or died, but why then did he prepare a major military campaign abroad? Three other matters better explain Caesar’s willingness to court death: Sulla, soldiering, and sobriety.
Caesar was always looking over his shoulder at Sulla, the dictator who preceded him. Where Sulla was brutal, Caesar was mild. For example, Caesar replaced Sulla’s executions with pardons. To the Roman mind, a bodyguard in the city of Rome smacked ofregnum—monarchy. Far from having a bodyguard, a Roman senator was supposed to be easy to approach—accessibility was the mark of a free society. Even Sulla honored this code. When he stepped down as dictator, he dismissed his bodyguard and walked through the streets of Rome untouched, supposedly guarded only by his reputation. This, although he still had plenty of enemies, and although once, years earlier, he was attacked in Rome by men with hidden daggers. Caesar, we might conclude, wanted to do Sulla one better and give up his bodyguard even while he was still dictator.
Caesar was a soldier. He prided himself on his personal courage and he thrived on risk. He had earned a civic crown by scaling the walls of a rebel Greek city at age twenty and survived a near disaster on the River Sabis in Gaul at age forty-three, and he was not about to cringe in the streets of Rome at age fifty-five. For a man as proud as Caesar the danger of going without a bodyguard was not an argument against doing so but an argument in favor of it.
Courage served well in the field but politics and Rome required cunning. Caesar had shown cunning, but perhaps he had grown rusty. Nicolaus says that the conspirators easily tricked Caesar because he was “straightforward by nature and unused to political wiles because of his military campaigns abroad.” An exaggeration, especially “straightforward,” and yet it contains some truth. The political magician of the 60s B.C. was out of practice. What’s more, he no longer seemed to enjoy Roman politics. He was used to giving orders, not unraveling plots. He made it clear that he couldn’t wait to get back into the field.
If Caesar was in denial about politics, he assessed the value of a bodyguard with cold sobriety. He knew that no bodyguard could offer complete protection. In fact it was precisely bodyguards who had assassinated some of the great men of the past, like King Philip II of Macedon, a founder of empire like Caesar, or Viriathus the Lusitanian, a native rebel against Rome in the very part of Spain where Caesar had fought. Finally, there was Sertorius, a supporter of Marius like Caesar himself.
Besides, something very important must be kept in mind: not having a bodyguard did not mean lacking protection completely. As dictator, Caesar was accompanied in public by twenty-four lictors. These were strong men, each carrying a bound bundle of wooden rods with an executioner’s axe on the outside. They served as guards, opened the way through crowds, and carried out arrests and whippings. They would not be useless in case of attack.
In addition, a crowd of friends and followers usually surrounded Caesar. This was truer than ever after the affair of the tribunes in January–February 44 B.C., when Caesar worried that he had behaved too high-handedly. He asked his friends to protect him in public. But when they in turn asked him to reestablish his bodyguard, Caesar refused.
We might suspect that some of the friends who accompanied him in public were chosen carefully. Imposing, dangerous-looking men, as well as, say, veterans, gladiators, and the odd cutthroat or two were likely recruits. The evidence comes from one ancient writer who says that the conspirators stood in awe of Caesar. They were afraid that, “even though he had no bodyguard, one of the men who were constantly around him would kill them” if they attacked Caesar. Finally, as we’ll see, the gathering of soldiers for Caesar’s impending departure for the front gave him one additional advantage when it came to deterring an attack.
The conspirators were well aware of all this. Cassius, Trebonius, and Decimus were among the best military minds in Rome. They understood the sober truth that the Senate House was the safest place to attack Caesar. Since only senators were allowed in the room during a meeting, the dictator would not have a throng of “friends” to protect him there. True, some of the senators, especially Caesar’s new senators, were probably tough customers and although no weapons were allowed in the Senate, they might havesmuggled some in. Help might come to Caesar from outside. So Cassius, Trebonius, and Decimus planned accordingly. After having pulled off an ambush against the Parthians in Syria in 51 B.C., for example, it was child’s play for Cassius to trap Caesar in the Senate. Escaping his vengeful soldiers afterward posed more of a challenge.
DINNER AT LEPIDUS’S
On March 14, 44 B.C., the day before the Ides of March, the dictator went to dinner with his Master of the Horse. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was a loyal friend to Caesar, which separated Lepidus from his two brothers-in-law, Brutus and Cassius. Like Cassius, Lepidus was married to one of Brutus’s sisters. Like Brutus, Lepidus came from a prominent noble family. Like Decimus, Lepidus rose under Caesar but he was a diplomat and errand boy rather than a great general. Caesar let Lepidus celebrate a triumph in 46B.C.for negotiating a settlement after trouble in Hispania, even though his military achievements were meager. Caesar made Lepidus his co-consul in 46 B.C. and his Master of the Horse in 45 and early 44 B.C. Such a man would never break with his patron and the conspirators surely never approached Lepidus.
Besides Caesar and Lepidus, Decimus was also present at dinner, brought by Caesar, according to Appian. Decimus might have used the occasion to brood on the honors that Lepidus had but which he, Decimus, really deserved—surely Decimus was more worthy of a triumph.
A formal Roman dining room had space for nine diners on three couches. Considering Caesar’s status, Lepidus surely had a full complement of guests. The couches were typically arranged in a U shape around a table. The guests ate reclining, three per couch. As guest of honor, Caesar lay on one end of the middle couch. Beside him, at the end of the so-called lowest couch, reclined Lepidus, the host.
While reclining, Caesar added personal greetings at the bottom of documents written by a secretary. This was his habit at dinners and at the games as well. It offended some, but Caesar was a busy man.
A Roman banquet had at least three courses and as many as seven, and Lepidus might have served a long meal. A Roman banquet began in the afternoon, followed by a drinking session, which often stretched well into the evening. The sources agree that the topic of discussion that night was the best sort of death. Appian says that Caesar brought up the subject himself. And what was the best sort of death? Caesar’s answer, according to Plutarch, was an unexpected death; a sudden one, says Appian; sudden and unexpected, says Suetonius. We could put Caesar on the psychiatrist’s couch and say that, subconsciously, he welcomed assassination. But he was about to leave for battle, which is a much simpler explanation for his comments. It’s understandable that he thought of sudden death as a warrior’s death.
Suetonius adds that Caesar had discussed the subject on another occasion. The literate dictator read, in Xenophon’s classic book, The Education of Cyrus, how King Cyrus of Persia gave orders for his funeral as his health declined. It is striking that Caesar compared himself to a king, and not just any king but a warrior king, one of history’s great conquerors. Cyrus was also an absolute monarch and the king of the country that Caesar now stood poised to invade. In any case, Caesar said that Cyrus’s plan was not for him—he wanted to die quickly and suddenly.
At least one of the other guests that evening knew that the dictator might soon have his wish.