Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
new glory, as if the present were all spent. It was in fact a
sort of emulous struggle with himself, as it had been with
another, how he might outdo his past actions by his future. In
pursuit of these thoughts, he resolved to make war upon the
Parthians, and when he had subdued them, to pass through
Hyrcania; thence to march along by the Caspian Sea to Mount
Caucasus, and so on about Pontus, till he came into Scythia;
then to overrun all the countries bordering upon Germany, and
Germany itself; and so to return through Gaul into Italy, after
completing the whole circle of his intended empire, and bounding
it on every side by the ocean. While preparations were making
for this expedition, he proposed to dig through the isthmus on
which Corinth stands; and appointed Anienus to superintend the
work. He had also a design of diverting the Tiber, and carrying
it by a deep channel directly from Rome to Circeii, and so into
the sea near Tarracina, that there might be a safe and easy
passage for all merchants who traded to Rome. Besides this, he
intended to drain all the marshes by Pomentium and Setia, and
gain ground enough from the water to employ many thousands of
men in tillage. He proposed further to make great mounds on the
shore nearest Rome, to hinder the sea from breaking in upon the
land, to clear the coast at Ostia of all the hidden rocks and
shoals that made it unsafe for shipping, and to form ports and
harbors fit to receive the large number of vessels that would
frequent them.
These things were designed without being carried into effect;
but his reformation of the calendar, in order to rectify the
irregularity of time, was not only projected with great
scientific ingenuity, but was brought to its completion, and
proved of very great use. For it was not only in ancient times
that the Romans had wanted a certain rule to make the
revolutions of their months fall in with the course of the year,
so that their festivals and solemn days for sacrifice were
removed by little and little, till at last they came to be kept
at seasons quite the contrary to what was at first intended, but
even at this time the people had no way of computing the solar
year; only the priests could say the time, and they, at their
pleasure, without giving any notice, slipped in the intercalary
month, which they called Mercedonius. Numa was the first who
put in this month, but his expedient was but a poor one and
quite inadequate to correct all the errors that arose in the
returns of the annual cycles, as we have shown in his life.
Caesar called in the best philosophers and mathematicians of his
time to settle the point, and out of the systems he had before
him, formed a new and more exact method of correcting the
calendar, which the Romans use to this day, and seem to succeed
better than any nation in avoiding the errors occasioned by the
inequality of the cycles. Yet even this gave offense to those
who looked with an evil eye on his position, and felt oppressed
by his power. Cicero, the orator, when someone in his company
chanced to say, the next morning Lyra would rise, replied, "Yes,
in accordance with the edict," as if even this were a matter of
compulsion.
But that which brought upon him the most apparent and mortal
hatred, was his desire of being king; which gave the common
people the first occasion to quarrel with him, and proved the
most specious pretense to those who had been his secret enemies
all along. Those, who would have procured him that title, gave
it out, that it was foretold in the Sybils' books that the
Romans should conquer the Parthians when they fought against
them under the conduct of a king, but not before. And one day,
as Caesar was coming down from Alba to Rome, some were so bold
as to salute him by the name of king; but he finding the people
disrelish it, seemed to resent it himself, and said his name was
Caesar, not king. Upon this, there was a general silence, and
he passed on looking not very well pleased or contented.
Another time, when the senate had conferred on him some
extravagant honors, he chanced to receive the message as he was
sitting on the rostra, where, though the consuls and praetors
themselves waited on him, attended by the whole body of the
senate, he did not rise, but behaved himself to them as if they
had been private men, and told them his honors wanted rather to
be retrenched than increased. This treatment offended not only
the senate, but the commonalty too, as if they thought the
affront upon the senate equally reflected upon the whole
republic; so that all who could decently leave him went off,
looking much discomposed. Caesar, perceiving the false step he
had made, immediately retired home; and laying his throat bare,
told his friends that he was ready to offer this to anyone who
would give the stroke. But afterwards he made the malady from
which he suffered, the excuse for his sitting, saying that those
who are attacked by it, lose their presence of mind, if they
talk much standing; that they presently grow giddy, fall into
convulsions, and quite lose their reason. But this was not the
reality, for he would willingly have stood up to the senate, had
not Cornelius Balbus, one of his friends, or rather flatterers,
hindered him. "Will you not remember," said he, "you are
Caesar, and claim the honor which is due to your merit?"
He gave a fresh occasion of resentment by his affront to the
tribunes. The Lupercalia were then celebrated, a feast at the
first institution belonging, as some writers say, to the
shepherds, and having some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea.
Many young noblemen and magistrates run up and down the city
with their upper garments off, striking all they meet with
thongs of hide, by way of sport; and many women, even of the
highest rank, place themselves in the way, and hold out their
hands to the lash, as boys in a school do to the master, out of
a belief that it procures an easy labor to those who are with
child, and makes those conceive who are barren. Caesar, dressed
in a triumphal robe, seated himself in a golden chair at the
rostra, to view this ceremony. Antony, as consul, was one of
those who ran this course, and when he came into the forum, and
the people made way for him, he went up and reached to Caesar a
diadem wreathed with laurel. Upon this, there was a shout, but
only a slight one, made by the few who were planted there for
that purpose; but when Caesar refused it, there was universal
applause. Upon the second offer, very few, and upon the second
refusal, all again applauded. Caesar finding it would not take,
rose up, and ordered the crown to be carried into the capitol.
Caesar's statues were afterwards found with royal diadems on
their heads. Flavius and Marullus, two tribunes of the people,
went presently and pulled them off, and having apprehended those
who first saluted Caesar as king, committed them to prison. The
people followed them with acclamations, and called them by the
name of Brutus, because Brutus was the first who ended the
succession of kings, and transferred the power which before was
lodged in one man into the hands of the senate and people.
Caesar so far resented this, that he displaced Marullus and
Flavius; and in urging his charges against them, at the same
time ridiculed the people, by himself giving the men more than
once the names of Bruti, and Cumaei.
This made the multitude turn their thoughts to Marcus Brutus,
who, by his father's side, was thought to be descended from that
first Brutus, and by his mother's side from the Servilii,
another noble family, being besides nephew and son-in-law to
Cato. But the honors and favors he had received from Caesar,
took off the edge from the desires he might himself have felt
for overthrowing the new monarchy. For he had not only been
pardoned himself after Pompey's defeat at Pharsalia, and had
procured the same grace for many of his friends, but was one in
whom Caesar had a particular confidence. He had at that time
the most honorable praetorship of the year, and was named for
the consulship four years after, being preferred before Cassius,
his competitor. Upon the question as to the choice, Caesar, it
is related, said that Cassius had the fairer pretensions, but
that he could not pass by Brutus. Nor would he afterwards
listen to some who spoke against Brutus, when the conspiracy
against him was already afoot, but laying his hand on his body,
said to the informers, "Brutus will wait for this skin of mine,"
intimating that he was worthy to bear rule on account of his
virtue, but would not be base and ungrateful to gain it. Those
who desired a change, and looked on him as the only, or at least
the most proper, person to effect it, did not venture to speak
with him; but in the night time laid papers about his chair of
state, where he used to sit and determine causes, with such
sentences in them as, "You are asleep, Brutus," "You are no
longer Brutus." Cassius, when he perceived his ambition a
little raised upon this, was more instant than before to work
him yet further, having himself a private grudge against Caesar,
for some reasons that we have mentioned in the Life of Brutus.
Nor was Caesar without suspicions of him, and said once to his
friends, "What do you think Cassius is aiming at? I don't like
him, he looks so pale." And when it was told him that Antony
and Dolabella were in a plot against him, he said he did not
fear such fat, luxurious men, but rather the pale, lean fellows,
meaning Cassius and Brutus.
Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than
unexpected. For many strange prodigies and apparitions are said
to have been observed shortly before the event. As to the
lights in the heavens, the noises heard in the night, and the
wild birds which perched in the forum, these are not perhaps
worth taking notice of in so great a case as this. Strabo, the
philosopher, tells us that a number of men were seen, looking as
if they were heated through with fire, contending with each
other; that a quantity of flame issued from the hand of a
soldier's servant, so that they who saw it thought he must be
burnt, but that after all he had no hurt. As Caesar was
sacrificing, the victim's heart was missing, a very bad omen,
because no living creature can subsist without a heart. One
finds it also related by many, that a soothsayer bade him
prepare for some great danger on the ides of March. When the
day was come, Caesar, as he went to the senate, met this
soothsayer, and said to him by way of raillery, "The ides of
March are come;" who answered him calmly, "Yes, they are come,
but they are not past." The day before this assassination, he
supped with Marcus Lepidus; and as he was signing some letters,
according to his custom, as he reclined at table, there arose a
question what sort of death was the best. At which he
immediately, before anyone could speak, said, "A sudden one."
After this, as he was in bed with his wife, all the doors and
windows of the house flew open together; he was startled at the
noise, and the light which broke into the room, and sat up in
his bed, where by the moonshine he perceived Calpurnia fast
asleep, but heard her utter in her dream some indistinct words
and inarticulate groans. She fancied at that time she was
weeping over Caesar, and holding him butchered in her arms.
Others say this was not her dream, but that she dreamed that a
pinnacle which the senate, as Livy relates, had ordered to be
raised on Caesar's house by way of ornament and grandeur, was
tumbling down, which was the occasion of her tears and
ejaculations. When it was day, she begged of Caesar, if it were
possible, not to stir out, but to adjourn the senate to another