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 t
he 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.
Death of Caesar : The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination (9781451668827) Page 9
