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 of regnum—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 have smuggled 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 46 B.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, r
eclined 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.
7
CAESAR LEAVES HOME
NOT LONG AFTER FIVE IN the morning of March 15, 44 B.C., the first light was visible in the eastern sky above Rome. Romans were early risers, so Calpurnia, wife of Julius Caesar, was probably already awake after a night of uneasy sleep. She was in bed by Caesar’s side that night when, suddenly, all the doors and windows of the bedroom opened and woke them both.
The noise roused Calpurnia from a bad dream. According to one version, she dreamt she was holding a murdered Caesar in her arms and mourning him. Other versions have Calpurnia dream that the front pediment of their house collapsed, with Caesar’s corpse either present or just suggested. In one version, his body was streaming with blood. The Senate had given Caesar the right to put up this pediment to make the house look like a temple—he was a god, after all.
Calpurnia had plenty of reason to toss and turn. Daughter of a prominent noble family, she was Caesar’s third wife (the first had died, while the second was divorced after adultery). Her father, Piso, was a former consul and a leading patron of philosophy. He and Caesar negotiated the marriage in 59 B.C. when Calpurnia was in her late teens. Now, fifteen years later, she was a mature woman. The marriage was childless. Although Caesar was absent from Rome for almost their entire marriage, she had plenty of time, living in the center of the city, to deepen her knowledge of Roman politics and its treacherous ways.
Rumors of plots to kill Caesar were widespread. Unfavorable omens were piling up, from menacing behavior by birds and weird lights in the sky to the discovery of a buried inscription with a threatening-sounding message, strangely crashing weapons, and men who seemed to catch on fire. Even the horses that Caesar had used to cross the Rubicon, now dedicated to the gods, supposedly stopped eating and started shedding tears. But if Calpurnia went in for prophecy, the most troubling item was Spurinna’s prediction. A month before, Spurinna said that Caesar faced great danger for the next thirty days. The morning would bring the last day. It was the Ides of March, roughly, the midpoint of the month.
SPURINNA
Spurinna came from Etruria (roughly, modern Tuscany), possibly from the city of Tarquinia, where the name was prominent. In Roman eyes, it was a city of dead kings and live soothsayers. Rome’s last kings had come from Tarquinia. Spurinna was a soothsayer—that is, he predicted the future by examining the internal organs of sacrificial animals or by interpreting lightning bolts or other omens. As an Etruscan, Spurinna was a Roman citizen, but he was also descended from a proud and separate culture. The Romans held Etruscan soothsayers in high regard and some leading politicians had personal soothsayers.
Spurinna served as Caesar’s soothsayer at the infamous Lupercalia on February 15. Caesar sacrificed a bull that day. Spurinna made the chilling announcement that the beast had no heart—perhaps it had withered or been displaced in the chest cavity or perhaps its absence was a sorcerer’s trick. Caesar was unmoved—he was famously unimpressed by omens. Spurinna, though, said he was afraid. The ancients believed that the heart was the seat of thought as well as of life, and so, Spurinna said, he feared that not only Caesar’s plans but also his life might come to a bad end. Then came another ominous sign when, at another sacrifice the next day, the victim’s liver was lacking the lobe.
The evidence is suggestive rather than conclusive, but a reasonable modern interpretation of these events is as follows: Spurinna was trying to warn Caesar not to go too far and not to become a king. Spurinna was a friend of Caesar. Caesar put at least one soothsayer in the Senate. We don’t know who but Spurinna is the leading candidate. Yet, like others rewarded by Caesar, Spurinna had principles. It seems that Spurinna came from an Etruscan aristocratic family that was as opposed to kings as Brutus, Cassius, and Decimus were.
February 15 was probably also the occasion when Spurinna warned Caesar that his life would be in danger for the next thirty days, a period ending with the Ides of March. This is subtly different from the famous warning in Shakespeare to “beware the Ides of March.” Spurinna’s notice referred to a month rather than a specific day. He could not have known that the conspirators would strike on March 15. He was not a conspirator and besides, they hadn’t settled on that date yet. What Spurinna did know was that Caesar was planning to leave Rome in mid-March for the Parthian War. He also knew the rumors of plots to kill Caesar—any well-informed Roman did. “Thirty days” was a conventional time period for a prophetic warning. The result was a warning period that expired on the Ides of March.
Calpurnia no doubt knew about Spurinna’s warning, which makes it easier to understand her troubled sleep on the night of March 14. The next morning at daybreak, around 5 A.M. or not much later, she begged Caesar not to go to the Senate meeting, or at least to carry out new sacrifices and check the omens first.
As for Caesar, one source says that he too had a bad dream—that he was flying above the clouds and shook the hand of Jupiter, king of the gods. But a bad dream might have been the least of Caesar’s problems. When Caesar returned home from dinner at Lepidus’s on the night of March 14, the meal did not sit well with him and his body felt sluggish. The next morning, he felt poorly. In particular, he is said to have suffered from vertigo. Could these have been the symptoms of an undetected epileptic seizure?
Even today, dizziness is often the mistaken description of the aftereffects of an undetected seizure (or even possibly a small seizure itself, although that seems less likely). One source says that Caesar experienced fainting and night terrors toward the close of his life, which might be seen in retrospect as signs of a seizure. If Caesar did suffer a seizure during the night of March 14–15, it might have left him with impaired judgment the next morning, even though he appeared normal. He might not even have been aware of the seizure.
Caution is needed, though, and not only because diagnosis is difficult on the basis of fragmentary details analyzed two thousand years after the fact. We can’t even be certain that Caesar really had the symptoms in question. Some in the ancient world said that Caesar was merely pretending to be ill on the Ides as a cover for the real reason he wanted to postpone the Senate meeting—the omens disturbed him. We might also imagine that after the assassination Caesar’s people invented the detail of his illness on the Ides as a way of explaining the great man’s blindness to danger on the fateful day.
So, whether he was suffering from poor judgment after a seizure or he was too proud
to admit weakness or he was, in fact, perfectly healthy, Caesar went on an early errand that morning. It was a protocol visit, a routine sacrifice to the god Jupiter, and only about three hundred yards away from the Public Mansion. The location was the residence of Cnaeus Domitius Calvinus. One of Caesar’s generals, Calvinus was the dictator’s choice for Master of the Horse in 43 B.C.
As it happened, Spurinna was also at Calvinus’s house. There now took place the famous exchange between the dictator and the soothsayer. “The Ides of March have come,” said Caesar. “Aye, they have come but not gone,” replied the soothsayer in one of history’s memorable comebacks.
Despite his bravado, Caesar took Spurinna’s words to heart once back at the Public Mansion. According to some sources he ordered new sacrifices just as Calpurnia asked, and the omens were bad. Caesar hesitated for a long time and finally decided to stay home. He was not a superstitious man, but he knew that Spurrina and Calpurnia each had a finger to the political winds. Perhaps, he decided, it was better to be cautious in the face of all the conspiracy talk after all. Maybe Caesar respected Calpurnia’s nose for trouble or maybe he just wanted peace in the household. Perhaps he felt dizzier than ever after the exertion of his visit to Calvinus’s house.
Caesar decided to send the consul, Antony, to dismiss the Senate because Caesar would not be attending. It’s not clear whether Antony was with Caesar in the Public Mansion at the time or whether Antony was elsewhere and reached by messenger.
Caesar would have missed the scheduled Senate meeting if not for the intervention of Decimus, who arrived at the Public Mansion later that morning. By that time, a lot was already going on in the city.
Death of Caesar : The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination (9781451668827) Page 12
