But as the time passed and Caesar failed to appear, tension rose. Like Caesar, Brutus too endured sleepless nights leading up to the Ides of March. Various anecdotes claim to describe the nervous scene at the Portico of Pompey. A man approached the older Casca brother and scolded him for keeping a secret that, he announced, Brutus had revealed to him. Casca was unnecessarily frightened, as the man was just gossiping about Casca’s run for office.
Then an augur and senator named Popilius Laenas took Brutus and Cassius aside to say that he joined in their prayers for success and urged them to hurry. The obvious question was, “prayers for success in what?” but Brutus and Cassius were too terrified to say anything. Finally, Brutus got awful news from home that Porcia was dead. It turned out to be a false rumor—she had just fainted from anxiety. But Brutus didn’t know that yet, claim the sources, and he soldiered on.
The report came of the bad omens at Caesar’s house, along with a rumor: the Senate might be dismissed. Thinking that Caesar wasn’t coming, an attendant carried his golden chair—the special one, voted to him by the Senate—out of the hall. Later, in retrospect, that seemed like a bad omen. But the conspirators had to worry about action and not omens. Dio claims that they decided to send Decimus to Caesar’s house to try to talk him into coming because he was such a close friend of Caesar.
Decimus was about to enter a man’s home to lure him to his death. That man was someone Decimus had served for more than a decade and who had honored and promoted Decimus in turn. True, he probably had left Decimus feeling unappreciated and overlooked, and true, he threatened to destroy the Republic and the values in which Decimus believed. Yet many people would label Decimus’s behavior disgraceful, even while acknowledging that it took guts.
How could Decimus do it? Those in the know might have said afterward, “Like mother, like son.” Sempronia had a reputation for brains, beauty, adultery, and revolutionary politics. She was accused of “masculine audacity.” In 63 B.C. she broke with the conservative politics of her husband and her father and supported Catiline. He was a failed politician who advocated armed rebellion to obtain debt relief for both poor people and overextended aristocrats like Sempronia. While her husband was out of town, she opened their home to Catiline’s Gallic allies—Allobroges, a tribe famous for its spear-wielding horsemen. Catiline’s rebellion failed but Sempronia might have taught Decimus a thing or two about betrayal.
Whether he went to Caesar’s on his own or at the call of others, Decimus was the linchpin of the plot. Unless he talked Caesar into coming to the Senate meeting, there would have been no attack that morning and probably no attack at all. Yes, Caesar would likely reschedule the Senate meeting for the next day or the day after, before he left for war. But with each day the risk increased that the plot would be discovered. It all came down to Decimus.
And so, he came to Caesar’s home. The two men conversed among the mosaics and the marbles of the Public Mansion. We will never know the details of that conversation. One of the participants told the story to his advantage and the other was silent. Historians in ancient times did not hesitate to invent dialogue, reporting what the speakers “should” have said. Yet, most of what they state about Decimus and Caesar has the ring of truth.
Decimus, they say, argued that Caesar should not risk disappointing the Senate or, worse, seeming to insult or mock it. Caesar himself had called the meeting, and for business that required a quorum, so the house was full and it was already waiting for some time. If Caesar simply sent someone to dismiss the meeting because of Calpurnia’s dreams, the senators would consider him a tyrant or a weakling. Some sources add that Decimus ridiculed the soothsayers. One writer even says that Decimus promised a vote in the Senate to declare Caesar king outside of Italy.
As the son of a noble family, Decimus had his finger on the pulse of the Senate, and Caesar knew it. But the key thing, one suspects, is that Decimus spoke as one soldier to another. They were comrades of the battlefield and Caesar was about to leave for another war, perhaps the greatest campaign of his career—this time without Decimus.
“What do you say, Caesar?” Decimus is supposed to have said. “Will someone of your stature pay attention to the dreams of a woman and the omens of foolish men?” Decimus told Caesar, in effect, to man up. Between two soldiers like Decimus and Caesar, an argument from masculinity is a trump card.
Caesar decided to go. He would postpone the meeting to another day but he would do it in person in the Senate House, thus showing the senators respect. Perhaps he was thinking that he would show something else, too—contempt for fear. What warrior could resist that?
In a seeming gesture of friendship, Decimus led Caesar out by the hand. To trick Julius Caesar was no mean feat, even if Caesar was in fact suffering from impaired judgment after a seizure. Decimus was a liar, a flimflam man, a brazen and audacious snake. In short he was much like Caesar.
Julius Caesar, the ultimate captain of his own fate, put his life in the hands of another. No writer could resist the drama of Caesar’s decision. The sources give us a Caesar who is gullible, taken in by a schemer like Decimus—so says Nicolaus of Damascus. They give us a Caesar who is passive because he is led rather than a leader—so says Plutarch. They give us a Caesar who cares about appearances—so says Appian. They give us a Caesar who is arrogant because he ignores the warnings of the gods—so says Suetonius or Dio. Yet, there was another Caesar, a man who was a risk taker—indeed, a risk addict—and a gambler who couldn’t resist one last roll of the dice. Appian, who sketches a Caesar who wanted a sudden death, comes closest to this side of the great commander’s personality. The man who scaled walls as a young soldier in the East, fought his way through an ambush on the Sabis River in Gaul, and stole a march on more than one fierce enemy, could not resist the call of a fellow soldier to undertake a final mission.
Caesar decided to go to the Senate meeting not because he thought it was safe, one suspects, but because he thought it was dangerous. It was almost at the end of the fifth hour—that is, shortly before eleven o’clock—when Caesar went forth.
CAESAR ARRIVES
A litter carried by slaves brought Caesar through the streets of Rome. Festival of Anna Perenna or not, Caesar was thronged along the way by his twenty-four lictors, by most of Rome’s public officials, and by a large and diverse crowd of citizens, foreigners, freedmen, and slaves. No doubt the multitude included favor seekers, well-wishers, rubberneckers, and maybe even a few bold catcallers. Many handed him small rolls of papyrus containing petitions or letters. Caesar immediately turned the rolls over to his attendants. It might have taken as long as forty-five minutes to reach the Portico of Pompey, so perhaps it was around 11:30 A.M. when he arrived. Meanwhile, word was sent to the senators that the dictator was on his way.
There was still time for Caesar to discover the plot, according to the sources. Barely had he left his door when another person’s slave tried to reach him, but the press of people around the dictator was too great. The slave asked Calpurnia to let him stay until Caesar returned, presumably because he knew that something was afoot but not that it was set for that very day.
Then, a man named Artemidorus of Cnidus made his way through the crowd to hand Caesar a small roll and told him to read it himself and to do so quickly. Artemidorus knew the truth about the conspiracy. Caesar tried to read the roll more than once but the mob of people kept preventing him. He was still holding it in his hand, unopened, when he entered the Senate. Or so one version goes. On another account, Artemidorus couldn’t break through the crowd to Caesar and someone else gave Caesar the roll he held as he went into the meeting. Suetonius merely says that Caesar got the roll from someone, but he claims that Caesar held it with other rolls in his left hand—the ill-omened hand for the Romans, as we can tell from the Latin word for left: sinister.
Who was Artemidorus to capture Caesar’s attention? His hometown, Cnidus, was an important port city in southwestern Anatolia (Turkey). His father, Theopompus, w
as called “a friend of the deified Caesar, a man of great influence with him.” Since 54 B.C. if not earlier, Theopompus had served Caesar as a diplomat. The dictator returned the favor by granting Cnidus “freedom”—that is, a certain amount of autonomy within Rome’s empire—and immunity from direct taxation. Like his father, Artemidorus was a local bigwig. Plutarch calls him a teacher of Greek philosophy, which underestimates his importance but might explain how Artemidorus knew Brutus—through a common interest in philosophy. That is the only clue we have as to how Artemidorus was aware of the conspiracy.
Caesar finally arrived at the Portico of Pompey. No sooner did he get out of his litter than Popilius Laenas hurried up to speak to him. The same man had scared Brutus and Cassius before. Now, as he spoke at length to Caesar, the conspirators exchanged mutual looks of concern. Cassius and others supposedly reached for their weapons under their togas when Brutus smiled at them. He couldn’t hear Popilius’s words but he could see his face. He observed with relief that he was asking Caesar for some favor and not denouncing the plot. So Brutus signaled that all was well. Popilius is said to have kissed Caesar’s hand as he said goodbye. Once again, we have only questionable sources for this melodramatic story.
Before Caesar went into the room, he had to wait for the magistrates to conduct the customary sacrifices and the soothsayers to take the auspices. Once again, they were unfavorable. The sources agree that the priests sacrificed several victims. The soothsayers examined the entrails but they did not like what they saw. The sources now offer two very different versions of what happened next. Nicolaus paints a dark picture. The soothsayers saw an avenging spirit in the omens; Caesar got angry and turned to face west, which was an even worse omen since the west symbolized sunset and death. Then Caesar’s friends talked him into putting off the meeting—at a guess, without entering the Senate House at all.
What changed Caesar’s mind? Nicolaus lays the blame squarely on the shoulders of Decimus, in whose mouth is put the memorable phrase, “make your own manly excellence an auspicious omen.” He says Decimus scorned the soothsayers and so changed Caesar’s mind. In the end, Decimus took Caesar by the hand and led him into the Senate House with Caesar following in silence. If this story is true, then Decimus becomes an even more pivotal player: even more cold-blooded and two-faced. Caesar is almost passive.
But no other source tells the tale, so perhaps it was a piece of venom invented after the fact. Nicolaus’s patron, Augustus, loathed Decimus. The other sources leave out Decimus and emphasize Caesar’s hubris instead. They have him insistent in the face of the bad omens. This sounds like the Caesar of old and, in fact, Appian says that Caesar reminded the soothsayers of a similar bad omen back on the campaign when he crushed Pompey’s armies in Hispania.
The capsarii had long since entered the Senate House. They were slaves and it was their job to carry the capsae, containers holding scrolls that served as books in Rome. Each capsa was made of beechwood and stood about a foot high. Each could carry six scrolls. But today, some of the capsae held something additional and unexpected. If the slaves noticed that they were carrying extra weight, they said nothing. Slaves knew better than to challenge their masters.
The other senators had already entered the chamber. There was nothing left except for Caesar to go in. It was around noon.
8
MURDER
BEFORE CAESAR ENTERED THE SENATE House around noon on the Ides of March, he laughed. He thereby dismissed the soothsayers and their bad omens. So Appian says. It’s a gesture worthy of a poet, and as good historians we must be highly skeptical and yet, Caesar wrote his own rules. It might even be true.
THE ROOM
When it comes to the details of Pompey’s Senate House, educated guesses are the best we can do. All that survives is part of two or possibly three foundation walls and perhaps some of the marble decorations. It’s clear that the Senate House was the biggest building in the Portico. A person entered the Senate House from the Portico by walking up from the garden. The interior was no doubt lined with marble and might conceivably have been decorated with large columns, perhaps representing two different decorative styles.
As Caesar entered the Senate House, he could have seen hanging inside it a famous painting by a Greek master of a warrior holding a round shield. But was the warrior in the process of going up or going down? That, said the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, was open to question.
If Caesar turned around before going in the door, he would have seen beyond the double row of plane trees—their branches still bare on the cusp of spring—Pompey’s Temple of Venus the Victorious perched atop the Theater of Pompey at the far side of the complex.
As he stepped inside, Caesar would have entered a place that was large but not imposing. We imagine that Caesar was killed in a grand space. The impression comes from the great neoclassical paintings, above all from Jean-Léon Gérôme’s iconic work The Death of Caesar (1867). In fact, the Senate House of Pompey was relatively small. It was somewhat smaller than Caesar’s Senate House, whose interior covered about 5,000 square feet. It was probably not as tall as Caesar’s Senate House either, whose roof rose to a height of almost 105 feet.
Senatorial rules of procedure dictated the layout of the space inside Pompey’s Senate House. Senators voted by division—that is, they crossed the center aisle to walk over to the side of the room where the senator proposing a motion was sitting. For that reason, the seats in a Roman Senate House were arranged along two sides of the building, with a broad central aisle. Perhaps the seats in Pompey’s Senate House were arranged on three broad steps as in Caesar’s Senate House.
At the far end of the room stood a tribunal—a low, raised platform for the presiding officer, who sat on his chair of office. Usually the consul presided, but, in Caesar’s case, it was the dictator. In Pompey’s Senate House, Pompey’s statue probably stood on the tribunal, perhaps in the middle near the rear wall of the building like the famous Statue of Victory in Caesar’s Senate House. No details of Pompey’s statue survive. We don’t know if it was marble or terra cotta or whether Pompey was garbed traditionally in a toga or depicted in the nude like some Greek potentate, which was the latest fashion for Roman generals and politicians.
There was probably room for about three hundred senators in Pompey’s Senate House. They would have needed the space for the meeting of March 15, 44 B.C. Attendance was often sparse at Senate meetings, but a quorum was required for certain items of business, such as consultation with priests, which was on the agenda that day. Hence, a quorum was needed, and the sources state that it was achieved. Caesar had raised the number of senators from about 600 to 900. The quorum, however, probably remained at 200, as it had been before, given the difficulties from time to time in making the quorum.
So there were at least 200 senators present on March 15, 44 B.C. Add the ten People’s Tribunes and, say, a dozen secretaries, slaves, and other assistants, and the result is a minimum of about 225 men and perhaps 300 in the Curia of Pompey on the Ides of March.
But at least two senators at the Portico of Pompey that day were not in the room. The conspirators were worried about Antony. Thanks to Brutus they wouldn’t kill him but they insisted on neutralizing him. They worried that Antony might lead friends in the Senate House to come to Caesar’s defense. If enough of them joined in, they could have overwhelmed the conspirators through force of numbers, especially if any of them carried hidden daggers. Antony was physically strong and a splendid leader. He could have played a key role, maybe even turned the tide. It was essential to keep him out.
So the plotters assigned Trebonius the role of chatting up Antony and keeping him outside the Senate. Not only was Trebonius a seasoned officer himself, but he went back a long way with Antony. The two of them had commanded adjoining sectors at the siege of Alesia in 52 B.C. in Gaul. And in 45 B.C., Trebonius had tried to recruit Antony against Caesar. By the time they met under the Portico outside Pompey’s Senate House that morning, the
two old comrades had years’ worth of war stories to chew over.
As Caesar entered the room, the senators rose. The dictator looked splendid. Caesar was wearing the special toga of a triumphant general, dyed a reddish purple and embroidered with gold. The Senate had given him the right to wear it and he put it on for formal occasions.
Among the senators there that day who were not in on the plot were Favonius, the friend of Cato whom Brutus rejected for the conspiracy; Dolabella, the consul-to-be if Caesar had his way; Cinna, the praetor; and Cicero. The great orator planned to attack Antony for trying to deny Dolabella his consulship.
Caesar took his seat on the tribunal—on his golden chair, which was now back in place. The conspirators were armed and ready.
THE WEAPONS
In Gérôme’s Death of Caesar, the assassins walk out of the Senate House, waving their triumphant swords. It’s a dramatic image and the swords look great, but the assassins—with one possible exception—used daggers, not swords. The sources are clear about this. Some if not all of the conspirators wore a dagger under their toga. Daggers had been hidden in the capsae, the storage baskets the slaves carried. Besides, swords were the wrong weapon for the occasion. They were too big for close-quarters action and they were too big to hide.
But the Romans never tired of thinking of their soldiers and their heroes in the arena as swordsmen—literally, gladiators, from the Latin gladius for “sword.” Daggers get much less attention in Roman literature and art, yet Roman soldiers made extensive use of daggers. To be precise, they used the military dagger or pugio (plural, pugiones). Pugio is related to the Latin words pugnus, “fist” and pugil, “boxer”; the English word pugilist comes from the latter. The pugio or military dagger was a standard part of a legionary’s equipment by the first century A.D. and probably already so by the second half of the first century B.C. But the Romans’ reticence about daggers is not surprising. Swords offer distance from the target but knifework is close range. It is a bloody, gruesome business. Few feel comfortable talking about it, and fewer still doing it.
Death of Caesar : The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination (9781451668827) Page 14
