Death of Caesar : The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination (9781451668827)

by Strauss, Barry

  People remembered how Antony sent troops into the Forum in 47 B.C. and killed eight hundred supporters of debt relief. The people’s champion on that occasion was Dolabella, and now he had joined the liberators on the Capitoline. Dolabella was also now consul like Antony. In short, the liberators had a chance of swinging the urban plebs to their side. They planned to make the most of the opportunity.

  As the afternoon of the Ides proceeded without further bloodshed, a group of people began trickling up to the Capitoline. They included both senators and ordinary Romans, probably most of them friends or clients of the conspirators. One of them was Cicero.

  Cicero wrote a very short letter to Minucius Basilus, one of the assassins. “Congratulations!” said Cicero, who added that he was rejoicing, that he loved his correspondent and wanted to be kept up to date. But what was he offering congratulations about? That’s unclear. Some see it as acknowledgment of the assassination. If his later comments are any indication, Cicero was ecstatic at the murder of Caesar. To Decimus he called it the greatest deed in history. “Has anything greater ever been done, by holy Jupiter,” he asked in a speech in 43 B.C., “not only in this city but in the whole world, anything more glorious and more valued in the eternal memory of men?” When Brutus addressed his visitors, he got enough of a response in this vein to make him decide to call a Public Meeting and give a formal speech to the people.

  Along with Cassius and other conspirators, Brutus now came down from the Capitoline to the Forum. Nicolaus of Damascus says that gladiators and slaves protected them, but Nicolaus scoffed at Brutus’s “supposed reasonableness,” and so maybe Nicolaus invented this detail to take Brutus down a peg. The people would not respond well to such a sight, and with the Capitoline easy to retreat to, the conspirators were probably willing to leave their security behind. Plutarch, who saw Brutus as a hero, says only that a group of eminent men flanked Brutus. In any case, Brutus reached the Speaker’s Platform near the foot of the Capitoline Hill. Just a month earlier, Caesar had sat on the same platform when Antony climbed up and twice put a diadem on his head, only to have Caesar remove it.

  Brutus did not look his best since his hand was still injured from the wound he received in Caesar’s murder. Yet, as he prepared to speak, something beautiful happened—silence. On a tumultuous day before a mixed crowd of ordinary Romans who were ready to shout him down, Brutus inspired orderly behavior. As he came forward, the audience received his words with great calm.

  Brutus was a very good speaker if not an exciting one. He was frank, simple, and generous, and he had what the Romans called gravitas, that is, seriousness or substance. Cicero, writing privately, found his speeches tedious and lax and other critics called them dull and cold. But those qualities might have proved reassuring on this occasion.

  We cannot reconstruct Brutus’s speech. Cassius and others spoke as well, and, as usual, the sources offer only the gist of what the speakers “should” have said. So, the speakers criticized Caesar and praised the rule of the people. They said that they had not killed Caesar for the sake of power but only to be free, independent, and governed rightly. They referred to their ancestors who had expelled the kings and said that Caesar was even worse than the kings because he took power by violence. Appian, who writes scathingly about the conspirators, accuses them of boastfulness and self-congratulation. He says they especially thanked Decimus for providing gladiators at a key moment. He also says they advocated the recall of the tribunes deposed by Caesar. And he says they asked for something incendiary—the recall from Spain of Sextus Pompey, the surviving son of Pompey, who was still fighting Caesar’s lieutenants. Nicolaus is probably referring to Cassius when he has a speaker say that lengthy planning went into the assassination because of the presence of Caesar’s troops and great commanders. That speaker also warns that greater evils might erupt.

  Why then did the people treat Brutus so kindly? The sources disagree markedly. Cicero wrote to his friend Atticus that the people were “burning with enthusiasm” for Brutus and Cassius in the days following the assassination. Nicolaus says that many people came to join the men on the Capitoline on March 15 and 16, when Caesar’s friends were still terrified. Appian maintains just the opposite—the people hated the assassins but they were intimidated into silence. Appian claims that Brutus and Cassius had hired a claque of foreigners, freedmen, and slaves to infiltrate the assembly and silence the real Roman citizens. But the Romans commonly tossed around such charges and we don’t have to take them seriously. Plutarch says that the crowd was silent out of respect for Brutus and pity for Caesar. They admired Brutus’s words but disapproved of the assassination. Nicolaus says that the people were confused and anxious about what the next revolutionary deed might be. That, and their respect for Brutus and his famous family, explains their silence.

  Consider another possibility. Perhaps the people recognized that Brutus was that rarest of all things—an honest man. Perhaps they reasoned thus: If Brutus wanted power, why didn’t he have troops at the city’s gates? If he cared only for himself, why didn’t he stick with his benefactor, Caesar? Perhaps the Romans understood that Brutus really meant what he later said—that his goal was liberty and peace.

  Then came a disturbing note for the conspirators. Another senator, the praetor Lucius Cornelius Cinna, rose to speak. He was the brother of the late Cornelia, Caesar’s first wife, and uncle of the late and much-loved Julia, Caesar’s daughter. Cinna’s father was a famous Populist and supporter of Marius. Caesar had made Cinna praetor for 44 B.C., an act of kindness to a man who had suffered persecution because of Sulla. Cinna accepted the honor but now he theatrically took off his toga of office and scorned it as the gift of a tyrant. Although not a conspirator, he condemned Caesar and praised his killers as tyrant slayers who deserved public honors. The crowd reacted with so much anger that the conspirators had to return to the Capitoline. Plutarch says this showed how much the people objected to the assassination, but their real objection was to Cinna’s disgraceful behavior. Caesar was not only Cinna’s benefactor but also his late sister’s husband, which created a kinship relationship by marriage—violating that relationship as Cinna had done was not something the Romans took lightly. In short, Cinna was the wrong salesman for the assassination.

  It was probably that same afternoon that Dolabella got a more favorable reaction to the conspiracy when he too called a Public Meeting and delivered a formal speech. Although Antony had not yet given up his objections to the appointment, Dolabella put on his toga of office as consul and addressed the Roman people in the Forum. He turned on his former champion, Caesar, and praised the assassins. Some sources say that Dolabella even proposed making the Ides of March the birthday of the state. The supporters of the conspirators took heart at the sight of a consul on their side.

  The bottom line is that the Roman people had not yet made up their mind. They watched and waited and gathered information about the various players in the great drama. Public opinion was still up for grabs.

  In addition to speaking to the Roman people, the conspirators decided to open negotiations with Antony. He was the highest-ranking person in Rome and he might want to make peace, especially because they had spared his life. They sent a delegation of ex-consuls to talk to him. Just what the terms were, we do not know. Cicero, who reports the news, says that they wanted him to tell Antony to defend the Republic, which sounds like an invitation to dump Caesar’s friends and join them. Cicero wasn’t having any of it. Reporting that he didn’t trust Antony, he refused to join the other ex-consuls who went on the mission.

  On the contrary, Cicero wanted the liberators, as he called them, to do an end run around Antony. On that “first day on the Capitoline,” as he wrote later, he declared that Brutus and Cassius should call the Senate to a meeting on the Capitoline Hill. As praetors, they had the right to do so, and the Capitoline did indeed house Senate meetings from time to time in the Temple of Jupiter. “By the immortal gods,” he wrote, what couldn’t have
been accomplished then, when “all the good men, even those who were only moderately good, were joyful, while the criminals were powerless?”

  A supporter of Antony later wrote that after Caesar’s assassination, the Republic seemed to be in the hands of “the two Brutuses [that is, Brutus and Decimus] and Cassius” and “the whole state moved towards them.” That was an exaggeration, but perhaps it captures the excited mood of the assassins. If Appian is right, most of the senators sympathized with the assassins. In that case, what of the great number of senators appointed by Caesar? Appian says that even some of them found his actions repugnant or they were cynical turncoats like Cinna. Some senators gave the assassins the honorable name of tyrant slayer or tyrannicide. Others wanted to vote them public honors. Alive, Caesar had injured the conspirators’ dignitas. Now that they had killed him many of their peers approved of their deed.

  But that was probably not clear yet on the afternoon of March 15. Earlier that day the conspirators saw how few senators stood by them. Why expect more to show up now? No one would be impressed by the rulings of a rump Senate. Or so they might have thought. Besides, it might have been getting late and Senate meetings were illegal after dark. Better to keep the pressure on Antony by rallying public support to their cause.

  MARCH 15: CAESAR GOES HOME

  Meanwhile, back at the Senate House of Pompey, Caesar’s corpse lay unattended. Caesar’s friends left it there. His supporters fled from the Portico of Pompey but not before some of them made other arrangements. The story goes that one repentant Caesar supporter even paused before leaving the Senate House to spit out angry words over the body, “Enough service to a tyrant.”

  Only three slaves remained behind to tend to Caesar’s body, which they put into a litter. These three ordinary slaves carried Caesar’s litter home, a sad contrast to the grand escort that had brought him to the Portico of Pompey that morning. Since it took four slaves to carry a litter, the three bearers walked haltingly and with many stops. The curtains of the litter were raised and people could see Caesar’s hands hanging down and his wounded face. According to Nicolaus, they cried at the sight.

  The slaves’ route took them past the foot of the Capitoline and through the Forum. Mourning, groans, and lamentation followed them on both sides from the streets, doorways, and rooftops. When they finally neared Caesar’s house, an even greater shrieking greeted them. A crowd of women and slaves emerged accompanying Calpurnia. Remembering her warning that morning, she called Caesar’s name and said that destiny had treated him even worse than she had expected.

  Suetonius says that the conspirators planned to drag Caesar’s body to the Tiber after killing him as well as confiscate his property and revoke his decrees, but that they held back out of fear of Antony and Lepidus. That’s not credible. Maybe that is what Cicero had in mind for the Senate meeting he wanted to hold on the Capitoline Hill that day. Neither a moderate like Brutus nor the most hard-bitten cynic would have stood for it. The assassins needed Caesar’s corpse as a bargaining chip.

  Sometime before the day ended, a storm hit Rome. There was tremendous thunder with violent and heavy rain. To some, it seemed like the heavens were proclaiming Pompey’s revenge over his rival.

  As the sun set on the Ides of March—around 6:15 P.M. on March 15 in Rome—nothing was clear. Antony and Lepidus promised a response the next day to the embassy of ex-consuls. Everyone wondered what would happen next. Both sides had weapons and the outcome was uncertain. It was hard to think about the public interest when people feared for their own safety.

  MARCH 16: A GATHERING AT ANTONY’S HOUSE

  The fate of Rome was decided in hundreds of gatherings during the days after Caesar’s murder. They ranged from nighttime consultations in private homes to sessions of the Senate that began at dawn, from huddled councils in the occupied buildings of the Capitoline to a formal reading of the dictator’s will in a posh town house, and from groups of armed men surging through the streets with shouted threats to public assemblies in the Roman Forum.

  The story of the days following the Ides of March is a paradox. On the one hand, they are part of probably the best-documented year in Roman history thanks to Cicero’s many surviving letters. On the other hand, Cicero says little about the March days and the other sources often disagree. The overall picture is clear but the details require a certain amount of guesswork.

  The men who seized and defended the Capitoline Hill feared an attack from Caesar’s soldiers. The first step came in the afternoon of March 15. Lepidus moved his soldiers from the Tiber Island to the Field of Mars, the site of the assassination. Then, in the night, he moved them again to the Roman Forum, on the east side of the Capitoline Hill. They probably marched along the road that led eastward to the city walls then they passed through the Carmental Gate and skirted the Capitoline Hill along the street known as the Vicus Iugarius, which led to the Forum. You could not legally bring an army within the walls of Rome, but the Civil War had seen many laws broken and the war had ended only months before. Pompey and even Cicero, that great republican, had each in his day summoned soldiers into Rome to put down unrest.

  The next day, March 16, was a day of speeches, saber rattling, and plotting. At dawn in the Roman Forum, Lepidus called a Public Meeting and delivered a speech against the assassins. Antony was in attendance. He wore armor, as was his right as consul. Lepidus probably wore military garb as well. The audience is likely to have included Caesar’s veterans and ordinary Romans as well as the troops that Lepidus commanded. Lepidus was ready to take his troops and assault the Capitoline Hill in order to avenge Caesar. The attack would surely succeed and kill at least some of the conspirators, perhaps including his two brothers-in-law, Brutus and Cassius. But Lepidus waited for a meeting later that day.

  It was a gathering of Caesar’s close supporters in Mark Antony’s house. This was a grand structure, complete with two colonnaded courts and a bath. It covered about 24,000 square feet, about the size of a modern mansion and much larger than the average luxury house in Rome in its era. Formerly the town house of Pompey the Great, it was acquired by Antony when he disposed of Pompey’s properties for Caesar. It was located in an elegant and fashionable residential district called Carinae, or the Keels, because certain buildings there looked like ships’ keels.

  The meeting lasted until evening. Lepidus and Caesar’s faithful lieutenant Aulus Hirtius were key players but other Caesar supporters were there, too. Lepidus argued for a military attack on the assassins in the name of avenging Caesar. Someone else agreed, calling it both unholy and unsafe to leave Caesar’s death unavenged—unholy presumably because these men had sworn to defend Caesar with their lives and unsafe because once the assassins gained power, they would exchange their present inactivity for something dangerous. Hirtius disagreed; he argued for negotiations and friendship. Killing the assassins would start a vendetta by their powerful friends and relatives and call down certain condemnation by the Senate. Then, too, if they started a war, they would have to face Decimus, who was about to become governor of Italian Gaul, a position to which Caesar had appointed him. This strategic province housed two legions capable of reaching Rome in less than two weeks. If they looked like winners, more troops would follow.

  Other provinces were also matters of concern. Gaius Matius feared an uprising in Belgian Gaul at the news of Caesar’s death; not until mid-April did the good news come to Rome that the tribes there had promised obedience. Supporters of Pompey controlled Syria and much of Hispania. Sextus Pompey had warships and, he would soon claim, seven legions. No match for the thirty-five legions that Caesar had gathered for war with Parthia, but to whom would those legions be loyal?

  Antony’s was the most important voice both because he was consul and because he was a man with a record of getting things done. He favored negotiation. Antony had no troops of his own and probably was not eager to see Lepidus get the credit for any military success. Besides, Antony perhaps learned his lesson from the backlash af
ter he unleashed the army in the Forum in 47 B.C. He may have concluded that it was better to hold the soldiers in the background as an intimidating presence than to use them for bloodshed and recriminations.

  In the short term, therefore, Brutus was right and Cassius was wrong—letting Antony live on March 15 was the smart move. In the long term, however, Antony would prove to be a deadly enemy to the liberators, a far shrewder operator than they had expected. Even then, however, he was not their biggest problem.

  The conferees at Antony’s house decided to negotiate. They would merely postpone vengeance, hoping to be able to wean Decimus’s army away from him. To the ex-consuls sent from the Capitoline Hill, the conferees replied with stern words about having to drive out the few guilty parties who had killed Caesar or else suffer a divine curse. But they proposed a Senate meeting in which the two sides could work out a common course. The men on the Capitoline Hill were happy to agree on a session for the next day, March 17.

  What followed was a long night in Rome, lit with fires as a sign of activity. Antony stationed guards around the city for safety’s sake. The assassins sent men to one senator’s house after another, trying to drum up support. At the same time, leaders of Caesar’s veterans prowled the streets, trying to intimidate the friends of the assassins and issuing threats about the consequences if anyone interfered with their land grants. Meanwhile, people began to notice just how few assassins and their friends there were. Those who first cheered the death of the tyrant began to have second thoughts.

  But the most important event of the night took place in the Public Mansion. Antony got control both of Caesar’s private fortune and his state papers, either because Calpurnia thought they would be safer with him than in her house or because he ordered it as consul. According to Plutarch, Caesar’s fortune amounted to 4,000 talents—that is, a huge sum, on the order of 250,000 pounds of silver. In politics, money and knowledge are both power, and Antony now had plenty of each.