erously
assembled, and waited his coming, he was prevailed upon to go, and
accordingly (51) set forward about the fifth hour. In his way, some
person having thrust into his hand a paper, warning him against the plot,
he mixed it with some other documents which he held in his left hand,
intending to read it at leisure. Victim after victim was slain, without
any favourable appearances in the entrails; but still, disregarding all
omens, he entered the senate-house, laughing at Spurinna as a false
prophet, because the ides of March were come, without any mischief having
befallen him. To which the soothsayer replied, "They are come, indeed,
but not past."

LXXXII. When he had taken his seat, the conspirators stood round him,
under colour of paying their compliments; and immediately Tullius Cimber,
who had engaged to commence the assault, advancing nearer than the rest,
as if he had some favour to request, Caesar made signs that he should
defer his petition to some other time. Tullius immediately seized him by
the toga, on both shoulders; at which Caesar crying out, "Violence is
meant!" one of the Cassii wounded him a little below the throat. Caesar
seized him by the arm, and ran it through with his style [95]; and
endeavouring to rush forward was stopped by another wound. Finding
himself now attacked on all hands with naked poniards, he wrapped the
toga [96] about his head, and at the same moment drew the skirt round his
legs with his left hand, that he might fall more decently with the lower
part of his body covered. He was stabbed with three and twenty wounds,
uttering a groan only, but no cry, at the first wound; although some
authors relate, that when Marcus Brutus fell upon him, he exclaimed,
"What! art thou, too, one of them? Thou, my son!" [97] The whole
assembly instantly (52) dispersing, he lay for some time after he
expired, until three of his slaves laid the body on a litter, and carried
it home, with one arm hanging down over the side. Among so many wounds,
there was none that was mortal, in the opinion of the surgeon Antistius,
except the second, which he received in the breast. The conspirators
meant to drag his body into the Tiber as soon as they had killed him; to
confiscate his estate, and rescind all his enactments; but they were
deterred by fear of Mark Antony, and Lepidus, Caesar's master of the
horse, and abandoned their intentions.

LXXXIII. At the instance of Lucius Piso, his father-in-la