rderers at once filled every breast.

Two or three days after this followed the funeral. The body was to be
burned, and the ashes deposited in the Campus Martius, near the tomb of
his daughter Julia. But it was first brought into the Forum upon a bier
inlaid with ivory and covered with rich tapestries, which was carried by
men high in rank and office. There Antony, as consul, rose to pronounce
the funeral oration. He ran through the chief acts of Caesar's life,
recited his will, and then spoke of the death which had rewarded him. To
make this more vividly present to the excitable Italians he displayed a
waxen image marked with the three-and-twenty wounds, and produced the
very robe which he had worn, all rent and blood-stained. Soul-stirring
dirges added to the solemn horror of the scene. But to us the memorable
speech which Shakespeare puts into Antony's mouth will give the
liveliest notion of the art used and the impression produced. That
impression was instantaneous. The senator friends of the liberators who
had attended the ceremony looked on in moody silence. Soon the menacing
gestures of the crowd made them look to their safety. They fled; and the
multitude insisted on burning the body, as they had burned the body of
Clodius, in the sacred precincts of the Forum. Some of the veterans who
attended the funeral set fire to the bier; benches and firewood heaped
round it soon made a sufficient pile.

From the blazing pyre the crowd rushed, eager for vengeance, to the
houses of the conspirators. But all had fled betimes. One poor wretch
fell a victim to the fury of the mob--Helvius Cinna, a poet who had
devoted his art to the service of the dictator. He was mistaken for L.
Cornelius Cinna the praetor, and was torn to pieces before the mistake
could be explained.[79]

[Footnote 79: This story is, however, rendered somewhat doubtful by the
manner in which Cinna is mentioned in Vergil's ninth _Eclogue_, which
was certainly written in or after the year B.C. 40.]

Antony was now the real master of Rome. The treasure which he had seized
gave him the means of purchasing good will, and of securing the
attachment of the veterans stationed in various parts of Italy. He did
not, however, proceed in the course which, from the tone of his funeral
harangue, might have been expected. He renewed friendly intercourse with
Brutus and Cassius, who were encouraged to visit Rome once at least, if
not oftener, after that day; and Dec. Bru