e, unless
moderation prevails, to be harmonious. If Marcus Brutus and Gaius
Cassius had stopped to think this over they would never have killed the
city's head and protector nor have made themselves the cause of
countless ills both to their own persons and to all the rest of mankind
then existing.

[-3-] It happened as follows, and his death was due to the cause I shall
presently describe. He had not aroused dislike without any definite
justification, except in so far as it was the senators themselves who
had by the novelty and excess of their honors sent his mind soaring; and
then, after filling him with conceit, they found fault with his
prerogatives and spread injurious reports to the effect that he was glad
to accept them and behaved more haughtily as a result of them. It is
true that sometimes Caesar erred by accepting some of the honors voted
him and believing that he really deserved them, yet most blameworthy are
those who, after beginning to reward him as he deserved, led him on and
made him liable to censure by the measures that they voted. He neither
dared to thrust them all aside, for fear of being thought contemptuous,
nor could he be safe when he accepted them. Excess in honors and praises
renders conceited even the most modest, especially if such rewards
appear to have been given with sincerity. [-4-] The privileges that were
granted him (in addition to all those mentioned) were of the following
number and kinds. They will be stated all together, even if they were
not all moved or ratified at one time. First, then, they voted that he
should always appear even in the city itself wearing the triumphal garb
and should sit in his chair of state everywhere except at festivals. At
that time he got the right to be seen on the tribune's benches and in
company with those who were successively tribunes. And they gave him the
right to offer the so-called _spolia opima_ at the temple of Jupiter
Feretrius, as if he had slain some hostile general with his own hand,
and to have lictors that always carried laurel, and after the Feriae
Latinae to ride from Albanum to the city mounted on a charger. In
addition to these remarkable privileges they named him father of his
country, stamped his image on the coinage, voted to celebrate his
birthday by public sacrifice, ordered that there be some statue of him
in the cities and all the temples of Rome, and they set on the rostra
two, one representing him as the savior of the citiz