avorable and
the birds with which he practiced divination forbade him to leave the
house. After his assassination, finally, some recalled a weighty
incident in connection with his gilded chair,--that the servant, as
Caesar was slow in coming, carried it out of the senate, thinking that he
would have no further need of it.

[-18-] Caesar for this reason was so long in coming that the conspirators
feared there might be a postponement (a rumor circulated, indeed, that
he would remain at home that day), and their plot thus fall through and
they themselves be detected. Therefore they sent Decimus Brutus, as one
appearing to be a devoted friend, to secure his attendance. This man
made light of Caesar's scruples and by adding that the senate was
extremely anxious to behold him, persuaded him to go forward. At this an
image of his which he kept set up in the vestibule fell of its own
accord and was shattered to pieces. He ought then to have changed his
purpose, but instead he paid no attention to this and would not listen
to some one who was giving him information of the plot. He received from
him a little roll in which all the preparations made for the attack had
been accurately inscribed, but did not read it, thinking that it was
some other not very pressing matter. In brief, he was so confident that
to the soothsayer who had warned him to beware of that day he said
jokingly: "Where are your prophecies? Don't you see that the day over
which you were all of a tremble is here and I am alive?" And the other,
they say, answered only this: "Yes, it is here, but not yet gone."

[-19-] Now when he finally reached the senate Trebonius delayed Antony
somewhere at a distance outside. They had planned to kill both him and
Lepidus. But fearing that they might be ill spoken of as a result of the
number of those destroyed, and that it might be said that they had slain
Caesar to gain power and not to free the city, as they pretended, they
did not wish Antony even to be present at his slaughter. As for Lepidus,
he had set out on a campaign and was in the suburbs. Antony was held by
Trebonius in conversation. Meanwhile the rest in a body surrounded Caesar
(he was as easy of access and ready to be addressed as any one could
have wished), and some talked among themselves, while others presented
petitions to him, so that suspicion might be as far from his mind as
possible. When the right moment came, one of them approached him as if
to express