strike before he set out. Caius Cassius, a
tall, lean man, who had lately been made praetor, was the chief
conspirator, and with him was Marcus Junius Brutus, a descendant of him
who overthrew the Tarquins, and husband to Porcia, Cato's daughter, also
another Brutus named Decimus, hitherto a friend of Caesar, and newly
appointed to the government of Cisalpine Gaul. These and twelve more
agreed to murder Caesar on the 15th of March, called in the Roman
calendar the Ides of March, when he went to the senate-house.

Rumors got abroad and warnings came to him about that special day. His
wife dreamt so terrible a dream that he had almost yielded to her
entreaties to stay at home, when Decimus Brutus came in and laughed him
out of it. As he was carried to the senate-house in a litter, a man gave
him a writing and begged him to read it instantly; but he kept it rolled
in his hand without looking. As he went up the steps he said to the
augur Spurius, "The Ides of March are come." "Yes, Caesar," was the
answer; "but they are not passed." A few steps further on, one of the
conspirators met him with a petition, and the others joined in it,
clinging to his robe and his neck, till another caught his toga and
pulled it over his arms, and then the first blow was struck with a
dagger. Caesar struggled at first as all fifteen tried to strike at him,
but, when he saw the hand uplifted of his treacherous friend Decimus,
he exclaimed, "_Et tu Brute_"--"Thou, too, Brutus"--drew his toga over
his head, and fell dead at the foot of the statue of Pompeius.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE.

44--33.

The murderers of Caesar had expected the Romans to hail them as
deliverers from a tyrant, but his great friend Marcus Antonius, who was,
together with him, consul for that year, made a speech over his body as
it lay on a couch of gold and ivory in the Forum ready for the funeral.
Antonius read aloud Caesar's will, and showed what benefits he had
intended for his fellow-citizens, and how he loved them, so that love
for him and wrath against his enemies filled every hearer. The army, of
course, were furious against the murderers; the Senate was terrified,
and granted everything Antonius chose to ask, provided he would protect
them, whereupon he begged for a guard for himself that he might be
saved from Caesar's fate, and this they gave him; while the fifteen
murderers fled secretly, mostly to Cisalpine Gaul, of w