Are You Asleep, Brutus? — Caesar III: The Ides of March
Honors pile up like an avalanche. In February 44 BC the Senate makes Caesar dictator for life. He receives a golden chair, a statue among the kings, temples, his own priest and a month named after him. Suetonius writes that because of this many concluded that he had abused his power and was justly slain.
And then come the gestures. When the senators come to him in a body with their decrees, he receives them seated, in front of the temple of Venus Genetrix. The sources disagree on why. Plutarch writes that Caesar pleaded illness, though in fact he wanted to rise, but Balbus held him back with the words: remember that you are Caesar. Dio gives a version with an upset stomach. The Senate sees only one thing: the dictator does not rise before the Senate.
Then comes the festival of the Lupercalia. Antony, who is consul, runs through the Forum as a priest of the festival, leaps onto the Rostra and offers Caesar, seated on his golden chair, a diadem wreathed in laurel. There is applause, weak and prearranged, Plutarch writes. Caesar pushes the diadem aside, and then the whole crowd applauds. Antony offers it again, and few applaud. Caesar refuses a second time and the applause swells again.
At the same time someone places on Caesar’s statue a laurel wreath with a white ribbon, the mark of kings. Two tribunes remove it and have those who shouted “king” arrested. The crowd calls them Brutuses. Caesar strips them of office. And to the crowd that hails him as king he answers: “I am Caesar, and no king.”
Marcus Brutus faces a harder dilemma than the others. He descends, as the Romans believe, from that first Brutus who drove out the kings. He fought against Caesar at Pharsalus, but Caesar spared his life and showered him with honors: a praetorship now, a consulship in three years. People whisper that he is Caesar’s son, because Caesar loved his mother Servilia. Appian says only that some believed it. It is a rumor that cannot be checked.
Caesar trusts him. When someone warns him about Brutus, he touches his own body and says: Brutus will wait for this withered skin. He fears others. Of Cassius he says: I don’t like him, he is too pale. And of Antony and Dolabella: I am not afraid of these fat, long-haired men, but of the pale and lean ones.
Night after night someone leaves messages on the chair of the praetor Brutus and beneath the statue of his ancestor. Are you asleep, Brutus? You are not Brutus! If only that first Brutus were alive! Cassius, who has his own grievances against Caesar, presses him. According to Appian he asks Brutus: which of the nobility will not follow you? Do you think those messages were left by artisans? From other praetors they demand games. From you, freedom.
At first the conspirators act in groups of two or three. Then they join forces and number more than sixty. They are led by Brutus, Cassius and Decimus Brutus, Caesar’s friend, who is named in his will as an heir in the second degree. Some would like to kill Antony as well. Brutus objects: they are killing a king, not his friends.
They weigh various places: the bridge during the elections, the Sacred Way, the entrance to the theater. In the end, time decides. In a few days Caesar sets out for the war with the Parthians, and then soldiers will surround him. Besides, a rumor is going around that the Sibylline Books say only a king can defeat the Parthians, and that the Senate is to name Caesar king outside Italy. The conspirators want neither to vote for this nor to watch it happen. They choose the session of the Senate on the Ides of March, March 15, in the hall by the Theatre of Pompey.
Suetonius lists a whole series of omens foretelling the death. The horses that Caesar dedicated to the river Rubicon refuse to eat and weep. The soothsayer Spurinna warns that the danger will not pass before the Ides of March. Ancient authors loved such portents and gave them to almost every great death. Scholars read them as a literary convention, not reportage.
On the eve of the Ides, Caesar dines at Lepidus’s house and signs letters while reclining at the table. Someone asks which death is best. Before anyone can answer, Caesar says: the unexpected one.
In the night the windows and doors of the bedroom fly open at once. Calpurnia groans in her sleep and utters indistinct words. She dreamed, Plutarch writes, that she was holding her murdered husband in her arms. According to another version, which Plutarch cites from Livy, she dreamed that the pediment of their house had collapsed. In the morning she begs Caesar to stay. The soothsayers, after many sacrifices, say the signs are bad. Caesar decides to send Antony to dismiss the session.