The Ides of March Read online

  LX The Broadsides of Conspiracy.

  [The following broadside or chain letter was circulated throughout the Peninsula by the thousands during the first weeks of September 45. This first one appeared in Rome September 1.]

  The Council of Twenty to every Roman worthy of his ancestors: Prepare to shake off the Tyranny under which our Republic groans. Our fathers died to acquire those liberties of which One Man now is robbing us. A Council of Twenty has been formed; it has taken oaths before the altars; it has received assurance from the Gods that its course is just and will succeed. Every Roman who receives this bulletin is enjoined to make five copies of it. With all secrecy, see that these copies reach the hands of five men, Romans likely to be of this opinion or to be so persuaded; they in turn are enjoined to make further copies.

  Other bulletins will follow. By degrees their measures will become more definite.

  Death to Caesar. For our country and our Gods. Silence and Resolution.

  The Council of Twenty

  LX-A Asinius Pollio to Caesar.

  [This is the conclusion of Pollio’s report to Caesar from Naples on September 18, given as our Document XIV.]

  I forward to my General the thirteen copies of the broadside which were sent to me during the last six days—three at my lodgings in Posilipo, ten here. My General will notice that five of them appear to have been written by the same hand which has, however, attempted to disguise itself. Quintus Cotta received 16; Lucius Mela, io.

  A corresponding movement has been set in motion in these parts for the common people, that is for those who cannot read and write. Pebbles and shells are being circulated on which are written: XX/C/M/ [for Death.] My orderly has collected a number of these. He assures me that they cause more indignation than enthusiasm and provoked the circulation of other stones marked XX/M. Both inscriptions can be found scrawled on the pavements, walls, etc.

  I do not venture to submit suggestions to my General as to measures calculated to counteract this activity. I give, however, the results of a discussion on the matter held in our offices by Cotta, Mela, Annius Turbatius and myself.

  1. The movement started in Rome. Its first appearance here was fifteen days later.

  2. Three slaves were apprehended while delivering these letters. They were subjected to torture. Two declared that they had found the broadsides, addressed to us, in public places (an old woman found one on the tray of figs she was selling) and then delivered them in the hope of attaining a reward. The whole circulation depends on the custom of giving fees to the bringers of messages. The third slave said that the letter, addressed to me, had been given him for delivery with a fee by a veiled woman on the waterfront.

  3. The initiators of this activity do not appear to be the Clodius Pulcher group, as lacking the astuteness and patience, nor the Cassius-Casca malcontents, who would think only in terms of a small group. The desire to enlist wide adherence, the relative absence of incitation to violence, together with the claims to religious approval suggest a studious and perhaps elderly group. We do not exclude the possibility of a Cicero or Cato arriving at this type of measure.

  4. It is difficult to see how a chain letter movement could transfer itself from negative to positive action. We are agreed, however, that the movement could achieve results detrimental to good government and await whatever instructions may be issued to counteract it.

  LX-B Second Broadside.

  [This broadside achieved even wider circulation throughout the entire Peninsula. Copies first appeared in Rome on September 17.]

  The Council of Twenty to every Roman worthy of his ancestors: second bulletin. Every Roman who receives this bulletin is enjoined to make five copies of it and with all secrecy to see that they reach the hands of the five men to whom they forwarded the preceding one.

  Herewith is our directive:

  Beginning on the sixteenth of this month September, every Roman as far as possible will see that himself and his household will make their purchases in the city, present themselves before the Courts, and engage in all activities of public life on the even days of the month only.

  In addition, those in Rome will render themselves ostentatiously assiduous in acclaiming the appearances of the Dictator and in accompanying his train at all public appearances. In conversation they will declare themselves enthusiastically in favor of all projects which he entertains, particularly the transference of the capital to the East, a military campaign to India, and a restoration of the Kingdom.

  Our next bulletin will contain still more definite measures.

  Death to Caesar. For our country and our Gods. Silence and Resolution.

  The Council of Twenty

  LX-C The Commonplace Book of Cornelius Nepos.

  [This entry was written after Caesar’s Death.]

  Throughout the Fall of 45, the principal subjects of conversation were so-called chain letters and the visit of Cleopatra. In fact, the initiation of the chain letters was ascribed by many to the Queen of Egypt, as they were thought to have a devious oriental cast, such as would not have occurred to a Roman. The injunction to perform one’s public business on the even days of the month was watched by the public with breathless interest. At first it was noticed that a preponderance of activity was taking place on the uneven days. This gradually relaxed and the reverse became apparent.

  LXI Caesar’s Journal—Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus.

  [Enclosing a copy of the first broadsides of the conspiracy.]

  [September 8–20.]

  979. Someone has thought up a new way to prepare the people for an overturn of the State and for my death by assassination.

  I enclose a copy of one of these public notices. They are circulating throughout Italy by the thousands.

  Scarcely a day has passed during the last year when I have not received new detailed evidence of one or other of these conspiratorial movements. I am brought lists of names and accounts of their reunions. I intercept letters. The majority of such groups are unbelievably maladept. Their membership generally includes one who is eager to sell his information for money or favor.

  Each new conspiracy awakens in me a great interest—I was going to say “a happy interest,” soon disappointed.

  In the first place, I have little doubt that, soon or late, I shall die by the hand of a tyrannicide. I have not chosen to encumber my life with the constant protection of armed guards nor my mind with the practice of vigilant anxiety. I could wish that it were the dagger of a patriot that strikes me down, but I am equally exposed to those of the madman and the envious. In the meantime, by incarceration, exile, admonition, and exposure, I have arrested such plots as have come to my notice.

  As I say, I have followed them with interest. It is always possible that among those who plan my death I shall find the man who is right in the matters where I am wrong. There are many better men in the world than I am, but I have not yet seen the man who could be a better ruler of our State. If he exists I think he would now be planning my death. Rome as I have shaped it, as I have had to shape it, is not a comfortable place for a man whose genius is the genius for ruling at the top: if I were not Caesar now, I would be Caesar’s assassin. (That thought had not occurred to me until this moment, but I see it is true; it is one of the many discoveries that come to me from the practice of writing letters to you.)

  But there is an even profounder reason why I should wish to know something about the man who slays me, even though that knowledge is mine only during the last moment of my life. This brings me back to that inquiry which, as you know, occupies me increasingly: Is there a Mind in or above the universe which is watching us?

  I am often called “Destiny’s favorite.” If the Gods exist they placed me where I am. They placed every man where he is, but the man who fills my seat is among the more conspicuous of Their appointments—as, in his way, the poet Catullus is; as you are; as Pompey was. The man who slays me would perhaps afford us some light upon Their nature—Their selected instrument. B
ut even as I write this my pen falls from my hand. I shall probably die by the dagger of a madman. The Gods hide themselves even in their choice of instrument. We are all at the mercy of a falling tile. We are left with the picture of Jupiter going about dislodging tiles which fall upon a lemonade vendor or upon Caesar. The jury that condemned Socrates to death were not august instruments; nor were the eagle and the tortoise that slew Aeschylus. It is probable that my last moment of consciousness will be filled with the last of many confirmations that the affairs of the world proceed with that senselessness with which a stream carries leaves upon its tide.

  There is another element in the eagerness with which I inquire into each new conspiracy. Would it not be a wonderful discovery to find that I am hated to the death by a man whose hatred is disinterested? It is rare enough to find a disinterested love; so far among those that hate me I have uncovered nothing beyond the promptings of envy, of self-advancing ambition, or of self-consoling destructiveness. It may be that in that last moment I may be permitted to look into the face of a man whose only thought is Rome and whose only thought is that I am the enemy of Rome.

  980–982. [Already given in Document VIII.]

  983. [On the weather.]

  984. [On the increasing divergence between written and spoken Latin and the decay of case endings and the subjunctive in popular speech.)

  985. [Again, on primogeniture and the inheritance of property.)

  986. [Accompanying the second broadside.)

  I enclose the second public notice of the Committee of Twenty. I have not yet learned who are the initiators of this series. It smacks of some new kind of malcontent.

  Since childhood I have been attentive to the attitude which men bear to those who have been placed over them and who are in a position to restrict their movements. What deference and loyalty masking what contempt and hatred! The deference and loyalty proceeds from a man’s gratitude that his superior relieves him of responsibility and from the terrors of weighty decision; the contempt and hatred from his resentment against the man who limits his freedom. During a part of every day and night even the mildest man is, however obscurely, the murderer of those who can command his obedience. In my youth I was often filled with consternation to discover that, waking or sleeping, I was prone to dream the death of my father, my tutors, and my governors toward whom I often bore a real, if intermittent, love. It was, therefore, with a kind of pleasure that I used to listen to the songs which my soldiers sang about their campfires; for every four songs that elevated me to the Gods there was a fifth that diminished me to idiocy, senile vice, and decay. These last they sang loudest and the woods rang with glee at my death. I found in myself no anger, but only a little laughter and a few accelerated steps toward old age when I discovered that even Marc Antony and Dolabella had for a time joined with a group which was plotting my death; for a time the master they loved had merged with all the masters they had hated. It is only dogs that never bite their masters.

  This combination of impulses is a part of the movement of the world and is not for us to approve or disapprove, for like all the fundamental impulses it produces both good and ill. And from it I draw confirmation of my conviction that the central movement of the mind is the desire for unrestricted liberty and that this movement is invariably accompanied by its opposite, a dread of the consequences of liberty.

  LXII Notes by Catullus, found by Caesar’s Secret Police.

  [These reached the Dictator on September 27.]

  [These rough drafts were on the reverse of leaves containing fragments of poetry or on slates. In both cases they had been negligently erased.]

  . . . . A Committee of Ten has been formed. . . .

  . . . . This Committee of Twenty, having taken oaths before the altars of the Gods . . .

  . . . . beginning on the twelfth of next month, September . . .

  . . . on the uneven days of the month will refrain from all . . .

  . . . . assiduous attendance at the public appearance of the Dictator . . . acclamations of profuse flattery . . .

  LXII-A Caesar to Catullus.

  [September 27.]

  It has been brought to my attention that certain friends of yours have initiated a series of documents designed to overturn the government of this Republic.

  I regard these measures as childish and mistaken rather than criminal. Your friends will have observed the means I have already taken to render them harmless and ridiculous. Pressure is being brought upon me, however, to inflict public punishment on their perpetrators.

  I find it difficult to believe that you had any hand in so inept an excursion into public affairs; but there is evidence to show that you were at least aware of it.

  For the sake of my long friendship with your father I am willing to deal leniently with these mistaken young men. I place their fortunes in your hands. If you are able to inform me that their part in the circulation of these letters will cease, I shall regard the matter as closed.

  I do not wish to hear any defense of their action. An affirmative word from you will be sufficient. That word you can give me day after tomorrow when I shall meet you, I am told, at the dinner being given by C. Publius Clodius and the Lady Clodia Pulcher.

  LXII-B Catullus to Caesar.

  [September 28.]

  The letters of which you speak were planned by me alone and the first copies of them were sent out by me alone. There is no Committee of Twenty.

  The means I have employed to remind Romans of their shrinking liberties may well seem inept to a Dictator. His powers are unlimited, as is his jealousy of any liberty other than his own. His powers extend to ransacking the private papers of the citizens.

  The composition of these letters by me has already ceased, since their efficacy is at an end.

  LXII-C Third Broadside of Conspiracy, written by Julius Caesar.

  [By “their efficacy is at an end” Catullus meant that the country was now so flooded by letters written in imitation of his own that the movement was soon dissipated in the bewilderment and flagging interest of the citizens. This Third Broadside which appeared a few days after the Second received the widest circulation of all of them.]

  The Council of Twenty to every Roman worthy of his ancestors, this third bulletin.

  The Council of Twenty now feels that these letters have received a sufficiently wide circulation. Hundreds of thousands have been aroused to a patriotic hatred of the oppressor and to an eager expectation of his death.

  In the meantime you are instructed to prepare the people for this happy event. Hence, lose no opportunity to ridicule the so-called achievements of the tyrant.

  Belittle his conquests. Remember that the territory was conquered by the Generals working under him to whom he denied all merit. He is called Unconquered, but it is well known that he suffered many costly defeats which were concealed from the Roman people. Spread about many stories of his personal cowardice before the enemy.

  Remember the Civil Wars; remember Pompey. Remind the people of the brilliance of his circuses.

  The distribution of lands: enlarge upon the injustice done to the large landholders. Intimate that the veterans received only stony or marshy land.

  The Council of Twenty has drawn up detailed plans for the control of public order and finance. The senile edicts of the Dictator will be revoked at once: the sumptuary laws, the reform in the calendar, the new currency, the ten-head system of distributing grain, the senseless expenditure of public funds on irrigation and the control of waterways. Prosperity and plenty will reign.

  Death to Caesar. For our country and our Gods. Silence and resolution.

  The Council of Twenty

  LXIII Caius Cassius at Palestrina to his mother-in-law, Servilia, in Rome.

  [November 3.]

  [Reading between the lines, the following letter discusses opportunities for assassinating Caesar and means of inducing Brutus to join the conspiracy.]

  The company which is seeking to do honor to our friend is increa
sing daily. There are many whose names we do not know. Our efforts to learn those of the admirers last month [Query. Those who attacked Caesar on September 27?] have been unavailing.

  It is difficult to find an occasion when an honor of this sort may be conferred, for it must both come as a surprise to the recipient and at the same time make as strong and agreeable an impression as possible upon the bystanders. Plans were well advanced to effect this at the conclusion of the Queen of Egypt’s reception. Our guest of honor mysteriously disappeared from the assembly, however, and it was thought that he had received some intimation of the ovation that was to be accorded him.

  I am increasingly of the opinion that this gratifying event should be delayed until at least one more of our friend’s closest associates be included among those conferring this honor. We are deeply indebted to you for your efforts toward this end. The person I have in mind has avoided my company and has even sent excuses that he is unable to see me in his home.

  We understand all the weight, honored Madam, of your arguments urging haste. We also are alarmed at the possibility that others may forestall us in this laudable enterprise, and with results that could only be disastrous. I hope to call upon you when next I come to the City.

  Long life and health to the Dictator.

  LXIV Porcia, wife of M. Junius Brutus, to her aunt and mother-in-law, Servilia.

  [November 26.]

  It is with respect but firmness, Madam, that I must ask you to cease to pay visits to this house. My husband has not concealed from me the reluctance he has to receive you and the relief that he feels at your departure. You will not have failed to remark that he never calls upon you in your home; you may infer from that that he receives you here only from a sense of filial duty. His agitated behavior and his troubled sleep following your visits have led me to take this action. I might well have taken it earlier, for I feel it unsuitable that I, as his wife, should be sent out of the room at each of your interviews.