Y.R. B. C. 71c Cæsar on his mother's side), resumed his artful design and 44 spoke as follows: 144. "It is not fitting, citizens, that the funeral oration of so great a man should be pronounced by me alone, but rather by his whole country. The decrees which all of us, in equal admiration of his merit, voted to him while he was alive the Senate and the people acting together — I will read, so that I may voice your sentiments rather than my own." Then he began to read with a severe and gloomy countenance, pronouncing each sentence distinctly and dwelling especially on those decrees which declared Cæsar to be superhuman, sacred, and inviolable, and which named him the father of his country, or the benefactor, or the chieftain without a peer. With each decree Antony turned his face and his hand toward Cæsar's corpse, illustrating his discourse by his action, and at each appellation he added some brief remark full of grief and indignation; as, for example, where the decree spoke of Cæsar as the father of his country he added that this was a testimonial of his clemency; and again, where he was made sacred and inviolable and everybody else was to be held unharmed who should find refuge with him, "Nobody," said Antony, "who found refuge with him was harmed, but he, whom you declared sacred and inviolable, was killed, although he did not extort these honors from you as a tyrant, and did not even ask for them. Most servile are we if we give such honors to the unworthy who do not ask for them. But you, faithful citizens, vindicate us from this charge of servility by paying such honors as you now pay to the dead." 145. Antony resumed his reading and recited the oaths by which all were pledged to guard Cæsar and Cæsar's body with all their strength, and all were devoted to perdition who should not avenge him against any conspiracy. Here, lifting up his voice and extending his hand toward the Capitol, he exclaimed, "Jupiter, guardian of this city, and ye other gods, I stand ready to avenge him as I have sworn and vowed, but since those who are of equal rank with me have considered the decree of amnesty beneficial, I pray that it may prove so." A commotion arose among the senators in consequence of this exclamation, whic seemed to have special reference to them. So Anton B.C. Y.R. 710 quieted them again and recanted, saying, "It seems to me, 44 fellow-citizens, that this deed is not the work of human beings, but of some evil spirit. It becomes us to consider the present rather than the past, since the greatest danger approaches, if it is not already here, lest we be drawn into our former civil commotions and lose whatever remains of noble birth in the city. Let us then conduct this sacred one to the abode of the blest, chanting our accustomed hymn of lamentation for him." 146. Having spoken thus, he gathered up his garments like one inspired, girded himself so that he might have the free use of his hands, took his position in front of the bier as in a play, bending down to it and rising again, and sang first as to a celestial deity. In order to testify to Cæsar's godlike origin, he raised his hands to heaven and with rapid speech recited his wars, his battles, his victories, the nations he had brought under his country's sway, and the spoils he had sent home, extolling each exploit as miraculous, and all the time exclaiming, "Thou alone hast come forth unvanquished from all the battles thou hast fought. Thou alone hast avenged thy country of the outrage put upon it 300 years ago, bringing to their knees those savage tribes, the only ones that ever broke into and burned the city of Rome." Many other things Antony said in a kind of divine frenzy, and then lowered his voice from its high pitch to a sorrowful tone, and mourned and wept as for a friend who had suffered unjustly, and prayed that his own life might be given in exchange for Cæsar's. Carried away by extreme passion he uncovered the body of Cæsar, lifted his robe on the point of a spear and shook it aloft, pierced with dagger-thrusts and red with the dictator's blood. Whereupon the people, like a chorus, mourned. with him in the most lugubrious manner, and from sorrow became again filled with anger. After the discourse other lamentations were chanted with funeral music according to the national custom, by the people in chorus, to the dead; and his deeds and his sad fate were again recited. Somewhere from the midst of these lamentations Cæsar himself was supposed to speak, recounting the benefits he had conferred on his enemies by name, and speaking of the murderers themselves, exclaiming, as it were, "Oh that I should Y.R. B.C. 710 have spared these men to slay me!" The people could en- 44 dure it no longer. It seemed to them monstrous that all the murderers who, with the single exception of Decimus Brutus, had been made prisoners while belonging to the faction of Pompey, and who, instead of being punished, had been advanced by Cæsar to the magistracies of Rome and to the command of provinces and armies, should have conspired against him; and that Decimus should have been deemed by him worthy of adoption as his son. 147. While they were in this temper and were already near to violence, somebody raised above the bier an image of Cæsar himself made of wax.2 The body itself, as it lay on its back on the couch, could not be seen. The image was turned round and round by a mechanical device, showing the twenty-three wounds in all parts of the body and on the face, which gave him a shocking appearance. The people could no longer bear the pitiful sight presented to them. They groaned, and, girding themselves, they burned the senate-chamber where Cæsar was slain, and ran hither and thither searching for the murderers, who had fled some time previously. They were so mad with rage and grief that like wild beasts they tore in pieces the tribune Cinna on account of his similarity of name to the prætor Cinna who had made a speech against Cæsar, not waiting to hear any explanation about the similarity of name, so that no part of him was ever found for burial. They carried fire to the houses of the other murderers, but the domestics valiantly fought them off and the neighbors besought them to desist. So the people abstained from the use of fire, but they threatened to come back with arms on the following day.* 1 A quotation from the Latin poet Pacuvius. The original is given in Suetonius: "Men' servasse, ut essent qui me perderent!" 2 Waxen images of the deceased were common in the funerals of distinguished persons in Rome. Suetonius (Jul. 85) and Valerius Maximus (ix. 9) agreed with Appian that this victim of error was the tribune Cinna, whose surname was Helvius. Plutarch says that he was a poet, or rather a man of a poetical turn. Merivale (Hist. of the Romans under the Empire, ii. 84) considers this report of Antony's funeral oration "no rhetorical fiction, but a fair representation both in manner and substance of the actual harangue.” Cicero bore testimony to the effectiveness of Antony's discourse when Y.R. 710 B. C. 148. The murderers fled from the city secretly. The 44 people returned to Cæsar's bier and bore it as a consecrated thing to the Capitol in order to bury it in the temple and place it among the gods. Being prevented from doing so by the priests, they placed it again in the forum where in the olden time stood the palace of the kings of Rome. There they collected together sticks of wood and benches, of which there were many in the forum, and anything else they could find of that sort, for a funeral pile, throwing on it the adornments of the procession, some of which were very costly. Some of them cast their own crowns upon it and many military gifts. Then they set fire to it, and the entire people remained by the funeral pile throughout the night. There an altar was first erected,' but now there stands the temple of Cæsar himself, as he was deemed worthy of divine honors; for Octavius, his son by adoption, who took the name of Cæsar, and, following in the footsteps of the latter in political matters, greatly strengthened the government founded by Cæsar, and which remains to this he spoke of it in the second Philippic (36) as "that beautiful encomium, that mournful dirge, that appeal to passion," adding: "thou, thou I say, didst light the fire that half consumed his body and burned down the house of L. Bellienus. Thou didst precipitate upon our homes that mob of abandoned men, mostly slaves, whom we drove back by force and violence." 1 Suetonius gives a similar account of Cæsar's funeral, and adds: "They afterward placed in the forum a solid column of Numidian marble nearly twenty feet high and inscribed on it the words 'To the Father of his Country,' at which they continued for a long time to offer sacrifice, to take vows, and to adjust controversies in which the oath was taken in the name of Cæsar." (Jul. 85.) This column was demolished by the consul Dolabella, who flung over the Tarpeian rock the free persons who participated in these ceremonies, crucified the slaves, and caused the ground to be repaved. This must have taken place shortly before the first of May, as Cicero, then at Puteoli, wrote a letter to Atticus on that day in which he mentioned it as news just received by him. "Oh, my admirable Dolabella," he says, "I now call him mine, for believe me, I had some little doubt of him before. The affair presents a great outlook. Over the rock! On the cross! The column demolished, the place itself under contract to be paved. Is it not heroic? He seems to me to have put an end to that appearance of regret for Cæsar which was hitherto spreading from day to day, and becoming chronic, so that I feared lest it should prove dangerous to our tyrantkillers." (Ad Att. xiv. 15.) Y.R. B. C. 710 day, decreed divine honors to his father. From this ex- 44 ample the Romans now pay like honors to each emperor at his death if he has not reigned in a tyrannical manner or made himself odious, although at first they could not bear to call them kings while living. CHAPTER XXI Comparison of Cæsar with Alexander 149. So died Gaius Cæsar on the so-called Ides of March, which correspond nearly with the middle of the Greek month Anthesterion, which day the soothsayer predicted that he should not survive. Cæsar jokingly said to him early in the morning, "Well, the Ides have come," and the latter, nothing daunted, answered, "But they are not past." Despising such prophecies, uttered with so much confidence by the soothsayer, and other prodigies that I have previously mentioned, Cæsar went on his way and was killed, being fifty-six years of age. He was a man most fortunate in all things, superhuman, of grand designs, and fit to be compared with Alexander. Both were men of the greatest ambition, both were most skilled in the art of war, most rapid in executing their decisions, most reckless of danger, least sparing of themselves, and relying as much on audacity and luck as on military skill. Alexander made a long journey through the desert in the hot season to visit the oracle of Ammon and crossed the Gulf of Pamphylia against a head sea successfully. A god restrained the 1 Mommsen maintains, contrary to the testimony of Suetonius, Plutarch, and Appian, that Cæsar was fifty-eight instead of fifty-six years old at the time of his death. He reasons that Cæsar must have been born as early as the year 652 in order to hold the offices of ædile, prætor, and consul at the time when he was first elected to them, supposing that he was elected to each as early as he could be legally. Although the age limit was relaxed in special cases, we find no mention of exception in favor of Cæsar, and it is hardly possible that three exceptions could have been made in favor of so illustrious a man without any mention of it occurring in ancient writings. There are other facts which tend to corroborate Mommsen's view, which is now generally accepted by scholars. |