after the manner of reports, that the so-called fifteen priests were declaring that the Sibyl had said the Parthians should never be captured in any other way than by a king, and the people were consequently preparing to propose that this title be granted to Caesar.  The conspirators believed this to be true, and because a vote would be demanded of the officials, among whom were Brutus and Cassius, owing to the seriousness of the measure, they felt that they neither dared to oppose it nor could submit to keep silent, and so hurried on the consummation of the plot before any business connected with the measure could come up.

[-16-] It had been decided by them to make the attempt in the senate, for they thought that there Caesar would least expect to be harmed in any way and would so fall an easier victim, while they would possess opportunity coupled with security by having their swords instead of documents brought in boxes, and that the rest being unarmed would be unable to make any resistance.  In case any one should be so rash, they expected at least that the gladiators, many of whom they had previously stationed in Pompey’s Theatre under the pretext that they were to practice with arms, would assist them.  These were to lie in wait there in a certain room of the peristyle.  The conspirators, when the appointed day had come, gathered in the senate-hall at dawn and called for Caesar. [-17-] As for him, he was warned of the plot in advance by the soothsayers, and was warned also by dreams.  The night before he was slain his wife had a vision of their house fallen in ruins, her husband wounded by some men and taking refuge in her bosom, and of Caesar being raised aloft upon the clouds and grasping the hand of Jupiter.  Moreover omens not few nor indistinct crossed his path.  The arms of Mars, at that time deposited at his house by virtue of his position as high priest and by ancestral custom, made a great noise at night, and the doors of the chamber where he slept opened of their own accord.  The sacrifices which he offered because of these occurrences indicated nothing favorable 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