and shows.  A funeral pile was erected here for the burning of the body There was to be a funeral discourse pronounced, and Marc Antony had been designated to perform this duty.  The body had been placed in a gilded bed, under a magnificent canopy in the form of a temple, before the rostra where the funeral discourse was to be pronounced.  The bed was covered with scarlet and cloth of gold and at the head of it was laid the robe in which Caesar had been slain.  It was stained with blood, and pierced with the holes that the swords and daggers of the conspirators had made.

[Sidenote:  Marc Antony’s oration.] [Sidenote:  The funeral pile.]

Marc Antony, instead of pronouncing a formal panegyric upon his deceased friend, ordered a crier to read the decrees of the Senate, in which all honors, human and divine, had been ascribed to Caesar.  He then added a few words of his own.  The bed was then taken up, with the body upon it, and borne out into the Forum, preparatory to conveying it to the pile which had been prepared for it upon the Field of Mars, A question, however, here arose among the multitude assembled in respect to the proper place for burning the body.  The people seemed inclined to select the most honorable place which could be found within the limits of the city.  Some proposed a beautiful temple on the Capitoline Hill.  Others wished to take it to the senate-house, where he had been slain.  The Senate, and those who were less inclined to pay extravagant honors to the departed hero, were in favor of some more retired spot, under pretense that the buildings of the city would be endangered by the fire.  This discussion was fast becoming a dispute, when it was suddenly ended by two men, with swords at their sides and knees in their hands, forcing their way through the crowd with lighted torches, and setting the bed and its canopy on fire where it lay.

[Illustration:  BURNING OF CAESAR’S BODY.]

[Sidenote:  The body burned in the Forum.]

This settled the question, and the whole company were soon in the wildest excitement with the work of building up a funeral pile upon the spot.  At first they brought fagots and threw upon the fire, then benches from the neighboring courts and porticoes, and then any thing combustible which came to hand.  The honor done to the memory of a deceased hero was, in some sense, in proportion to the greatness of his funeral pile, and all the populace on this occasion began soon to seize every thing they could find, appropriate and unappropriate, provided that it would increase the flame.  The soldiers threw on their lances and spears, the musicians their instruments, and others stripped off the cloths and trappings from the furniture of the procession, and heaped them upon the burning pile.

[Sidenote:  The conflagration.]