[Sidenote:  Marcus Brutus.]

Brutus was the praetor of the city.  The praetorship of the city was a very high municipal office.  The conspirators wished to have Brutus join them partly on account of his station as a magistrate, as if they supposed that by having the highest public magistrate of the city for their leader in the deed, the destruction of their victim would appear less like a murder, and would be invested, instead, in some respects, with the sanctions and with the dignity of an official execution.

[Sidenote:  Character of Brutus.] [Sidenote:  His firmness and courage.]

Then, again, they wished for the moral support which would be afforded them in their desperate enterprise by Brutus’s extraordinary personal character.  He was younger than Cassius, but he was grave, thoughtful, taciturn, calm—­a man of inflexible integrity, of the coolest determination, and, at the same time, of the most undaunted courage.  The conspirators distrusted one another, for the resolution of impetuous men is very apt to fail when the emergency arrives which puts it to the test; but as for Brutus, they knew very well that whatever he undertook he would most certainly do.

[Sidenote:  The ancient Brutus.] [Sidenote:  His expulsion of the kings.]

There was a great deal even in his name.  It was a Brutus that five centuries before had been the main instrument of the expulsion of the Roman kings.  He had secretly meditated the design, and, the better to conceal it, had feigned idiocy, as the story was, that he might not be watched or suspected until the favorable hour for executing his design should arrive.  He therefore ceased to speak, and seemed to lose his reason; he wandered about the city silent and gloomy, like a brute.  His name had been Lucius Junius before.  They added Brutus now, to designate his condition.  When at last, however, the crisis arrived which he judged favorable for the expulsion of the kings, he suddenly reassumed his speech and his reason, called the astonished Romans to arms, and triumphantly accomplished his design.  His name and memory had been cherished ever since that day as of a great deliverer.

[Sidenote:  The history of Brutus.]

They, therefore, who looked upon Caesar as another king, naturally turned their thoughts to the Brutus of their day, hoping to find in him another deliverer.  Brutus found, from time to time, inscriptions on his ancient namesake’s statue expressing the wish that he were now alive.  He also found each morning, as he came to the tribunal where he was accustomed to sit in the discharge of the duties of his office, brief writings, which had been left there during the night, in which few words expressed deep meaning, such as “Awake, Brutus, to thy duty;” and “Art thou indeed a Brutus?”

[Sidenote:  His obligations to Caesar.] [Sidenote:  Caesar’s friendship for Brutus.]