The villa was so crammed with troops that there was scarcely a chamber where the great man himself could dine.  I suppose there were two thousand men.  I was really anxious what might happen next day.  But Barba Cassius came to my help, and gave me a guard.  The camp was pitched in the park; the house was strictly guarded.  On the 19th he was closeted with Philippus till one o’clock in the afternoon.  No one was admitted.  He was going over accounts with Balbus, I fancy.  After this he took a stroll on the shore.  Then came the bath.  He heard the epigram to Mamurra, (a most scurrilous epigram by Catullus), and betrayed no annoyance.  He dressed for dinner and sat down.  As he was under a course of medicine, he ate and drank without apprehension and in the pleasantest humor.  The entertainment was sumptuous and elaborate; and not only this, but well cooked and seasoned with good talk.  The great man’s attendants also were most abundantly entertained in three other rooms.  The inferior freedmen and the slaves had nothing to complain of; the superior kind had an even elegant reception.  Not to say more, I showed myself a genial host.  Still he was not the kind of guest to whom we would say, ’My very dear sir, you will come again, I hope, when you are this way next time.’  There was nothing of importance in our conversation, but much literary talk.  What do you want to know?  He was gratified and seemed pleased to be with me.  He told me that he should be one day at Baiae, and another at Puteoli.”

Within three months this remarkable career came to a sudden and violent end.  There were some enemies whom all Caesar’s clemency and kindness had not conciliated.  Some hated him for private reasons of their own, some had a genuine belief that if he could be put out of the way, Rome might yet again be a free country.  The people too, who had been perfectly ready to submit to the reality of power, grew suspicious of some of its outward signs.  The name of King had been hateful at Rome since the last bearer of it, Tarquin the Proud, had been driven out nearly seven centuries before.  There were now injudicious friends, or, it may be, judicious enemies, who were anxious that Caesar should assume it.  The prophecy was quoted from the books of the Sibyl, that Rome might conquer the Parthians if she put herself under the command of a king; otherwise she must fail.  On the strength of this Caesar was saluted by the title of King as he was returning one day from Alba to the Capitol.  The populace made their indignation manifest, and he replied, “I am no king, only Caesar;” but it was observed that he passed on with a gloomy air.  He bore himself haughtily in the Senate, not rising to acknowledge the compliments paid to him.  At the festival of the Lupercalia, as he sat looking on at the sports in a gilded chair and clad in a triumphal robe, Antony offered him a crown wreathed with bay leaves.  Some applause followed; it was not general, however, but manifestly got up for the occasion.  Caesar