like a wild beast among the hunters.  They had agreed that every one should take a part in the murder, and Brutus, friend as he was, could not hold back.  The rest, some say, he struggled with, throwing himself hither and thither, and crying aloud; but as soon as he saw Brutus with a drawn sword in his hand, he wrapped his head in his toga and ceased to resist, falling, whether by chance or by compulsion from the assassins, at the pedestal of Pompey’s statue.  He is said to have received three-and-twenty wounds.  Many of his assailants struck each other as they aimed repeated blows at his body.”  His funeral was a remarkable proof of his popularity.  The pit in which the body was to be burned was erected in the Field of Mars.  In the Forum was erected a gilded model of the temple of Mother Venus. (Caesar claimed descent through Aeneas from this goddess.) Within this shrine was a couch of ivory, with coverlets of gold and purple, and at its head a trophy with the robe which he had worn when he was assassinated.  High officers of state, past and present, carried the couch into the Forum.  Some had the idea of burning it in the chapel of Jupiter in the Capitol, some in Pompey’s Hall (where he was killed).  Of a sudden two men, wearing swords at their side, and each carrying two javelins, came forward and set light to it with waxen torches which they held in their hands.  The crowd of bystanders hastily piled up a heap of dry brush-wood, throwing on it the hustings, the benches, and any thing that had been brought as a present.  The flute players and actors threw off the triumphal robes in which they were clad, rent them, and threw them upon the flames, and the veterans added the decorations with which they had come to attend the funeral, while mothers threw in the ornaments of their children.

The doors of the building in which the murder was perpetrated were blocked up so that it never could be entered again.  The day (the 15th of March) was declared to be accursed.  No public business was ever to be done upon it.

These proceedings probably represented the popular feeling about the deed, for Caesar, in addition to the genius which every one must have recognized, had just the qualities which make men popular.  He had no scruples, but then he had no meannesses.  He incurred enormous debts with but a faint chance of paying them—­no chance, we may say, except by the robbery of others.  He laid his hands upon what he wanted, taking for instance three thousand pounds weight of gold from the treasury of the Capitol and leaving gilded brass in its stead; and he plundered the unhappy Gauls without remorse.  But then he was as free in giving as he was unscrupulous in taking.  He had the personal courage, too, which is one of the most attractive of all qualities.  Again and again in battle he turned defeat into victory.  He would lay hold of the fugitives as they ran, seize them by the throat, and get them by main force face to face with the foe.  Crossing the Hellespont