Forget not, in your speed, Antonius,
    To touch Calphurnia; for our elders say,
    The barren, touched in this holy chase,
    Shake off their sterile curse.

Act i.  Sc. 2.]

[Footnote 593:  Dion Cassius (44. c. 9) speaks of the honours conferred on Caesar and his supposed ambitious designs.]

[Footnote 594:  The Latin word “brutus” means “senseless,” “stupid.”  The Cumaei, the inhabitants of Cume in AEolis, were reckoned very stupid.  Strabo (p. 622) gives two reasons why this opinion obtained; one of which was, that it was not till three hundred years after the foundation of the city that they thought of making some profit by the customs duties, though they had a port.]

[Footnote 595:  Compare the Life of Brutus, c. 1, Dion Cassius (44. c. 12), and Drumann, Geschichte Roms, Junii, p. 2.  This Brutus was not a descendant of him who expelled the last king.]

[Footnote 596:  Plutarch means the office of Praetor Urbanus, the highest of the offices called praetorships.  There was originally only one praetor, the Praetor Urbanus.  There were now sixteen.  The Praetor Urbanus was the chief person engaged in the administration of justice in Rome; and hence the allusion to the “tribunal” ([Greek:  bema]) where the Praetor sat when he did business.]

[Footnote 597:  I have translated this according to the reading of Sintenis.  Compare the Life of Brutus, c. 8.  Caesar was very lean.  As to the writings compare Dion Cassius (44, c. 12).]

[Footnote 598:  See the Life of Brutus, c. 89.]

[Footnote 599: 

    Caesar.  Let me have men about me that are fat;
    Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights: 
    Yond’ Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
    He thinks too much:  such men are dangerous. 
Shakspere, Julius Caesar, Act i.  Sc. 2.]

[Footnote 600:  The passage was in the Historical Memoirs.  See the Life of Sulla, c. 26; and the Life of Lucullus, c. 28.  Notes.]

[Footnote 601:  The Ides of March were the 15th, on which day Caesar was murdered.]

[Footnote 602:  Compare Dion Cassius (44. c. 17).  Caesar also had a dream.]

[Footnote 603:  I have kept Plutarch’s word, which is Greek.  Suetonius (Caesar, c. 81) expresses it by the Latin word “fastigium,” and also Florus (iv. 2), Cicero (Philipp. ii. 43), and Julius Obsequens (c. 127), who enumerates the omens mentioned by Plutarch.  The passage of Livius must have been in the 116th Book, which is lost.  See the Epitome.  The word here probably means a pediment.  But it also signifies an ornament, such as a statue placed on the summit of a pediment.]