[Footnote 616:  Caesar made Caius Octavius, his sister’s grandson, his first heres.  He left a legacy to every Roman citizen, the amount of which is variously stated.  He also left to the public his gardens on the Tiber. (Suetonius, Caesar, c. 83); Dion Cassius (44. c. 35).

Shakspere has made a noble scene of the speech of Antonius over Caesar’s body on the opening of the will: 

Ant.  Here is the will, and under Caesar’s seal; To every Roman citizen he gives, To every several man, seventy-five drachmas:  Moreover he hath left you all his walks, His private arbours and new planted orchards, On this side Tiber; he hath left them you And to your heirs for ever; common pleasures, To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves.  Here was a Caesar.  When comes such another?

Julius Caesar, Act iii.  Sc. 2.

Antonius, according to Roman fashion, made a funeral speech over the body of Caesar (Life of Antonius, c. 14; of Brutus, c. 20).  Dion Cassius (44. c. 36-49) has put a long speech in the mouth of Antonius, mere empty declamation.  Appianus (Civil Wars, ii. 144-6) gives one which is well enough suited to the character of Antonius. (Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta, ed.  Mayer, p. 455.) It is probable that the speech of Antonius was preserved, and was used as materials by the historians.]

[Footnote 617:  This man, who unluckily bore the name of Cinna, was C. Helvius Cinna, a tribune of the plebs, a poet, and a friend of Caesar.  (Dion Cassius, 44. c. 50, and the notes of Reimarus.) The conspirator Cinna was the son of L. Cornelius Cinna, who was a partisan of Marius, and was murdered in his fourth consulship (Life of Pompeius, c. 5).  Caesar’s wife Cornelia, the mother of his only child Julia, was the sister of the conspirator Cinna, as Plutarch names him.  But probably he was not one of the conspirators, though he approved of the deed after it was done. (Drumann, Geschichte Roms, Cinnae, p. 591, notes, and also as to Helvius Cinna.)]

[Footnote 618:  And also in the Life of Antonius.]

[Footnote 619:  Suetonius (Caesar, c. 89) observes that scarce any of his assasins survived him three years; and they all came to a violent end.]

[Footnote 620:  This town was on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont.  Compare the Life of Brutus, c. 36. 48, and Appianus (Civil Wars, iv. 134).  Dion Cassius does not mention the ghost story.]

[Footnote 621:  It has been already remarked that Niebuhr is of opinion that the introduction to the Life of Caesar is lost.  This opinion will not appear well founded to those who have got a right conception of the dramatic form in which Plutarch has cast most of his Lives, and more particularly this of Caesar.  He begins by representing him as resisting the tyrant Sulla when others yielded, and then making his way through a long series of events to the supreme power, which he had no sooner attained than he lost it.  But his fortune survived him, and the faithless men, his murderers, most of whom owed to him their lives or their fortunes, were pursued by the avenging daemon till they were all hunted down.