Gradually more and more people were drawn into the plot against Caesar and by the end at least sixty were involved. Their motives varied. While masquerading as principled tyrannicides or, as they called themselves, Freedom Fighters (liberatores), some in fact resented the deaths of family and friends in the civil war. For a few, the Dictator’s clemency and generosity was too much to bear, too insulting to their sense of dignity. Others were impressed by the political and social status of the leading conspirators; in particular Marcus Brutus, one of whose ancestors had led a celebrated uprising against the monarchy centuries before, was extremely influential in giving the enterprise respectability. And then there were those who had worked for Caesar a long time and felt they had not been adequately rewarded.
Meanwhile, the regime continued to entrench itself. Honors were poured on Caesar and statues of him began appearing all over the city. His ivory image was carried in the procession at the Games alongside those of the gods. Another was set up in the Temple of Romulus, the first King of Rome, in the Forum with the dedication “To the Invincible God.” His effigy was also placed on the Capitol, Rome’s citadel, next to those of the former kings of Rome.
AS an expression of the new spirit of harmony that he wished to project, Caesar re-erected statues of Pompey and other onetime political opponents in their old places. Cicero had the mot for the moment: “By his generous action, he has not just set up Pompey’s statues but ensured that his own remain safely in place.” Towards the end of 45 a final batch of honors was granted, in effect announcing Caesar’s deification on lines uncomfortably similar to those of the Hellenistic monarchs of Asia Minor, for whom self-conferred divine status was a long-standing convention.
Plans for the huge expeditionary force of sixteen legions that Caesar had decided to lead against the Parthian Empire to avenge the defeat and death of Crassus in 53 were approaching completion. He would set off in mid-March 44 and might be away from Rome for as long as three years. He arranged for the advance election of all the Consuls who would hold office during his absence. The Dictator’s lack of interest in domestic politics and the renewal of Republican institutions could hardly have been more clearly demonstrated.
On December 31 one of the Consuls died and, as elections for some other officeholders were being held at the time, Caesar forced the immediate election of a certain Caius Caninius Rebilus, a New Man who had served under him in Gaul, to be his successor for a few hours. This was using the Consulship as a cheap reward for a supporter. Public opinion was outraged. When a crowd of followers prepared to escort the new Consul down to the Forum, Cicero remarked: “We’d better get a move on, or he’ll be out of office before we get there.”
AS the new year dawned the mood in the city was darkening. Many damaging rumors were being assiduously spread—that Caesar was going to establish Egypt as the seat of his Empire where he would rule with his mistress, Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, now living just outside the capital in opulent, un-Roman style; or, even more implausibly, that Troy was to be the new capital of the Empire. These tales were little more than distorted reflections of a perfectly rational anxiety about how Rome would be ruled during Caesar’s absence in Asia Minor.
Caesar may have begun to suspect that among the fawning Senators there were those who recommended more and more fantastic honors with the conscious aim of setting opinion against him. He hesitated over whether or not to assume the title of Dictator for Life, eventually deciding to do so in the early days of February. This caused a good deal of angry comment, since the Dictatorship was traditionally a strictly temporary appointment that gave the officeholder supreme power for a short time, seldom more than six months, in order to cope with a state emergency.
Caesar’s decision was seen as a very bad sign by Republicans, an obvious first step to a formal monarchy. Some of the conspirators, wanting to stir up bad feeling, began saluting him as king in public. They secretly placed a diadem (a ribbon worn around the head, denoting royalty) on one of his statues. Two Tribunes removed it, apparently to Caesar’s annoyance. A little later when he was riding in from attending a festival on the Alban Mount, some men again hailed him as king. “My name is Caesar, not King,” he remarked. The same Tribunes brought a suit against the first man who had shouted the word out. This infuriated Caesar and, when the Tribunes then issued a statement that their freedom of speech was under threat, they were unceremoniously deposed from office. The incident could suggest that Caesar really did want to establish a monarchy. However, there is another more plausible and less sinister interpretation, which an event a few days later seems to confirm.
On February 15, 44, the festival of the Lupercalia was held—a strange ritual which symbolized the renewal of civil order near the year’s beginning. The Luperci were a college of priests, young men of good family who every year on this day ran through the city naked except for goatskin loincloths. They represented wolf-men living in a primal community held together by violence.
Caesar attended this exotic event, watching it from his gilded chair on the Speakers’ Platform in the Forum. The ceremony opened with the sacrifice of goats and a dog, whose blood was smeared on the foreheads of two young men. The blood was then wiped off with milk-soaked wool, after which the Luperci dressed themselves in the bloodstained skins of the victims. They ate and drank heavily before running around the Palatine Hill to purify a grotto there which was sacred to the Luperci. They brandished strips of freshly flayed animal skin and lashed out with them at childless women, who placed themselves in their way in the belief that a touch of the whip would relieve them of their infertility.
Antony, now in his late thirties and a little old for the part, was among the runners, but instead of carrying a thong he held a diadem in his hand, twined around a laurel wreath. Some of his fellow runners lifted him up so that he could place it at Caesar’s feet. Voices in the crowd shouted that Caesar should be crowned with it. Cassius with another of the conspirators, Publius Servilius Casca, picked up the diadem and put it on Caesar’s knee. The Dictator made a gesture of refusal and there were cheers from the crowd. Then Antony ran up again, presumably onto the Speakers’ Platform itself, and put the diadem on Caesar’s head. Antony said, “The people offer this to you through me,” and Caesar replied, “Jupiter alone is King of the Romans.” He immediately took it off and flung it into the crowd; those at the back clapped, but in the front rows people shouted that he should accept it and not resist the will of the People. An early source says that this “pantomime” went on for some time with applause ringing out with every refusal. Looking thoroughly put out, Caesar stood up and opened the front of his toga and said that anyone who wanted to cut his throat might do so.
Eventually Antony retrieved the diadem and had it sent to the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. The official record in the archives for the Lupercalia of that year read: “To Caius Caesar, Life Dictator, Mark Antony the Consul, by command of the People, offered the kingship: Caesar was unwilling.”
The episode betrays every sign of having been premeditated. AS Cicero pointed out later to Antony: “Where did the diadem come from? It is not the sort of thing you pick up in the street. You had brought it from home.” It is highly unlikely that Antony would have dared to improvise or stage an ambush of this kind without Caesar’s knowledge and it seems equally implausible that the government was unaware of the real state of public feeling.