by Jack Lindsay
The other senators were gaping at the scene on the floor of the hall, gripped by an obscure and deepening perturbation. Why, they could not say; but they felt something was wrong. The change from an ordinary scene of petitioning to a drama of menace occurred almost in a flash; and the onlookers stopped in mid-sentence, turning to watch, holding the sides of their chairs or catching at one another’s arms.
Caesar felt that he had one chance. They dared not face him. He must walk boldly through the group, straight through them, before they had time to think. It was his one hope. Without formulating what the situation was, he knew that he was in a deadly snare. He made a step forward, and at that moment Casca, who had successfully edged round to his back, leaned towards him. Caesar saw the movement reflected in the eyes of the men before him. Casca’s hand lifted, and the resistance of the group stiffened, closed. Caesar was lost.
He turned swiftly now towards Casca, hoping to break through the side, and the magic of his eyes was ended. Cimber, stealthily, painfully, as if fighting against a great force of wind, stretched out and grasped at Caesar’s toga. He caught the cloth and pulled at it in a weeping frenzy of joy. Casca, biting through his lip, leaped at Caesar, aiming his dagger blindly at the face, but he was dazed with the terror of the act. The dagger, slipping, gashed Caesar on the neck. But the gesture was enough. The blood lust of the others was unleashed. They no longer feared Caesar, they saw only the stricken quarry. They sprang at him, ripping their gowns as they tore out their daggers, snarling, lips drawn back from the wet, hungry teeth. The remaining conspirators dashed down from their seats, roused by the spectacle, assured that all would be well, eager to flesh their daggers; for thus had it been agreed. Only an equality of guilt could bind them all entirely to the deed and its consequences.
Caesar saw the wild eyes, the crowding forms. Men that had fought at his side, men whom he had favoured, men with whom he had shared his last rations of food, his jests, his life. Never once had he hidden from a danger that they must face; he had fought from one end of the world to the other, and now the men with whom he had broken the bread of his intimacy were stabbing at his heart.
But he had no appeal to make. He drew the stylus from his tablet and fought back at his enemies with that weak slip of steel. Casca’s brother, answering Casca’s scream, had struck Caesar in the side. But Caesar felt no pain. He knew he was about to die, but that was no great matter. He was thinking only of the bitter desolation of his death, hedged in by men whom he had loved as fellow-soldiers, and, beyond them, the world that none but he could rule with insight and understanding power. But with the blood that rushed clamorously to his head came a further knowledge. His work would not die. No casual betrayal could destroy the new depth of loyalty that he had brought into being.
That was the truth he wished to know. How could he see it supremely and die with happiness?
They were stabbing at him, screaming, tearing. He fought maniacally, writhing, charging, striking out with his slender piece of steel, striving hard to understand before they swarmed over him and trampled him to death. Had he failed? What did this ambush mean? Madly he stared at the faces before him, faces increasing, surging, rising and falling like waves of the sea, faces of his friends distorted out of recognition. Suddenly he remembered. On this very day, 15th March, nineteen years before he had been elected High Priest, and had entered the Temple of Vesta, where no other man might go. There, in the Holy of Holies, he had held in his hands the Sacred Thing of Rome, the earthen jar symbolic of the Eternal Empire, which no man but he might touch. He was back there now, holding it in his hands. He had not failed. One fall, and he would have smashed that fragile jar. But he had not fallen, and the jar was safe. These traitorous fools might kill him, but the need was in the blood of the people who had loved him. Ah, if he but knew the man in whose hands he might place that pledge of Rome’s fate, the jar of sealed earth. But someone would take it.
The fight could not last long. Sobbing, howling, the men closed in, hacking at his bleeding body. The toga was torn off and trampled into a mess of blood and dust, and he was left in a light tunic. He fought his way towards the statue of Pompeius, his trained instinct seeking for an object against which he could place his back. As he struggled, another dagger found his throat. Cassius struck him in the shoulder. Brutus aimed at his heart and hit him in the thigh. He was falling. Caesar was dead.
As he fell, he saw the jar of earth falling out of his hands, and he saw the hands of another man stretch out of the darkness and catch the jar, and it did not matter that he did not know whose hands he had seen. He knew only that Rome would stand and his work would go on, and that was all he wished to know; and the passionate bitterness, the anguish of regret and horror, faded into a great peace and blessedness.
CAESAR IS DEAD
III — HERE IS FREEDOM
The latecomers could do no more than thrust their daggers into the wounds already made on the bloody corpse.
Brutus pushed his way through and raised his arm to address the Senate, calling on Cicero, the vindicated champion of the Republic. But there was no one left in the tiers of seats. The senators had crowded aghast out of the building while Caesar was fighting his way towards the statue of Pompeius. Two had made to help their stricken patron; but overwhelmed by the hopelessness of the scene, they joined the fleeing crowd. Outside, the trembling senators had hastily collected their attendants and made off. Sinking back in the cushions, they furtively plucked at the litter-curtains, looking out on the buildings around, finding it incredible that the crust of lazy sunlight had not tightened and crushed the world. For their own heads were tautly pressed in helms of heat.
At once there was collision and the street was impassable with litters. The senators in the rear told their men to make off northwards and then regain Rome by alleyways. A few with villas in Etruria gave orders to be carried into the countryside, and then dreaded that in this collapse of all bonds the litter-slaves would murder them and toss their corpses to the frogs in a nettled ditch. Others gave up the idea of reaching home in a litter and plunged through the mob, guarded by equally frightened slaves. Broken litters filled the streetway, and the stalls were overturned.
“Caesar is dead.”
The cry was taken up. It ran through the audience within the Theatre; it struck the stage where an acrobat was doing handsprings and balancing a shield; it sped behind the scenes and interrupted a quarrel between two dancers. A startled harpist broke the string that he was tuning. A slave-girl choked in mid-swallow of some bread and honey, and lay gasping; no one thought to beat her on the back. In the cavea of the Theatre a hush had rippled along the seats. The people stopped stamping on the floor to show their impatience in waiting for the chief turn, a tenor. In the silence a wailing baby was heard. “Sssh,” cried the neighbours, and the mother placed her hand tightly over the baby’s face, almost sending it into convulsions. The lad who was stealing his hand under the girl’s cloak drew back. A woman wept. Then a voice rang out, “They’ve killed him.”
The crowd rose in a great wave of abject dismay. They pushed along the rows, shoving and treading on the weaker. Women’s dresses caught and were ripped; men’s gowns were trampled and pulled off. Three children were killed. An old man fell down in a fit, and was spared, because a fit was a sacred seizure. The people gave him room, and, while still pressing on, found time to listen to his horrible cries, hoping that some divine message of guidance or comfort could come from his twisted lips. Sandals dropped off, but no one dared pause to pick them up.
Who had killed Caesar? The people feared that a band of murderers would swoop upon them, thrusting torches into all the windows of the Theatre and roasting the rearmost alive. The clatters and bangs of the stampede sounded as if the Theatre itself was collapsing. The pillars would come crashing down in a moment. Caesar had fallen. What else could stand? Someone in fury threw a wine-flask from the upper tiers on the people struggling lower down. It hit a man and laid his head open, and
a fragment slashed a girl’s cheek. Then it splintered on the floor, where it cut the feet of those who pushed on.
“Caesar is dead.”
A cry of despair sounded across the Field of Mars. At first it was a wordless shout. No one knew what was happening, but a cold hand grasped the heart of all. The noise of merriment died away. The festival ceased as if the sky had suddenly darkened with storm. Then the message of fear became articulate. “They’ve killed him.” The news passed from mouth to mouth. There was no shouting now. Girls crawled with flushed faces and knotted hair from under the bushes and the tents of cloaks, calling for their mothers. The family-groups ran together, and the children cried and clutched at their parents. The vendors tried to close up their stalls quickly and drag them off towards the shelter of the trees along the river or in the grove. A vast sobbing murmur arose, and hundreds swore later that blackness fell on the world. The sky was bruised flesh. Those who spoke of it said they thought the wolf of doom had at last swallowed the sun. Abandoning their picnics, the parties rushed from the Field, without thought making detours eastwards to avoid the spot where Caesar had fallen.
The youths who were riding shaggy young horses, playing the discus or ball-games, scattered and fled. Those who were swimming splashed towards their clothes, or fled naked and wet. A boy was drowned, kicked in the face by a hurrying comrade. All scampered away, eager only to feel the safety of home, even if that home was no more than a filthy hole in a tenement from which the bailiff was threatening ejectment. But a few thieves, social outcasts whom no sign of wrath in heaven or earth could scare, watched the flight with satisfaction and rummaged among the discarded baskets and holiday-huts. Their fellows among the theatre-crowd were busy snatching purses and bearing off the goods of the overturned stalls.
To find the Senate fled was a blow of the first magnitude to the conspirators. They had not been able to concert any measures beyond the plan for slaying Caesar, and had taken for granted that they would turn at once to the Senate and justify themselves. Brutus had his speech ready; he was to announce that Caesar’s death ended the dictatorship and that the constitution once more became paramount. Now the conspirators looked at the empty disordered hall, and stood afraid. Trebonius entered, to admit that Marcus Antonius had escaped; but what had been the use of holding him when the Senate had run away?
Decimus Brutus left as soon as he saw Caesar bleeding on the floor. He had placed a body of trained gladiators in a small side-portico, under pretence of assisting with a fencing-display at the Theatre; these men were to form up at the hall-door and keep order until the Senate had made its first resolutions. A clash of arms declared that he had brought the troupe into position; but what use were they now? The conspirators were lost between exultation in the success of the deed and fear at the solitude in which it had isolated them. They pressed round the main actors, Brutus, Cassius, Trebonius, and Casca, waiting for a lead. Brutus and Cassius spoke a few uncertain words aside, waiting for the return of Decimus.
“We can’t remain here,” said Brutus, at last, addressing the huddled group. “We must go back into Rome and find somewhere else to call the Senate, and it’s of course imperative that meanwhile we don’t separate. I suggest that we march with the guard of Decimus and occupy the Capitol.”
His words brought life back into the men. They applauded loudly, pleased at the noise. They mustn’t separate; anything but that. Eagerly they moved out of the Curia, averting their eyes from the spot under the statue-base where a broken body lay. Someone hoisted a Phrygian liberty-cap on the end of a pike, and they marched out into the street, chanting, calling on the people to rise and be free. But dishevelled, waving blood-stained daggers, shouting incomprehensible words, they completed the demoralisation of the people who yet remained. The crowd, still streaming out of the Theatre and the neighbouring pleasure-gardens, were appalled at the sight. Knocking one another down, they scrambled to avoid the slayers, terrified of being contaminated by the blood-guilt, aware only that there was no longer any security in the world.
*
Amos was lying under a myrtle-bush in the portico, which was a sin. For though there was nothing wrong in enjoying the shade of a myrtle, it was a different matter when myrtle was chosen because it was the tree of Venus. The leaf was the shame-patch of the goddess, her palm of secrecy and what the palm hid. Amos, abandoned to a sense of sin, wondered if a girl would come and rest on the other side of the leaves, so that he could roll over and take her in his arms by miraculous chance. But she would scream, and that would be unpleasant. Amos was confounded by the dilemma of the masculine daydream: a girl supernaturally chaste and infinitely lascivious. Girls, in point of fact, were either solely chaste, so that one couldn’t get them, or solely lascivious, so that everyone but oneself got them: which wasn’t satisfactory.
Then he remembered Karni and relented. But how was he ever to visit Karni again? Why didn’t she live in less redoubtable surroundings, not among Ethiopians who ate money.
Then he heard the sounds of men running, scuffling, crying. What was wrong? He feared that they were chasing after him, and shrank back under the bush, into the many-patched Venus; but what had he done? Nothing that anyone knew about. What was only in his head wasn’t a crime. He lay quaking for a long while, inventing excuses, and then crept out. There was no one to be seen along the wide garden. Various articles strewn about suggested flight; but what enemy could be marching on Rome? Amos saw a fine yellow-brown cloak, and coveted it violently. It was exactly the shade of his shoes. If he owned the cloak, he needn’t be ashamed of his shoes any more. He approached the cloak and decided to take the risk. As soon as he saw anyone, he would call “Who’s lost a cloak?” Then they couldn’t accuse him of stealing it. He took it up, fondled it, and tiptoed towards the gate.
There was no one in the street. The last thieves had retreated, and Amos couldn’t see the drunken man lying under the upturned stall, or the young pair of lovers who, too dazed to run, were embracing with feverish haste in an abandoned litter.
He crept out through the gate. All the buildings seemed twice as big. Was it the end of the world? Had everyone died but Amos? Had the Messiah come and led away the armies of the faithful and the damned? The thought made the flesh of Amos stiffen with dread. What terrible game was Yahwe playing with him? Poor Amos, pity the lad. He wasn’t either a sinner or a saint; he was simply lost, not wanted, unjudged. Why should he be left when the rest of mankind were twitched off the earth into the pits of air, leaving him only a brown-yellow cloak?
He slunk up to the door of the Curia and gazed in. A fascination descended on him. He wanted to see into this hall of silence where the great of the earth had congregated. He felt that the secret must be there. Had Caesar too been carried off? Surely not. Would Yahwe crush Caesar into the aery void and leave Amos behind? Slowly, unwillingly, the horrified Amos crept into the hall, up the front-steps and across the vestibule where incense was still smoking. He listened to the rattling thud of his footsteps, alone in the huge world of death.
Then he passed over the main threshold and looked in. At first he saw only the long hall. Then he saw the bundle lying under the high statue. A man bleeding from a score of gashes, a lean, wiry body, contorted in death. The face was turned towards the door, and Amos saw that it was free from wounds, and there was a light of great happiness resting on the face. Amos shivered. He couldn’t understand. The sight was too strange. Who was the man?
Then Amos knew it was Caesar, and his knees knocked together, and he prayed for a moment of utter agony, and he fled out of the hall, wailing through his chattering teeth.
*
The news of some disaster was speeding through the city before the first fugitive had reached the Carmental Gate. As in the field, there was a chaotic drift of dismay, and then the explanation.
“Caesar is dead.”
Like a virus entering the blood through a tiny puncture and rushing through the rest of the body, the words penetrated to eve
ry area of the city. The money-changer overturned his table and then bent quavering to pick up the coins. The banker paused in mid-entry, licked his dry lips, looked at the line of figures, and closed the book. The girls in the brothels threw back their heads and howled. The men at the armourers dropped their hammers and seized the swords. The plumber left the lead-piping that he was fixing at an illegally low level, and ran, leaving the water to gush out and fill the cellars of the neighbourhood, drowning cats and spoiling wine. “Bite me,” said the drunken girl, insufficiently kissed. The slaves crouched in corners, fearful of being blamed for the cloud of guilt that had suddenly suffused the world. Shutters were clanking in the palsied hands of shopkeepers. Stalls collapsed. A child was pushed down a sewer-hole, and the mother beat her head on the pavement, licking at the blood that rolled down her cheeks. Thieves attacked a silversmith’s shop and were thrashed away. A porter scattered a barrow-full of pottery across the road. A girl pushed her inquisitive mother-in-law out of the lofty tenement-window. A cripple was trodden to death. The temples were filled with lowly-moaning votarists.