The name of Brutus would be a guarantee to the people of
rectitude of intention. Brutus, as the world went, was of more than
average honesty. He had sworn to be faithful to Caesar as the rest had
sworn, and an oath with him was not a thing to be emotionalized away; but
he was a fanatical republican, a man of gloomy habits, given to dreams and
omens, and easily liable to be influenced by appeals to visionary
feelings. Caius Cassius, his brother-in-law, was employed to work upon
him. Cassius, too, was praetor that year, having been also nominated to
office by Caesar. He knew Brutus, he knew where and how to move him. He
reminded him of the great traditions of his name. A Brutus had delivered
Rome from the Tarquins. The blood of a Brutus was consecrated to liberty.
This, too, was mockery; Brutus, who expelled the Tarquins, put his sons to
death, and died childless; Marcus Brutus came of good plebeian family,
with no glories of tyrannicide about them; but an imaginary genealogy
suited well with the spurious heroics which veiled the motives of Caesar's
murderers.
Brutus, once wrought upon, became with Cassius the most ardent in the
cause which assumed the aspect to him of a sacred duty. Behind them were
the crowd of senators of the familiar faction, and others worse than they,
who had not even the excuse of having been partisans of the beaten cause;
men who had fought at Caesar's side till the war was over, and believed,
like Labienus, that to them Caesar owed his fortune, and that he alone
ought not to reap the harvest.
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