to Caesar. He determined to slay
Caesar rather than to allow him to be made a king, and he went to work,
with great caution, to bring other leading and influential men to join
him in this determination. Some of those to whom he applied said that
they would unite with him in his plot provided he would get Marcus
Brutus to join them.

[Sidenote: Marcus Brutus.]

Brutus was the praetor of the city. The praetorship of the city was a
very high municipal office. The conspirators wished to have Brutus join
them partly on account of his station as a magistrate, as if they
supposed that by having the highest public magistrate of the city for
their leader in the deed, the destruction of their victim would appear
less like a murder, and would be invested, instead, in some respects,
with the sanctions and with the dignity of an official execution.

[Sidenote: Character of Brutus.]
[Sidenote: His firmness and courage.]

Then, again, they wished for the moral support which would be afforded
them in their desperate enterprise by Brutus's extraordinary personal
character. He was younger than Cassius, but he was grave, thoughtful,
taciturn, calm--a man of inflexible integrity, of the coolest
determination, and, at the same time, of the most undaunted courage. The
conspirators distrusted one another, for the resolution of impetuous men
is very apt to fail when the emergency arrives which puts it to the
test; but as for Brutus, they knew very well that whatever he undertook
he would most certainly do.

[Sidenote: The ancient Brutus.]
[Sidenote: His expulsion of the kings.]

There was a great deal even in his name. It was a Brutus that five
centuries before had been the main instrument of the expulsion of the
Roman kings. He had secretly meditated the design, and, the better to
conceal it, had feigned idiocy, as the story was, that he might not be
watched or suspected until the favorable hour for executing his design
should arrive. He therefore ceased to speak, and seemed to lose his
reason; he wandered about the city silent and gloomy, like a brute. His
name had been Lucius Junius before. They added Brutus now, to designate
his condition. When at last, however, the crisis arrived which he judged
favorable for the expulsion of the kings, he suddenly reassumed his
speech and his reason, called the astonished Romans to arms, and
triumphantly accomplished his design. His name and memory had been
cherished ever since that day as of a g