WaybackWire

ROME, the third day before the Ides.—Caesar goes east leaving a long list of public works in hand at home, and the preparations for them are already under way.

The greatest are works of water and road. A canal is to be cut through the Isthmus of Corinth, and the task has already been given to Anienus. The Tiber is to have a new channel below the city, running to the sea at Terracina, and Ostia is to get new harbours. The Pomptine marshes are to be drained, and Lake Fucinus with them, and a road is to be carried over the Apennines.

In the city itself he plans a temple of Mars larger than any in the world, and a great theatre under the Tarpeian Rock.

Nor are law and letters forgotten. The civil law is to be brought together into a single digest, and Rome is to have public libraries, with Marcus Varro in charge of gathering the books.

ROME, the third day before the Ides.—The Senate is to meet on the Ides in the hall attached to Pompey’s theatre, where the statue of Pompey stands. Caesar himself fixed the day, and the senators are to gather first in the portico.

In the Forum the talk is of what may come before them. A proposal is said to be on its way from the Fifteen, the priests who keep the books of fate, and Lucius Cotta is to announce it: that since the books say the Parthians can be conquered only by a king, Caesar should be given that title.

A second report is going the rounds with it, that the dictator means to move to Alexandria or Troy and take the wealth of the empire with him.

Talk of a king has followed Caesar all winter, since the affairs of the diadem at the Latin Festival and the Lupercalia.

Caesar has answered it before. When the people hailed him as king, he told them: “I am Caesar and no king.”

ROME, the third day before the Ides.—Writings left by night have been found on the tribunal and the chair of the praetor Marcus Brutus. No one has put a name to them. They read: “Thou art asleep, Brutus,” and “Thou art not Brutus.”

Caesar has stood by the praetor. When men came to him with charges against Brutus, he answered that Brutus deserved to rule for his virtue, and would not turn ingrate.

When Antony and Dolabella were denounced to him, the dictator answered: “I am not much in fear of these fat, long-haired fellows, but rather of those pale, thin ones.”