Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/328

 320 (LESAR. upon this, was more instant than before to work him yet further, having himself a private grudge against Caesar, for some reasons that we have mentioned in the Life of Brutus. Nor was Caesar without suspicions of him, and said once to his friends, " What do you think Cassius is aiming at ? I do n't like him, he looks so pale." And when it was told him that Antony and Dolabella were in a plot against him, he said he did not fear such fat, luxu- rious men, but rather the pale, lean fellows, meaning Cassius and Brutus. Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than unexpected. For many strange prodigies and ap- paritions are said to have been observed shortly before the event. As to the lights in the heavens, the noises heard in the night, and the wild birds which perched in the forum, these are not perhaps worth taking notice of in so great a case as this. Strabo, the philosopher, tells us that a number of men were seen, looking as if they were heated through with fire, contending with each other ; that a quantity of flame issued from the hand of a soldier's servant, so that they who saw it thought he must be burnt, but that after all he had no hurt. As Caesar was sacrificing, the victim's heart was missing, a very bad omen, because no living creature can subsist without a heart. One finds it also related by many, that a soothsayer bade him prepare for some great danger on the ides of March. When the day was come, Caesar, as he went to the senate, met this soothsayer, and said to him by way of raillery, " The ides of March are come ; " who answered him calmly, " Yes, they are come, but they are not past." The day before this assassination, he supped with Marcus Lepidus ; and as he was signing some letters, according to his custom, as he reclined at table, there arose a question what sort of death was the best. At which he immediately, before any one could speak, said, "A sudden one."