Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/314

 306 MARCUS BRUTUS. as one of the chiefest of his party. All the tune that he was in the camp, excepting that which he spent in Pompey's company, he employed in reading and in study, which he did not neglect even the day before the great battle. It was the middle of summer, and the heat was very great, the camp having been pitched near some marshy ground, and the people that carried Brutus's tent were a long while before they came. Yet though upon these accounts he was extremely harassed and out of order, having scarcely by the rhiddle of the day anointed himself and eaten a sparing meal, whilst most others were either laid to sleep or taken up with the thoughts and apprehensions of what would be the issue of the fight, he spent his time until the evening in writing an epitome of Polybius. It is said that C^sar had so great a regard for hiin that he ordered his commanders by no means to kill Brutus in the battle, but to spare him, if possible, and bring him safe to him, if he would willingly surrender himself; but if he made any resistance, to suffer him to escape rather than do him any violence. And this he is believed to have done out of a tenderness to Servilia, the mother of Brutus ; for Ca3sar had, it seems, in his youth been very intimate with her, and she passionately in love with him ; and, considering that Brutus was born about that time in which their loves were at the highest, Caesar had a belief that he was his own child. The story is told, that when the groat question of the conspiracy of Catiline, which had like to have been the destruction of the commonwealth, was debated in the senate, Cato and Ciesar were both standing up, contending together on the decision to be come to ; at which time a little note was delivered to Ca)sar from without, which he took and read silently to himself Upon this, Cato cried out aloud, and accused Caesar of holding correspondence with and