Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/348

 310 MARCUS BRUTUS. At this Cassius laughed ; but Brutus thrust him out, calling him impudent dog and counterfeit Cynic ; but yet for the present they let it put an end to their dispute, and parted. Cassius made a supper that night, and Brutus invited the guests ; and when they were set down, Favonius, having bathed, came in among them. Brutus called out aloud and told him he was not invited, and bade him go to the upper couch ; but he violently thrust himself in, and lay down on the middle one;* and the entertainment passed in sportive talk, not wanting either wit or philosophy. The next day after, upon the accusation of the Sar- dians, Brutus publicly disgraced and condemned Lucius Pella, one that had been censor of Rome, and employed in offices of trust by himself, for haAang embezzled the public money. This action did not a little vex Cassius ; for but a few days before, two of his own friends being accused of the same crime, he only admon- ished them in private, but in public absolved them, and continued them in his service ; and upon this occasion he accused Brutus of too much rigor and severity of justice in a time which required them to use more policy and favor. But Brutus bade him remember the Ides of March, the day when they killed Caesar, who himself neither plundered nor pillaged mankind, but was only the sup- port and strength of those that did ; and bade him con- sider, that if there was any color for justice to be neglected, it had been better to suffer the injustice of CoBsar's friends than to give impunity to their own ; " for then," said he, " we could have been accused of cow- had called Antisthenes Cyna, or of the Roman dining-room, the dog, and Cynic was the epithet of triclinium, the middle was the couch those that copied his manner. of honor, and the lower that of the (for their breadth more resembling be on the one, Cassius on the beds) which formed the furniture other.
 * Of the three couches or sofas master of the house. Brutus would