Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/352

 344 MARCUS BRUTUS. of Caesar, but in the splendidness of the men's arms and richness of their equipage it wonderfully exceeded ; for most of their arms were of gold and silver, which Brutus had lavishly bestowed among them. For though in other things he had accustomed his commanders to use all frugality and self-control, yet he thought that the riches which soldiers carried about them in their hands and on their bodies would add something of spirit to those that were desirous of glory, and would make those that were covetous and lovers of gain fight the more val- iantly to preserve the arms which were their estate. CiBsar made a view and lustration * of his army within his trenches, and distributed only a little corn and but five drachmas to each soldier for the sacrifice they were to make. But Brutus, either pitying this poverty, or dis- daining this meanness of spirit in Cajsar, first, as the cus- tom was, made a general muster and lustration of the army in the open field, and then distributed a great num- ber of beasts for sacrifice to every regiment, and fifty drachmas to every soldier ; so that in the love of his sol- diers and their readiness to fight for him Brutus had much the advantage. But at the time of lustration it is reported that an unlucky omen happened to Cassius ; for his lictor, presenting him with a garland that he was to wear at sacrifice, gave it him the wrong way up. Further, it is said that some time before, at a certain sol- emn procession, a golden image of Victory, which was carried before Cassius, fell down by a slip of him that car- ried it Besides this there appeared many birds of prey cleaning, to which, as to many other the propitiation to Apollo, " Aga- disagreeable things, it was made a memnon bids the people clean point to assign a sacred character, themselves of their pollutions ; they vSo in the Iliad (I., 312), while the clean themselves, and cast their sliip is sailing, carrying back his pollutions in the sea."
 * The lustration was a general daughter to Chryses and conveying