Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/355

 MAKCUS BRUTUS. 347 own fortunes I am of another mind ; for if Providence shall not dispose Avhat we now undertake according to our wishes, I resolve to put no further hopes or warlike preparations to the proof, but wiU die contented with my fortune. For I already have given up my life to my country on the Ides of March ; and have lived since then a second life for her sake, with liberty and honor." * Cassius at these words smiled, and, embracing Brutus, said, " With these resolutions let us go on upon the enemy ; for either we ourselves shall conquer, or have no cause to fear those that do." After this they discoursed among their friends about the ordering of the battle ; and Brutus desired of Cassius that he might command the right wing, though it was thought that this was more fit for Cassius, in regai'd both of his age and his experience. Yet even in this Cassius complied with Brutus, and l^laced Messala with the valiantest of all his legions in the same wing, so Brutus immediately drew out his horse, excellently well equipped, and was not long in bringing up his foot after them. Antony's soldiers were casting trenches from the marsh by which they were encamped, across the plain, to cut off Cassius's communications with the sea. Coesar was to be at hand with his troops to support them, but he was not able to be present himself, by reason of his sickness; and his soldiers, not much expecting that the enemy would come to a set battle, but only make some excursions with their darts and light arms to disturb the men at work in the trenches, and not taking notice of the troops drawn up against them ready to give battle, were considers himself to have given and as it were extra life, and this, away his life once for all on the too, honorably. " The divine course Ides of March; since then he did of things" just above is in the Greek not regard himself to have, prop- the daimon, the word rendered by erly, any life of his own at all ; " Providence " is God, or a god. he had, however, for his country's
 * He means, I believe, that he sake, lived a subsequent, second,