Note 124 — Chapter XXV · THE CLOSING SCENES OF CÆSAR’S LIFE
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[According to Nicolaus, it was the conspirators who moved the senate to declare Cæsar inviolable. They prompted this decree with the cunning aim of hereby making Cæsar secure (as he would think) and so inducing him to dismiss his bodyguard. After his return from Spain whenever he came forth in public, not only in the country but also in town, he had himself accompanied by a bodyguard. He did not dismiss this bodyguard until shortly before his appointment as perpetual dictator, which took place between the 26th of January and the 15th of February, in the year 44 B.C.
“That this statement of Nicolaus rests on a pure invention can hardly be assumed,” says Wiegandt, who gives it full credit, and adds:
“This is all the more probably true of the above-mentioned decree, because it served the most vital interests of the conspirators. For, so long as Cæsar was protected by his bodyguard any attack upon him exposed their own lives to the hazard. Consideration of their own personal safety, again, influenced the conspirators at every step. Even after Cæsar had dismissed his bodyguard, the attempt was constantly being postponed in view of the danger resulting from his numerous attendance. In this way were rejected the various designs to murder him on the Via Sacra, on the occasion of the meeting of electoral committees in the Campus Martius, or during the gladiatorial games at the theatre. What recommended the senate house to the combined choice of the conspirators as a fit place in which to execute the blow was this, that here, secretly armed themselves, they had nothing to fear from the unarmed friends of Cæsar, and, moreover, might rely on the protection of the gladiators of Decimus Brutus.
“A second argument in favour of the statement of Nicolaus is that a still broader decree of the senate appears to have been based on the same cunning motive. The conspirators had reckoned too little with Cæsar’s sober practical nature when they hoped that as a man sacrosanct he would renounce all armed attendance. As a matter of fact he attached so little significance to the decree, that it never occurred to him to dismiss his escort.”h]