Caesar returned to Rome. There, while he was restoring the condition of the commonwealth with a clemency contrary to the precedents of former generations, he was stabbed with twenty-three wounds in the senate house and perished, at the instigation of Brutus and Cassius, with a very great part of the senate privy to the deed as well.
1 Caesar Romam rediit. ubi dum reipublicae statum contra exempla maiorum clementer instaurat, auctoribus Bruto et Cassio, conscio etiam plurimo senatu, in curia uiginti et tribus uulneribus confossus interiit.
They say that there were more than sixty accomplices in that conspiracy. The two Bruti and Gaius Cassius and their other associates withdrew to the Capitol with drawn daggers. There was long deliberation as to whether the Capitol ought to be set on fire together with the authors of the murder.
2 in qua coniuratione fuisse amplius sexaginta conscios ferunt. duo Bruti et C. Cassius aliique socii strictis pugionibus in Capitolium secesserunt. diu deliberatum est, utrum Capitolium cum auctoribus caedis oporteret incendi.
The people, goaded by grief, seized his body and burned it in the forum on fragments of the tribunals and benches.
3 corpus eius raptum populus dolore instimulatus in foro fragmentis tribunalium ac subselliorum cremauit.
Rome surveyed the breadth of her realm by her own disasters, and, turned to her own slaughter, took vengeance for each and every nation in the very place where she had subdued it. In Asia, Europe and Africa — I do not say in three parts of the world, but in every corner of the three parts — she put forth her own gladiators, and thrust upon her enemies, now at their ease, the spectacle of a wretched vengeance.
4 Percensuit latitudinem regni sui Roma cladibus suis atque in suam conuersa caedem singulas quasque gentes ibidem, ubi domuit, uindicauit. Asiae Europae atque Africae, non dico tribus mundi partibus sed totis trium partium angulis edidit gladiatores suos feriatisque inimicis spectaculum miserae ultionis ingessit.
Nor yet was it enough that the very causes too had been consumed together with their authors; the seeds sprang up again and germinated in the same field, soon to yield to those who reaped them, with great sweat, great increases of evils. Caesar, the victor in the civil war, was killed by citizens; into the murder of one man whole columns of accomplices were drawn.
5 nec tamen sufficit ipsas quoque cum auctoribus causas fuisse consumptas; recidiua semina in eodem agro germinant, magna continuo metentibus malorum incrementa cum magno sudore factura: uictor ciuilis belli a ciuibus Caesar occiditur, in caedem unius trahuntur agmina consciorum.
For it was certain that Caesar, unworthily slain, could have many avengers; and a very great part of the nobility was bound together at once in a single chain of crime, lest perhaps so great a store of fuel for evils should not be fed by the magnitude of a war but thinned out by the brevity of a vengeance.
6 certum enim erat, quia Caesar indigne peremptus plures habere posset ultores; plurimaque nobilitas una simul catena sceleris copulatur, ne forte tanta malorum materia non belli magnitudine suppleatur sed uindictae breuitate tenuetur.
The fables tell that Medea once sowed the teeth of a slain serpent, from which, as a crop befitting the seed, armed men sprang from the earth and soon laid one another low in fighting.
7 Medeam illam fabulae ferunt dentes quondam occisi seuisse serpentis, e quibus quasi conpetens semini seges armati homines terra emerserint seseque mox inuicem pugnando prostrauerint.
That, to be sure, is the invention of the poets; but our Rome, when Caesar was killed — what armed columns she brought forth from his ashes! What wars she stirred up, in witness of her wretched fecundity — wars not to be read by schoolboys, but to be watched by whole peoples!
8 equidem hoc poetarum commenta finxerunt; nostra autem Roma Caesare occiso quanta de cineribus eius agmina armata parturiit! quanta bella in testimonium miserae fecunditatis non legenda pueris sed spectanda populis excitauit!
And yet the beginning of all these evils is pride: from it the civil wars blazed up, from it they sprouted again. Not unjust, therefore, is the slaughter of those who unjustly pursue it, if the rivalry of ambition is both carried on and punished through them and in them, until those who refused a partnership learn to bear a master, and, the sum of the whole empire being brought down to one man, all men submit to a far different way of life, so that all strive humbly to please rather than insolently to offend.
9 et tamen horum omnium malorum initium superbia est: inde exarserunt bella ciuilia, inde iterum pullularunt. non ergo iniusta caedes est eorum, qui eam iniuste consectantur, si ambitionis aemulatio per ipsos atque in ipsis et agitur et punitur, donec qui detrectauere collegium, discant ferre dominatum, summaque imperii totius ad unum redacta longe aliud omnes homines uiuendi genus subeant, ut omnes humiliter placere studeant, non insolenter offendere.
But for so wholesome a teaching of humility a teacher was needed. And so, when the affairs of Augustus Caesar had been fittingly set in order, the Lord Christ was born, who, though he was in the form of God, humbly took upon himself the form of a servant, so that the instruction in humility might at last be the more fitting at a time when the punishment of pride had now become an example to all throughout the whole world.
10 sed ad tam salubrem humilitatis doctrinam magistro opus est. itaque opportune conpositis rebus Augusti Caesaris natus est Dominus Christus, qui cum in forma Dei esset, formam serui humiliter adsumpsit, ut tunc demum aptior fieret humilitatis institutio, quando iam per totum mundum poena superbiae omnibus esset exemplo.