mastery of the Roman world which ended in the overthrow of the Republic.
Shakespeare has made us familiar with the fate of the poet Cinna, who
was actually mistaken for one of the conspirators against Cæsar and
murdered by the crowd. He dreamt, on the night before he met his death,
that Cæsar invited him to supper, and when he refused the invitation,
took him by the hand and forced him down into a deep, dark abyss, which
he entered with the utmost horror.

But there is a story connected with the crossing of the Rubicon by Cæsar
that certainly deserves to be better known than it is.[111] It is only
fitting that an event fraught with such momentous consequences should
have a supernatural setting of some kind; and Suetonius relates that
while Cæsar was still hesitating whether he should declare himself an
enemy of his country by crossing the little river that bounded his
province at the head of an army, a man of heroic size and beauty
suddenly appeared, playing upon a reed-pipe. Some of the troops, several
trumpeters among them, ran up to listen, when the man seized a trumpet,
blew a loud blast upon it, and began to cross the Rubicon. Cæsar at once
decided to advance, and the men followed him with redoubled enthusiasm
after what they had just seen.

It is to Plutarch that we owe the famous story of the apparition that
visited Brutus in his tent the night before the battle of Philippi, and
again during the battle. Shakespeare represents it to be Cæsar's ghost,
but has otherwise strictly followed Plutarch. It would be absurd to give
the scene in any other words than Shakespeare's.[112]

BRUTUS. How ill this taper burns! Ha! who comes here?
I think it is the weakness of mine eyes
That shapes this monstrous apparition.