This discourse of Cæsar’s struck Brutus with exceeding shame and confusion; but at length, with a feeble and trembling voice, he delivered himself to this effect. “Gentlemen of the Senate,” says he, “do ye not hear Cæsar? or will ye add sin to sin, and suffer all the blame to be cast upon the instruments, when you yourselves were the contrivers of the villainy? Why do ye not answer? for Cæsar speaks to you, as well as to us. Cassius and myself were but your bravoes, and governed by your persuasions and advice, little dreaming of that insatiable ambition that lay lurking under the gravity of your long beards and robes. But ’tis the practice of you all, to arraign that tyranny in the prince, which you would exercise yourselves: in effect, when you have gotten power, and the colour of authority in your hands, it is more dangerous for a prince not to comply with you than for a vassal to rebel against his prince. To what end served your perfidious and ungrateful treason? Make answer to Cæsar. But for our parts, in the conscience of our sin, we feel the severity of our punishment.”
At these words a hollow-eyed, supercilious senator (that had been of the conspiracy, and was then blazing like a pitched barrel) raised himself, and with a faint voice asked Cæsar what reason he had to complain! “For, prince,” says he, “if King Ptolomy murdered Pompey the Great, upon whose score he held his kingdom, why might not the Senate as well kill you, to recover what you had taken from them? And in the case betwixt Cæsar and Pompey, let the devils themselves be judges. As for Achilles (who was one of the murderers) what he did, was by Ptolomy’s command, and then he was but a free-booter neither, a fellow that got his living by rapine and spoil: but Cæsar was undoubtedly the more infamous of the two. ’Tis true, you wept at the sight of Pompey’s head, but such tears as were more treacherous than the steel that killed him. Ah cruel compassion and revengeful piety! that made thee a more barbarous enemy to Pompey, dead than living. Oh that ever two hypocrite eyes should creep into the first head of the world! To conclude, the death of Cæsar had been the recovery of our republic, if the multitude had not called in others of his race to the government, which rendered thy fall the very hydra of the empire.”