The day fixed being arrived, the hall was presently filled, and measures taken, that as soon as one party was heard, another should enter. Lucifer was seated upon his golden throne, having upon each side those princes I have before mentioned. After having inveighed against the disorders prevalent in hell, and stated his determination to rectify them, he signified his permission to the standers by to speak. At this intimation there arose an old man of a haughty appearance, and having a crown of laurel upon his head; he read the Roman laws touching parricides, and amplified upon the ingratitude of natural and adopted children towards their parents.
“The parties,” said Belzebub to Lucifer, “must be ordered, before commencing their speeches, to announce their names, because many of them have been dead a great length of time.”
Such a decree was accordingly made; and he who had now spoken about half an hour, said that he was Julius Cæsar, the first emperor of the Romans. “Under the pretext of the liberty of our common country,” continued he, “Brutus and Cassius, to gratify their ambition, assassinated me in the midst of the senate, their enmity was not directed against the empire and monarchy, which were, on the contrary, the object of their desires; but they hated the emperor, who had magnified the Roman power, and extended its dominion both north and east. Was the government better administered in the hands of those senators, who, by their feuds and personal dislikes, perilled the salvation of the republic, by resigning it into the hands of a perpetual dictation, whom they were obliged shortly afterwards to elect? Rome having once tasted the benefits of monarchy, preferred rather to obey a Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, or a Heliogabulus, than to re-establish this pretended public liberty, for which Brutus and Cassius, those two traitors, took up arms against the father of their country.”
He continued his discourse in this strain, and concluded by moving, that they should be treated in hell as assassins, public disturbers, and traitors.
Brutus then arose, and with a trembling voice, said: “Senators, you have heard Cæsar; have you not been biassed by his eloquence? But will you forget the services I have rendered? Remember the advice you privately gave me, to encourage the glorious design I had conceived in favour of your liberty? Answer then to Cæsar, that it was by your advice I gave the fatal stab; that if the laws had not been abrogated and violated by the formidable power of tyranny, you would, yourselves, have put him to death under the forms of justice; and that your silence, after the execution of my project, was an evidence of your approbation.”