Cæsar had never excelled as a judge of men. Although unquestionably a genius and a man of supreme mental powers, the Dictator was ever open to flattery; and he collected around him a number of satellites who had won their way into his favour by blandishments and by countenance of their master’s many eccentricities. Balbus and Oppius, Cæsar’s two most intimate attendants, were men of mediocre standing; and Publius Cornelius Dolabella, who now comes into some prominence, was a young adventurer, whose desire for personal gain must have been concealed with difficulty. This personage, although only five-and-twenty years of age, had been appointed by Cæsar to the consulship which would become vacant upon his own departure for the East, a move that must have given grave offence to Antony; for Dolabella, a few years previously, had fallen in love with Antony’s wife, Antonia, who had consequently been divorced, the outraged husband thereafter finding consolation in the marriage to his present wife Fulvia. The various favours conferred by Cæsar on this young scamp must therefore have caused considerable irritation to Antony; and it is not easy to suppose that the latter’s apparent devotion to the cause of the Dictator was altogether genuine. Indeed, the rumour once more passed into circulation that Antony nursed designs upon Cæsar’s life, this time, strange to say, in conjunction with Dolabella. On hearing this report the Dictator remarked that he “did not fear such fat, luxurious men as these two, but rather the pale, lean fellows.”
Of the latter type was Cassius, a sour, fanatical soldier and politician, who had fought against Cæsar at Pharsalia, and had been freely pardoned by him afterwards. From early youth Cassius entertained a particular hatred of any form of autocracy; and it is related of him that when at school the boy Faustus, the son of the famous Sulla, had boasted of his father’s autocratic powers, Cassius had promptly punched his head. Cæsar’s attempts to obtain the throne excited this man’s ferocity, and he was probably the originator of the plot which terminated the Dictator’s life. The plot was hatched in February B.C. 44, and, when Cassius and his friends had prevailed upon the influential and studious Marcus Brutus to join them, it rapidly developed into a widespread conspiracy. “I don’t like Cassius,” Cæsar was once heard to remark; “he looks so pale. What can he be aiming at?”