ABSTRACT
Bmtus, and Cassius seemed to have put by Julius CtEsar from the tyrannie, as another Tarquinius Superbus. But common libertie, the restitution whereof they principally aymed at, was lost by this assassinate of the common Father. So soone therefore as the fact was committed, they fled out of the Senate house, or Curia, into the Capitoll, as fearing CtEsars old souldiers, not without cause, who wanted not the minde to take revenge, but a captain for it. And when it now appeared what destruction hung over the state: the murther was disliked, & by the Consuls consent a decree of oblivion was enacted: yet to bee o~t of the eye of the publike griefe, they departed into .syria, and Macedonia, provinces given them even by CtEsar himselfe, whom they slue; revenge was rather defferred then buried. The common we ale therfore being setled upon the pleasure rif the Triumvirs, rather as it might be then as it were fit, and Lepidus olle rif the three, left at home for defence of Rome, CtEsar addresseth himselfe, with Antonius against Cassius and Brutus. They having drawne huge fon;:es to an head, took the selfe-same field which was fatall to ClltEUS Pompeius, where the tokens of their destinated overthrow were not obscure: for the birds which used to gorge themselves upon carion, hoverd about the campe as if it were already theirs. As they marcht out to batel, a black Moore meeting them, was too too plainely a sign foreboding dire successe: and to Brutus himselfe at night, when light beeing brought in, he meditated somewhat, as his maner was, all alone, a certain gloomie Image appeared to him, which being by him demanded what it was, I AM (it said) THINE EVILL SPIRIT, and therewithall vanished out
of his admiring sight. In Cdlsars campe all presages were as much for good, as they were in the other for the bad j birds, & beasts promising alike faire fortune: but nothing was in present more luckie, then that Cdlsars physician was warnd in his sleepe, that Cdlsar should not stay in his owne campe, for that it would be surprised, accordingly as it fel out. For the battels joyning, and the fight maintain'd on both sides with equal manhood for a while, although the Generals were not present, the one withdrawne through sicknesse of bodie 1 and the other for sloth, and feare 2 j yet the unvanquisht fortune both of the revenger, and hee for whom the revenge was undertaken, stood for the side. The danger was as doubtfull at first, and as equal on both parts, as the event of the fight declared: Cdlsars campe taken he ere, and Cassius his campe there. But how much more forceable is fortune then virtue! and how true is that speech in which hee breathed out his last! THAT VER TUE WAS ONLY A VERBAL THING, AND NOT A REAL. Meere mistaking gave away that battell: for when Cassius, a wing of his armies shrinking, saw his owne troops of horse gallop back upon the spurre, after they had taken Cdlsars campe, supposing th~y fled, got himselfe to an hillocke j from whence not being able to discerne what was done by reason of the dust, noise, & night at hand j and when the scout whom hee had emploid for discoverie, staid somewhat long before he returnd, he verily thought the day was lost j and thereupon caused one of them who was next him, to strike off his head. Brutus, when he had in Cassius lost his own life also, not to breake in any point that faith which each of them had plighted to the other, for otherwise they meant not to over-live the battel, laid his side open to the deadly blow of one of his owne companions. Who would not wonder that those most wise men used not their own hands at their last? unlesse in this point also they had a joynt perswasion, not to distaine their hands, but in letting out their most pure, and pious soules they meant the direction should be theirs, but the heinous execution other mens.
