Cæsar, however, was not destined even to set out for Parthia. On March 15 (44 B. C.), the Senate met to take the last measures preparatory to his departure. The place of session was the Senate House which Pompey had built near his theater. Scarcely had Cæsar entered and taken his seat when a throng of about sixty senators gathered round him, pretending to greet him and to offer a petition. They were conspirators who had engaged in a plot for his assassination, through no especial love for the Republic, but for various personal reasons. Many had gained office and wealth under his patronage; but in their greed for greater wealth and political glory they lost all sense of gratitude. The best among them was Marcus Brutus, in his own social circle a philosopher and an idealist, but in business a hard, relentless usurer. Caius Cassius, the brain of the conspiracy, was a plunderer of the provinces and a robber of temples, whom envy drove into the plot. By such men was Cæsar slain. It was a crime perpetrated upon the civilized world, which had to endure thirteen more years of desolating civil war (44-31 B. C.), before Octavius, the young heir to Cæsar, could gain the mastery and bring the empire to peace. This young man, known to history as Augustus, though less brilliant than his granduncle, possessed a far greater degree of practical wisdom. It was he, rather than Cæsar, who gave the Roman world an organization under which it was to enjoy more than two centuries of prosperity and happiness. Viewed in this light, the wisest act of the great Cæsar was the choice of this youth of delicately modeled features and frail body as his son and successor. [Illustration: OCTAVIUS Called “Augustus.” In the Vatican Museum, Rome] [Illustration: MARCUS BRUTUS In the National Museum, Naples. Found at Pompeii] * * * * *