316 MARCUS BRUTUS. Btancy ; at which he being astonished, hfted up his hands to heaven, and begged the assistance of the gods in his enterprise, that he might show himself a husband worthy of such a wife as Porcia. So then he comforted his wife. But a meeting of the senate being appointed, at which it was believed that Ca3sar would be present, they agreed to make use of that opportunit}' : for then they might appear all together without suspicion ; and, besides, they hoped that all the noblest and leading men of the com- monwealth, being then assembled, as soon as the great deed was done, would immediately stand forward, and assert the common liberty. The very place, too, where the senate was to meet, seemed to be by divine appointr ment favorable to their purpose. It was a portico, one of those joining the theatre, with a large recess,* in which there stood a statue of Pompey, erected to him by the commonwealth, when he adorned that part of the city with the porticos and the theatre. To this place it was that the senate was summoned for the middle of March (the Ides of March is the Eoman name for the day) ; as if some more than human power were leading the man thither, there to meet his pvmishment for the death of Pompey. As soon as it was day, Brutus, taking with him a dagger, which none but his wife knew of, went out. The rest met together at Cassius's house, and brought forth his son, that was that day to put on the manly gown, as it is called, into the forum ; and from thence, going all to Pompey's porch, stayed there, expecting
- An exedra. These were cham- They might be said to correspond
bars or saloons attached to colon- to modem reading-rooms, and were nades and porticos, as, for example, used by the lecturers in rhetoric and to those which surrounded the great philosophy. For Pompey's famous buildings for pulilic amusements, theatre, see his Life, in Vol. IV., p. called the thermic, from the baths, 101, and a note at the end of the which formed but one part of them, volume.
