Cæsar triumphed a fifth time over Spain. Very many and high honours were decreed him by the senate; among others, that he should be styled Father of his country, and Sacred, and also that he should be perpetual dictator, [y. r. 708. b. c. 44.] It afforded cause of odium against him, that he rose not to the senate when conferring these honours on him, as he was sitting before the shrine of Venus Genetrix; and that he laid aside on a chair the diadem, placed on his head, by his colleague in the consulship, Marcus Antonius, who was running among the Lupercalians, and that the magistracies were taken away from Epidius Marullus and Cassetius Flavus, the tribunes of the people, who excited envy against him for aiming at the imperial dignity. For these reasons, a conspiracy was formed against him; the chiefs of which were, Marcus Brutus and Caius Cassius, with two of his own partisans, Decimus Brutus and Caius Trebonius. He was slain in Pompey’sPg 2207 senate-house with three-and-twenty wounds; and the Capitol was seized on by his murderers. An act of amnesty having been passed by the senate in relation to his murder, and the children of Antony and Lepidus having been taken as hostages, the conspirators came down from the Capitol. Octavius, Cæsar’s nephew, was by his will made heir of half his possessions. Cæsar’s body was burnt by the people, in the Campus Martius, opposite the rostrum. The office of dictator was abolished for ever. Caius Amatius, one of the lowest of the people, giving himself out for the son of Caius Marius, having excited some seditious movements among the credulous vulgar, was slain.