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Immediately various figures rose and approached him offering petitions. This was normal practice now that the debates themselves no longer mattered: they had become instead rare opportunities to give the Dictator something in person. The first to reach him – from the left, both his hands stretched out in supplication – was Tillius Cimber. He was known to be seeking a pardon for his brother, who was in exile. But instead of lifting the hem of Caesar’s toga to kiss it, he suddenly grabbed the folds of fabric around Caesar’s neck and yanked so hard on the thick material that Caesar was pulled sideways, effectively pinioned and unable to move. He shouted angrily, but his voice was half strangled so I couldn’t quite make it out. It sounded something like, ‘But this is violence!’ A moment later, one of the Casca brothers, Publius, strode towards him from the other side and jammed a dagger into Caesar’s exposed neck. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: it was unreal – a play, a dream.

‘Casca, you villain, what are you doing?’ Despite his fifty-five years, the Dictator was still a strong man. Somehow he grabbed the blade of Casca’s dagger with his left hand – he must have torn his fingers to shreds – squirmed free of Cimber’s grasp, then swung round and stabbed Casca in the arm with his stylus. Casca cried in Greek, ‘Help me, brother!’ and an instant later his brother Gaius knifed Caesar in the ribs. The Dictator’s gasp of shock echoed round the chamber. He dropped to his knees. More than twenty toga-clad figures were now stepping up on to the dais and surrounding him. Decimus ran past me to join in. There was a frenzy of stabbing. Senators rose in their places to see what was happening. People have often asked me why none of these hundreds of men, whose fortunes Caesar had made and whose careers he had advanced, attempted to go to his aid. I cannot answer except to say that it was all so fast, so violent and so unexpected, one’s senses were stupefied.

I could no longer see Caesar through the ring of his assailants. I was told afterwards by Cicero, who was closer than I, that by some superhuman effort he briefly regained his feet and tried to break away. But such was the force, the desperate haste and the closeness of the attack that escape was impossible. His assailants even wounded one another. Cassius knifed Brutus in the hand. Minucius Basilus stabbed Rubrius in the thigh. It is said that the Dictator’s last words were a bitter reproach to Decimus, who had tricked him into coming: ‘Even you?’ Perhaps it is true. I wonder, though, how much speech he was capable of by then. Afterwards the doctors counted twenty-three stab wounds on his body.

Their business done, the assassins drew back from what a moment before had been the beating heart of the empire and was now a punctured skein of flesh. Their hands were gloved in blood. Their gory daggers were held aloft. They shouted a few slogans: ‘Liberty!’ ‘Peace!’ ‘The republic!’ Brutus even called out ‘Long live Cicero!’ Then they ran down the aisle and out into the portico, their eyes staring wildly in their excitement, their togas spattered like butchers’ aprons.

The moment they had gone, it was as if a spell had been broken. Pandemonium erupted. Senators clambered over the benches and even over one another in their panic to get away. I was almost trampled in the rush. But I was determined not to leave without Cicero. I ducked and twisted my way through the oncoming press of bodies until I reached him. He was still seated, staring at Caesar’s body, which lay entirely unattended – his slaves having fled – sprawled on its back, its feet pointed towards the base of Pompey’s statue, its head lolling over the edge of the dais, facing the door.

I told Cicero we needed to leave, but he did not seem to hear me. He was staring at the corpse, transfixed. He murmured, ‘No one dares go near him, look.’

One of the Dictator’s shoes had come off; his bare depilated legs were exposed where his toga had ridden up his thighs; his imperial purple was ragged and bloodied; there was a slash across his cheek that exposed the pale bone; his dark eyes seemed to stare, outraged, upside down, at the emptying chamber; blood ran from his wound diagonally across his forehead and dripped on to the white marble.

All those details I see today as clearly as I saw them forty years ago, and for an instant there flashed into my mind the prophecy of the sibyl: that Rome would be ruled by three, then two, then one, and finally by none. It took an effort for me to drag my gaze away, to seize Cicero by the arm and pull him to his feet. Finally, like a sleepwalker, he allowed himself to be led from the scene, and together we made our way out into the daylight.

XIV