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When Caesar entered, the senate stood up to show their respect to him, and of Brutus's confederates, some came about his chair and stood behind it, others met him, pretending to add their petitions to those of Tillius Cimber, in behalf of his brother, who was in exile; and they followed him with their joint supplications till he came to his seat.
Tullius Cimber, whom he had just made governor of Bithynia, then came close to him, with some request which he was unwilling to grant. Cimber caught his gown, as if in entreaty, and dragged it from his shoulders. Cassius, who was standing behind, stabbed him in the throat. He started up with a cry, and caught Cassius's arm. Another poniard entered his breast, giving a mortal wound.
Cassias and Cimber and Cinna rushed upon him with their daggers drawn, and the former succeeded in inflicting a wound upon his body; but before he could strike again, and before either of the others could strike at all, Caesar stretched the three miscreants at his feet with as many blows of his powerful fist.
Cæsar at the first simply refused their kindness and entreaties: but afterwards, perceiving they still pressed on him, he violently thrust them from him. Then Cimber with both his hands plucked Cæsar's gown over his shoulders, and Casca that stood behind him, drew his dagger first, and struck Cæsar upon the shoulder, but gave him no great wound.
Cimber, to judge from Cicero's invective, was suspected of having risen from servile parentage, and of trying, as freedmen then frequently did, to pass as a descendant of some unfortunate barbarian prince. Vergil seems to imply that the brogue as well as the name Cimber had been assumed to hide his Asiatic parentage.
I. 10, 43; Carm. The reference here, too, must have been to Antony. The circle was clearly in harmony in their political views. The two creatures of Antony attacked by Cicero and Vergil alike are Ventidius and Annius Cimber.
Billy Trebonius got into conversation with the people's friend and Caesar's Mark Antony and under some pretense or other got him away, and Brutus, Decius, Casca, Cinna, Metellus Cimber, and others of the gang of infamous desperadoes that infest Rome at present, closed around the doomed Caesar.
The conspirators came to terms with him, and were even entertained by him, and received the provinces which he assigned to them. Brutus received Macedonia; Cassius, Syria; Trebonius, Asia; Cimber, Bythinia; and Decimus, Cisalpine Gaul. Dolabella was his colleague in the consulship,—a personal enemy, yet committed to his policy.
Some of Brutus' accomplices came up behind his chair, and others before it, pretending to intercede, along with Metillius Cimber, for the recall of his brother from exile. They continued their instances till he came to his seat. When he was seated he gave them a positive denial; and as they continued their importunities with an air of compulsion, he grew angry.
The second point seems to be that Cimber, though a teacher of rhetoric, was so ignorant of Greek, that while proclaiming himself an Atticist, he used non-Attic forms and vaunted Thucydides instead of Lysias as the model of the simple style. Finally, it was rumored, and Cicero affects to believe the tale, that Cimber was not without guilt in the death of his brother.
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