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A MURDER, BOMBING AND EXCURSION AMONG DOLMENS Duncan Caldwell © 1996 Duncan Caldwell The forecourt & “manhole” of an allée couverte megalithic tomb near Paris Although the excursion to the Neolithic tombs of the Vexin region, northwest of Paris, by France's specialists in the Neolithic didn't start with the murder, it got off to a bad start. As the coach veered onto a highway, passengers in the back shouted that the box with our lunches was still on the curb. The bus lurched to a halt and the area’s chief archaeologist darted from the front seat beside me to face down trucks and retrieve our picnics. Flustered, we set forth again. Having much to learn and being new to this crowd, I’d enthroned myself in the point position to drink in new landscapes, unaware that it would be ideally positioned to converse with the country’s greatest authority on mortuary customs at the dawn of agriculture. Still, I kept my peace as high-rises gave way to fields and the bus trundled towards what we were told would be a well-preserved allée couverte or "covered alley" - in other words, a 6,500 year-old box of gigantic stone slabs erected in a trench, whereas true dolmens – or megalithic box graves - were built on the surface, and then buried under a tumulus. Guiry-en-Vexin, where the tomb is embedded in a ridge overlooking orchards and a village dominated by a chateau, was one of the few places I had been evicted from land while prospecting for prehistoric vestiges. A tattered gamekeeper had nabbed me along with a friend and herded us through rows of sprouts towards a Jaguar hidden within a tree line, mumbling that he had to do it because his lord had his binoculars trained on us. The vigilant aristocrat was costumed in "country" tweeds and accosted me with matching hauteur and severity, only to be caught off guard by my foreign accent, smiling greeting and stretched hand - such blithe innocence and egalitarian presumption! Still, there was a certain satisfaction in bagging such nervy and exotic game as myself, so he let us off with a duel of barbed wit, which I fought sportingly, though it was prudent to lose. Still, I was glad to be coming back under official auspices. When we arrived, the covered alley's roofed chamber and forecourt of giant slabs were webbed with surveyor's string, but we ducked the filaments to examine twinned protuberances above raised crescents on boulders standing upright on either side of a "manhole" entrance. Here, in relief, were the Neolithic goddess’s eroded breasts and necklaces: one of a long series of female supernaturals who had reigned in various emanations from the Fertile Crescent to the Atlantic from the Aurignacian, 35,000 years ago, to at least the end of the Neolithic, 4,500 years ago, and even later on island redoubts in the Mediterranean. The images of these supernaturals range from a few dozen 25,000-year-old Gravettian “venuses”, such as the famous one from Willendorf, to the stocky matrons of Catal Huyuk and Malta, 20,000 years later - and yet such feminine imagery is so rarely found in French Neolithic sites that this was a treat. After crawling into the chamber where the deity’s wards had lain pell-mell in her community of death, the pensive company returned to our vehicles mulling ancient profundities - only to be confronted by a vigilante furiously scribbling down license plates. "I'm calling the gendarmes," shouted the mayor's tall brother in his gray suit, "I don't care if that thing is a national monument and you are on one of your official visits, the shoulder is municipal, not national, property!" We all scrambled aboard the coach and ogled the altercation through its tinted windows like cowed aquarium fish, to see if our guide could save the day again. Finally, he seemed to win us a moment's grace - or at least a head start - and jumped aboard, spurring the driver to step on it, while leaning forward, gripping the rail. "Why," I ventured, after we had put some distance behind us, "is the mayor's family harassing the staff of the very museum that put their village on the map?" "Well," the great prehistorian turned to me beleagueredly, "actually the present mayor isn't the mayor who invited us to build the museum in Guiry. He's our sponsor's opponent and is allied to this nobleman" (the nobleman!) "who bought the chateau a few years ago and tipped the following election by winning over a few large families. Now the nobleman's pet mayor is so opposed to his predecessor's legacy that he calls meetings empowered to expropriate property for the precise hours that the museum is inaugurating an exhibition, just to make sure nobody dares attend openings." Damned, if they weren’t trying to smoke the archeologists out of their hole! We made haste down the length of a plateau that forms the spine of the Vexin region. Our route lay parallel to an equally straight Roman road, the Chaussée de Jules César, heading for the river Epte, and the English Channel beyond it. That ancient military road had once strung together a series of Roman farms, which had vanished except for concentrations of shards. Further out, along the plateau's edges, the savannah of wheat also hid scatterings of flint where Neolithic camps had overlooked valleys. Everything had been swept under vast rugs of greenery. Ahead lay the next covered alley - "La Bellée" at Boury-en-Vexin. The coach brushed crops aside as it trundled incongruously along lanes too narrow for its chromed monstrosity, but so much isolation and verdure promised safety from civilization's sour notes. Finally, the copse harboring the megaliths arose from an approaching ridge. But, oddly, a blue car was parked across the dirt road. A cop car? What with spy satellites and cellular phones, the world had just gotten too quick for us. Still, we disembarked in a milling throng, hoping to brazen it out. But the stone-faced policeman neither budged nor arrested us. All he did was make it painfully clear that nobody but nobody was going to take a step forward. But why? He ignored all queries. Our permits meant nothing. We strained to discern what was going on. Among the trees, men in lab coats ferreted around the giant slabs. Our cop's radio crackled and we made out.... that there was a bullet-ridden body inside! Dumped? A suicide? Maybe not! And the cop wasn't even arresting us? Wasn't it a bit too coincidental that an entire coach-load of bone analysts had appeared - for the first official visit of the allée couverte in 75 years - when the funeral monument’s contents had just been refreshed? If this plot had been written by Agatha Christie, the constabulary would have rounded up the whole scruffy lot of us and quarantined our band in a chateau, even as the perpetrator continued to strike, reducing our numbers, until some shrewd detective or coolly analytical archaeologist broke the case while there were still enough suspects to make it worth his while. Luckily the guard didn't realize the obvious as we made our second get-away. "La Bellée" at Boury-en-Vexin – without any modern corpses The accumulation of events was growing so bizarre that it smelled fishily like fate was ripening aboard our bus like a heady cheese. Everyone grinned uneasily and began to exchange egregious wisecracks, breaking the last ice between us. Our bus had become the Flying Dutchman - and we its crew! Next stop was for lunch: a picnic in a tame municipal park beside the Seine. The chateau from which Rommel had directed Nazi counter-attacks during the Battle of Normandy loomed above the sliver of a town on la Roche-Guyon – Guyon Rock. Our plastic trays laden with roast beef, grated vegetables and mounds of mayonnaise were laid out on a parapet. But where were the forks and knives? Forgotten! A lucky few gnawed morsels off the tips of their jackknives - but the rest of us had to prune twigs from the municipal plantings and whittle chopsticks. Soon we were eating Chinese-style and climbed back on the bus like a plague of locusts, having stripped the bushes. The next two visits to mortuary monuments were actually uneventful (if you don't count the fact that the bus drove away at the first one so as to give any gendarmes a moving target, and that inventive vandals had painted and fired upon a bull’s-eye dead center on the standing stone at the end of the second covered alley). Basically, though, we were able to concentrate again on faint engravings, constricting budgets, dating cultures and splitting archaeological hairs, and, so, we had recovered some of our air of professionalism as we headed for the last stop, a complex of three covered alleys that had become my own stomping ground. When the band poured out onto the shoulder on the plateau above Presles-Courcelles in the Oise region and began consulting maps, I struck out ahead. Over here I'd found a polished axe crackled by an ancient fire, and, there, that whitish spot in a field was a fossil outcropping. Here again, as I briskly set the pace, a farmer had tried hiding a funerary alley under a huge manure heap, - and, oh yes, over there, by the copse we were approaching, my little daughter had curled up in the grass beside a field to take a nap next to a stone that looked like a pillow. A Neolithic grinding bowl. Which, when flipped, turned out to have a silken polishing basin, or portable polissoir, for polishing stone axes. I thought of it as the perfect tool for a couple: at the risk of stereotyping prehistoric sexual roles, a Neolithic woman could have ground grain into gritty flour on her side of the same stone that her men-folk polished their axes. I had noticed from examining fragments that such dual usage of sandstone slabs had been so common as to be almost the norm, and fantasized that such tools might have meant as much as wedding rings. Our guide caught up and I asked him if he had probed the land that had recently become an adjacent golf course before giving authorization for bulldozing which had "landscaped" the area. I just wondered because I'd checked out the gouged and banked devastation and quickly happened upon a big celt and other highly refined tools just where you'd expect a prehistoric habitation, a stone's throw from the megalithic tomb, which had escaped destruction in the adjacent forest. He looked downcast and explained that political pressure had been so intense that he hadn't even dared enter the property. In fact, he said the regional archaeological service had had an exhibit in a large chamber beside their offices and had received instructions from the local politicos at about the same time to box it up - just for the weekend. The politicians explained that they needed the space for a "cultural event". But afterwards, when the archaeologists began bringing the relics out of storage, they were told the space was no longer theirs. "You can't believe how beleaguered we are by the alliances of political parties and builders," the researcher said, "We were even forced out of our offices themselves." As we entered the woods, we crossed a low earthwork which I speculated might be a remnant of a Neolithic ritual enclosure, given its length, positioning, and the importance of the covered alley on the plateau's headland. Speculating further, I inquired if he'd ever checked these woods for other megalithic tombs. No, nobody had done so, he admitted. “Why don’t we do it together sometime?” he suggested. Then, crunching dead leaves in the late afternoon gloom, we arrived: a giant boulder chamber called "La Pierre Plate" crouched in its trench amid a vandalized fence, overgrowth and stirring trees. The "manhole" into this stone box had been carefully carved to contain a huge stone plug with an arched loop on one face - unnervingly like a 300-pound bathtub stopper. We crept through and squatted under one of the tomb's slabs to run our fingers along silken grooves and basins. The slab was another polissoir - this time a gigantic one that had been turned upside-down! Obviously the tomb’s makers had flipped it over to form the roof just as their Neolithic brethren had done at another covered alley at Janville-sur-Juine. Such reuse of polissoirs intrigued me, and I suspected that it was not entirely coincidental, either in France or in other prehistoric cultures. For example, polishing basins are still visible on the backs of some of the largest Olmec heads, clearly showing that the heads were not made out of random boulders or blocks which had been quarried to order, but may have been reused polissors which had already acquired importance. In fact, the reuse of polissoirs in Neolithic cultures reminded me of the way Christianity built on the site of Roman temples or the way Islam converted the Aghia Sophia cathedral into a mosque. In any case, it seemed fitting that the Olmecs had transformed those most communal and utilitarian of stone artifacts - large polissoirs - into portraits of the first individuals to impose truly royal authority over their community. I wondered if there were examples of such reuse of polishing platforms in the rise of the first kingdoms elsewhere. But now, the coach had to return, so everyone went off with it - except five diehards who were not about to quit while we were so close to the biggest Neolithic edifice in the region: a covered alley called the Pierre Turquaise, which hunkered in the forest just across the valley. Its megalithic chamber is so big that an 18th century nobleman used it as a kennel for his pack of hounds. As we hiked to it through the twilight, I made out a large charred spot on the roof stone. "Why, it’s been vandalized!" I cried, "someone's made a bonfire on the main slab!" Inside the Pierre Turquaise, not long after it was used as a kennel "It was an explosion," dropped an archaeologist from another jurisdiction, who was hiking beside me. "What do you mean, an explosion! You know?" "Actually, a bomb," she admitted. "A BOMB! Why wasn't it in the papers?" "It was kept secret. In fact, it was the Iranian-backed terrorists back in '86. They tested a bomb here before they killed all those people in restaurants and outside the Tati department store. The powder residues were identical to those from the terrorist bombs in Paris. In any case, the main slab was shattered. Check it out: it was reconstructed out of fragments, resin, and reinforced concrete. But the standing stone at the entrance with the carving of the Neolithic goddess was pulverized." The Pierre Turquaise, 80 years before it was blown up by terrorists So that's where she'd gone! I had searched for her in vain! I scratched the roof slab and, sure enough, it was a composite. But why on earth would archaeologists, police and other government officials have kept so discreet about this politically inexcusable vandalism as to make it all but secret? Not only had the terrorists committed random murder, but they had ignored thousands of square kilometers of empty fields, forests and abandoned quarries and purposefully sought out the most important local vestige of humanity's common prehistoric heritage - an edifice without any ties to our world's current ideologies and strife! As far as I was concerned, the Iranians could talk all they wanted about exacting revenge and exerting pressure on France to stop aiding Iraq during the Iraqi-Iranian War, but this had nothing to do with that. These terrorists had shown their scorn for any notion of human community by destroying the most imposing evidence they could find of a past that predates all modern hatreds and anchors everybody to common roots. That, it seemed to me, distilled their shamelessness as much as their wanton murders. But why the “discretion”? Because France was already negotiating with Iran and sought to quash non-lethal incidents that might exacerbate the public's fury? No, there'd been too many people in the know; I thought it was probably because of another phenomenon: namely, the fact that many French people enjoy guarding a juicy but open secret - open, at least, to the elite - that proves they are included in a charmed circle. For example, everyone "in the know" knew about President Mitterrand's "second" family and "natural" daughter, but none of the journalists in the loop breathed a word about it to the rabble. Or else, might it have been due to another phenomenon illustrated by an anecdote that a reporter had just told me: he'd wanted to write about the plight of mountain gorillas in Rwanda amid mines, genocide, anarchy and unleashed poachers, but his employer, a powerful press agency, quashed the article because a story about the plight of mere "animals", when millions of people were being ruthlessly hunted, was seen as being in bad taste. How perverse we moderns are, I thought, with our brutal ideologies, gloating secrecy, and hypocritical compassion. Mulling such raw notions, I announced I could find my own way to a train station and, splitting from the group, set off through the forest to relocate a row of giant slabs that I’d found years before in a mound of irises. Animals had tunneled all around the stones into the hollows below. Night fell as I stood on top of what I hoped was a still untouched monument from the depths of time. The forest stirred. And complications fell away. The Pierre Turquaise intact © 1996 Duncan Caldwell  Prehistory home page  The Foz Coa / Coa Valley prehistoric rock art scandal “World's Oldest Optical Illusion Found?” - National Geographic article by Andrew Howley about Duncan Caldwell’s discovery of the world’s oldest known intentional optical illusion (Dec. 22, 2010)  Prehistoric Art Emergency & Foz Coa / Coa Valley home page  The “prey-mother” hypothesis concerning Paleolithic feminine imagery & venus figurines The Neanderthal / Neandertal insulation hypothesis concerning Neanderthal adaptations to cold, diets, behavior & extinction Baby slings & human evolution: The baby-sling hypothesis concerning immunological and fur distribution adaptations among juvenile hominids & human evolution PDF: The First Paleolithic Animal Sculpture in the Ile-de-France and its Ramifications - Accepted for presentation at the IFRAO Congress on Pleistocene art of the world, 6 - 11 Sept. 2010. PDF: Supernatural Pregnancies: Common features and new ideas concerning Upper Paleolithic feminine imagery. 2010. Arts & Cultures, Barbier-Mueller Museum Key words: Neolithic funerary monuments, dolmen, dolmens, Neolithic funerary practices, Neolithic mortuary practices, Prehistoric funerary rituals, French prehistoric sites, Prehistoric sites in France, Vandalism,

Caroline's Miscellany: Postman's Park Thank you so much Caroline for your amazing facts! I am having such an interesting time reading about postman's park. Thank you! …

The adjustment of the calendar, however, and the correction of the irregularity in the computation of time, were not only studied scientifically by him, but also brought to completion, and proved to be of the highest utility. For not only in very ancient times was the relation of the lunar to the solar year in great confusion among the Romans, so that the sacrificial feasts and festivals, diverging gradually, at last fell in opposite seasons of the year, but also at this time people generally had no way of computing the actual solar year; the priests alone knew the proper time, and would suddenly and to everybody's surprise insert the intercalary month called Mercedonius. Numa the king is said to have been the first to intercalate this month, thus devising a slight and short-lived remedy for the error in regard to the sidereal and solar cycles, as I have told in his Life. But Caesar laid the problem before the best philosophers and mathematicians, and out of the methods of correction which were already at hand compounded one of his own which was more accurate than any. This the Romans use down to the present time, and are thought to be less in error than other peoples as regards the inequality between the lunar and solar years. However, even this furnished occasion for blame to those who envied Caesar and disliked his power. At any rate, Cicero the orator, we are told, when some one remarked that Lyra would rise on the morrow, said: "Yes, by decree," implying that men were compelled to accept even this dispensation.

But the most open and deadly hatred towards him was produced by his passion for the royal power. For the multitude this was a first cause of hatred, and for those who had long smothered their hate, a most specious pretext for it. And yet those who were advocating this honour for Caesar actually spread abroad among the people a report that from the Sibylline books it appeared that Parthia could be taken if the Romans went up against it with a king, but otherwise could not be assailed; and as Caesar was coming down from Alba into the city they ventured to hail him as king. But at this the people were confounded, and Caesar, disturbed in mind, said that his name was not King, but Caesar, and seeing that his words produced an universal silence, he passed on with no very cheerful or contented looks. Moreover, after sundry extravagant honours had been voted him in the senate, it chanced that he was sitting above the rostra, and as the praetors and consuls drew near, with the whole senate following them, he did not rise to receive them, but as if he were dealing with mere private persons, replied that his honours needed curtailment rather than enlargement. This vexed not only the senate, but also the people, who felt that in the persons of the senators the state was insulted, and in a terrible dejection they went away at once, all who were not obliged to remain, so that Caesar too, when he was aware of his mistake, immediately turned to go home, and drawing back his toga from his neck, cried in loud tones to his friends that he was ready to offer his throat to any one who wished to kill him. But afterwards he made his disease an excuse for his behaviour, saying that the senses of those who are thus afflicted do not usually remain steady when they address a multitude standing, but are speedily shaken and whirled about, bringing on giddiness and insensibility. However, what he said was not true; on the contrary, he was very desirous of rising to receive the senate; but one of his friends, as they say, or rather one of his flatterers, Cornelius Balbus, restrained him, saying: "Remember that thou art Caesar, and permit thyself to be courted as a superior."

There was added to these causes of offence his insult to the tribunes. It was, namely, the festival of the Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped to an easy delivery, and the barren to pregnancy. These ceremonies Caesar was witnessing, seated upon the rostra on a golden throne, arrayed in triumphal attire. And Antony was one of the runners in the sacred race; for he was consul. Accordingly, after he had dashed into the forum and the crowd had made way for him, he carried a diadem, round which a wreath of laurel was tied, and held it out to Caesar. Then there was applause, not loud, but slight and preconcerted. But when Caesar pushed away the diadem, all the people applauded; and when Antony offered it again, few, and when Caesar declined it again, all, applauded. The experiment having thus failed, Caesar rose from his seat, after ordering the wreath to be carried up to the Capitol; but then his statues were seen to have been decked with royal diadems. So two of the tribunes, Flavius and Maryllus, went up to them and pulled off the diadems, and after discovering those who had first hailed Caesar as king, led them off to prison. Moreover, the people followed the tribunes with applause and called them Brutuses, because Brutus was the man who put an end to the royal succession and brought the power into the hands of the senate and people instead of a sole ruler. At this, Caesar was greatly vexed, and deprived Maryllus and Flavius of their office, while in his denunciation of them, although he at the same time insulted the people, he called them repeatedly Brutes and Cymaeans.

Under these circumstances the multitude turned their thoughts towards Marcus Brutus, who was thought to be a descendant of the elder Brutus on his father's side, on his mother's side belonged to the Servilii, another illustrious house, and was a son-in‑law and nephew of Cato. The desires which Brutus felt to attempt of his own accord the abolition of the monarchy were blunted by the favours and honours that he had received from Caesar. For not only had his life been spared at Pharsalus after Pompey's flight, and the lives of many of his friends at his entreaty, but also he had great credit with Caesar. He had received the most honourable of the praetorships for the current year, and was to be consul three years later, having been preferred to Cassius, who was a rival candidate. For Caesar, as we are told, said that Cassius urged the juster claims to the office, but that for his own part he could not pass Brutus by. Once, too, when certain persons were actually accusing Brutus to him, the conspiracy being already on foot, Caesar would not heed them, but laying his hand upon his body said to the accusers: "Brutus will wait for this shrivelled skin," implying that Brutus was worthy to rule because of his virtue, but that for the sake of ruling he would not become a thankless villain. Those, however, who were eager for the change, and fixed their eyes on Brutus alone, or on him first, did not venture to talk with him directly, but by night they covered his praetorial tribune and chair with writings, most of which were of this sort: "Thou art asleep, Brutus," or, "Thou art not Brutus." When Cassius perceived that the ambition of Brutus was somewhat stirred by these things, he was more urgent with him than before, and pricked him on, having himself also some private grounds for hating Caesar; these I have mentioned in the Life of Brutus. Moreover, Caesar actually suspected him, so that he once said to his friends: "What, think ye, doth Cassius want? I like him not over much, for he is much too pale." And again, we are told that when Antony and Dolabella were accused to him of plotting revolution, Caesar said: "I am not much in fear of these fat, long-haired fellows, but rather of those pale, thin ones," meaning Brutus and Cassius.

But destiny, it would seem, is not so much unexpected as it is unavoidable, since they say that amazing signs and apparitions were seen. Now, as for lights in the heavens, crashing sounds borne all about by night, and birds of omen coming down into the forum, it is perhaps not worth while to mention these precursors of so great an event; but Strabo the philosopher says that multitudes of men all on fire were seen rushing up, and a soldier's slave threw from his hand a copious flame and seemed to the spectators to be burning, but when the flame ceased the man was uninjured; he says, moreover, pthat when Caesar himself was sacrificing, the heart of the victim was not to be found, and the prodigy caused fear, since in the course of nature, certainly, an animal without a heart could not exist. The following story, too, is told by many. A certain seer warned Caesar to be on his guard against a great peril on the day of the month of March which the Romans call the Ides; and when the day had come and Caesar was on his way to the senate-house, he greeted the seer with a jest and said: "Well, the Ides of March are come," and the seer said to him softly: "Ay, they are come, but they are not gone." Moreover, on the day before, when Marcus Lepidus was entertaining him at supper, Caesar chanced to be signing letters, as his custom was, while reclining at table, and the discourse turned suddenly upon the question what sort of death was the best; before any one could answer Caesar cried out: "That which is unexpected." After this, while he was sleeping as usual by the side of his wife, all the windows and doors of the chamber flew open at once, and Caesar, confounded by the noise and the light of the moon shining down upon him, noticed that Calpurnia was in a deep slumber, but was uttering indistinct words and inarticulate groans in her sleep; for she dreamed, as it proved, that she was holding her murdered husband in her arms and bewailing him.

Some, however, say that this was not the vision which the woman had; but that there was attached to Caesar's house to give it adornment and distinction, by vote of the senate, a gable-ornament,º as Livy says, and it was this which Calpurnia in her dreams saw torn down, and therefore, as she thought, wailed and wept. At all events, when day came, she begged Caesar, if it was possible, not to go out, but to postpone the meeting of the senate; if, however, he had no concern at all for her dreams, she besought him to inquire by other modes of divination and by sacrifices concerning the future. And Caesar also, as it would appear, was in some suspicion and fear. For never before had he perceived in Calpurnia any womanish superstition, but now he saw that she was in great distress. And when the seers also, after many sacrifices, told him that the omens were unfavourable, he resolved to send Antony and dismiss the senate.

But at this juncture Decimus Brutus, surnamed Albinus, who was so trusted by Caesar that he was entered in his will as his second heir, but was partner in the conspiracy of the other Brutus and Cassius, fearing that if Caesar should elude that day, their undertaking would become known, ridiculed the seers and chided Caesar for laying himself open to malicious charges on the part of the senators, who would think themselves mocked at; for they had met at his bidding, and were ready and willing to vote as one man that he should be declared king of the provinces outside of Italy, and might wear a diadem when he went anywhere else by land or sea; but if some one should tell them at their session to be gone now, but to come back again when Calpurnia should have better dreams, what speeches would be made by his enemies, or who would listen to his friends when they tried to show that this was not slavery and tyranny? But if he was fully resolved (Albinus said) to regard the day as inauspicious, it was better that he should go in person and address the senate, and then postpone its business. While saying these things Brutus took Caesar by the hand and began to lead him along. And he had gone but a little way from his door when a slave belonging to some one else, eager to get at Caesar, but unable to do so for the press of numbers about him, forced his way into the house, gave himself into the hands of Calpurnia, and bade her keep him secure until Caesar came back, since he had important matters to report to him.

Furthermore, Artemidorus, a Cnidian by birth, a teacher of Greek philosophy, and on this account brought into intimacy with some of the followers of Brutus, so that he also knew most of what they were doing, came bringing to Caesar in a small roll the disclosures which he was going to make; but seeing that Caesar took all such rolls and handed them to his attendants, he came quite near, and said: "Read this, Caesar, by thyself, and speedily; for it contains matters of importance and of concern to thee." Accordingly, Caesar took the roll and would have read it, but was prevented by the multitude of people who engaged his attention, although he set out to do so many times, and holding in his hand and retaining that roll alone, he passed on into the senate. Some, however, say that another person gave him this roll, and that Artemidorus did not get to him at all, but was crowded away all along the route.

So far, perhaps, these things may have happened of their own accord; the place, however, which was the scene of that struggle and murder, and in which the senate was then assembled, since it contained a statue of Pompey and had been dedicated by Pompey as an additional ornament to his theatre, made it wholly clear that it was the work of some heavenly power which was calling and guiding the action thither. Indeed, it is also said that Cassius, turning his eyes toward the statue of Pompey before the attack began, invoked it silently, although he was much addicted to the doctrines of Epicurus; but the crisis, as it would seem, when the dreadful attempt was now close at hand, replaced his former cool calculations with divinely inspired emotion.

Well, then, Antony, who was a friend of Caesar's and a robust man, was detained outside by Brutus Albinus, who purposely engaged him in a lengthy conversation; but Caesar went in, and the senate rose in his honour. Some of the partisans of Brutus took their places round the back of Caesar's chair, while others went to meet him, as though they would support the petition which Tullius Cimber presented to Caesar in behalf of his exiled brother, and they joined their entreaties to his and accompanied Caesar up to his chair. But when, after taking his seat, Caesar continued to repulse their petitions, and, as they pressed upon him with greater importunity, began to show anger towards one and another of them, Tullius seized his toga with both hands and pulled it down from his neck. This was the signal for the assault. It was Casca who gave him the first blow with his dagger, in the neck, not a mortal wound, nor even a deep one, for which he was too much confused, as was natural at the beginning of a deed of great daring; so that Caesar turned about, grasped the knife, and held it fast. At almost the same instant both cried out, the smitten man in Latin: "Accursed Casca, what does thou?" and the smiter, in Greek, to his brother: "Brother, help!"

So the affair began, and those who were not privy to the plot were filled with consternation and horror at what was going on; they dared not fly, nor go to Caesar's help, nay, nor even utter a word. But those who had prepared themselves for the murder bared each of them his dagger, and Caesar, hemmed in on all sides, whichever way he turned confronting blows of weapons aimed at his face and eyes, driven hither and thither like a wild beast, was entangled in the hands of all; for all had to take part in the sacrifice and taste of the slaughter. Therefore Brutus also gave him one blow in the groin. And it is said by some writers that although Caesar defended himself against the rest and darted this way and that and cried aloud, when he saw that Brutus had drawn his dagger, he pulled his toga down over his head and sank, either by chance or because pushed there by his murderers, against the pedestal on which the statue of Pompey stood. And the pedestal was drenched with his blood, so that one might have thought that Pompey himself was presiding over this vengeance upon his enemy, who now lay prostrate at his feet, quivering from a multitude of wounds. For it is said that he received twenty-three; and many of the conspirators were wounded by one another, as they struggled to plant all those blows in one body.

Caesar thus done to death, the senators, although Brutus came forward as if to say something about what had been done, would not wait to hear him, but burst out of doors and fled, thus filling the people with confusion and helpless fear, so that some of them closed their houses, while others left their counters and places of business and ran, first to the place to see what had happened, then away from the place when they had seen. Antony and Lepidus, the chief friends of Caesar, stole away and took refuge in the houses of others. But Brutus and his partisans, just as they were, still warm from the slaughter, displaying their daggers bare, went all in a body out of the senate-house and marched to the Capitol, not like fugitives, but with glad faces and full of confidence, summoning the multitude to freedom, and welcoming into their ranks the most distinguished of those who met them. Some also joined their number and went up with them as though they had shared in the deed, and laid claim to the glory of it, of whom were Caius Octavius and Lentulus Spinther. These men, then, paid the penalty for their imposture later, when they were put to death by Antony and the young Caesar, without even enjoying the fame for the sake of which they died, owing to the disbelief of their fellow men. For even those who punished them did not exact a penalty for what they did, but for what they wished they had done.

On the next day Brutus came down and held a discourse, and the people listened to what was said without either expressing resentment at what had been done or appearing to approve of it; they showed, however, by their deep silence, that while they pitied Caesar, they respected Brutus. The senate, too, trying to make a general amnesty and reconciliation, voted to give Caesar divine honours and not to disturb even the most insignificant measure which he had adopted when in power; while to Brutus and his partisans it distributed provinces and gave suitable honours, so that everybody thought that matters were decided and settled in the best possible manner.

But when the will of Caesar was opened and it was found that he had given every Roman citizen a considerable gift, and when the multitude saw his body carried through the forum all disfigured with its wounds, they no longer kept themselves within the restraints of order and discipline, but after heaping round the body benches, railings, and tables from the forum they set fire to them and burned it there; then, lifting blazing brands on high, they ran to the houses of the murderers with intent to burn them down, while others went every whither through the city seeking to seize the men themselves and tear them to pieces. Not one of these came in their way, but all were well barricaded. There was a certain Cinna, however, one of the friends of Caesar, who chanced, as they say, to have seen during the previous night a strange vision. He dreamed, that is, that he was invited to supper by Caesar, and that when he excused himself, Caesar led him along by the hand, although he did not wish to go, but resisted. Now, when he heard that they were burning the body of Caesar in the forum, he rose up and went thither out of respect, although he had misgivings arising from his vision, and was at the same time in a fever. At sight of him, one of the multitude told his name to another who asked him what it was, and he to another, and at once word ran through the whole throng that this man was one of the murderers of Caesar. For there was among the conspirators a man who bore this same name of Cinna, and assuming this man was he, the crowd rushed upon him and tore him in pieces among them. This more than anything else made Brutus and Cassius afraid, and not many days afterwards they withdrew from the city. What they did and suffered before they died, has been told in the Life of Brutus.

At the time of his death Caesar was fully fifty-six years old, but he had survived Pompey not much more than four years, while of the power and dominion which he had sought all his life at so great risks, and barely achieved at last, of this he had reaped no fruit but the name of it only, and a glory which had awakened envy on the part of his fellow citizens. However, the great guardian-genius of the man, whose help he had enjoyed through life, followed upon him even after death as an avenger of his murder, driving and tracking down his slayers over every land and sea until not one of them was left, but even those who in any way soever either put hand to the deed or took part in the plot were punished.

Among events of man's ordering, the most amazing was that which befell Cassius; for after his defeat at Philippi he slew himself with that very dagger which he had used against Caesar; and among events of divine ordering, there was the great comet, which showed itself in great splendour for seven nights after Caesar's murder, and then disappeared; also, the obscuration of the sun's rays. For during all that year its orb rose pale and without radiance, while the heat that came down from it was slight and ineffectual, so that the air in its circulation was dark and heavy owing to the feebleness of the warmth that penetrated it, and the fruits, imperfect and half ripe, withered away and shrivelled up on account of the coldness of the atmosphere. But more than anything else the phantom that appeared to Brutus showed that the murder of Caesar was not pleasing to the gods; and it was on this wise. As he was about to take his army across from Abydos to the other continent, he was lying down at night, as his custom was, in his tent, not sleeping, but thinking of the future; for it is said that of all generals Brutus was least given to sleep, and that he naturally remained awake a longer time than anybody else. And now he thought he heard a noise at the door, and looking towards the light of the lamp, which was slowly going out, he saw a fearful vision of a man of unnatural size and harsh aspect. At first he was terrified, but when he saw that the visitor neither did nor said anything, but stood in silence by his couch, he asked him who he was. Then the phantom answered him: "I am thy evil genius, Brutus, and thou shalt see me at Philippi." At the time, then, Brutus said courageously: "I shall see thee;" and the heavenly visitor at once went away. Subsequently, however, when arrayed against Antony and Caesar at Philippi, in the first battle he conquered the enemy in his front, routed and scattered them, and sacked the camp of Caesar; but as he was about to fight the second battle, the same phantom visited him again at night, and though it said nothing to him, Brutus understood his fate, and plunged headlong into danger. He did not fall in battle, however, but after the rout retired to a crest of ground, put his naked sword to his breast (while a certain friend, as they say, helped to drive the blow home), and so died.*

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Lawrence Harley

As the suit jacket and trousers gradually came together, so did the tie, replacing the silk stock that would previously have been worn around the neck. It arrived from Europe. The court of Louis XIV was impressed as much by the neckerchiefs of Croat mercenaries employed to fight the Thirty Years War as by their fighting spirit. The style was adopted in France—the word cravate is apparently a corruption of Croat. The four-in-hand, the forerunner of the tie, appeared in Britain in about 1860 (like the suit) and was the social-networking tool of its day. The pattern and colours denoted affiliations such as school, regiment or sporting club.

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Q Why do you seem obsessed with brand name apparel et al in Pattern Recognition and Spook Country?

A You ain't seen nothing, yet! Actually the new one may explain that, a bit. Or just further convince some people that I'm obsessed. It's one of the ways in which I feel I understand how the world works, and there aren't really that many of those. It's not about clothes, though, or branding; it's about code, subtext. I was really delighted, for instance, to learn who made George Bush's raincoats. A company in Little Rock (now extinct, alas) but they were made of Ventile, a British cotton so tightly woven that you can make fire hoses (and RAF ocean survival suits) out of it. Which exists because Churchill demanded it, because the Germans had all the flax production sewn up. No flax, no fire hoses for the Blitz. The cultural complexities that put that particular material on Bush's back delight me deeply; it's a kind of secret history (and not least because most people would find it fantastically boring, I imagine).

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Goya and Wellington

"Viva Velinton!" When the Spanish master met the then Lord Wellington in 1812, the 43-year-old Briton was the idol of Spain. The streets echoed with cries of "Y viva Velinton!," and beautiful women rushed forward to cover him with kisses. Had Goya been a less truthful artist, he might have tried to idealize the man into some sort of benign hero surrounded by the trappings of glory.

But the future duke, who had little respect for artists, quickly found that there are artists who have little respect for dukes. In this austere portrait, the trappings of glory are absent. Even the order of the Golden Fleece is hidden beneath the cloak, and the sharp-featured face is neither benign nor particularly heroic. Goya painted exactly what he saw: a cold and contemptuous Englishman who regarded the exuberance of the Spaniards as rather poor taste.

The antagonism between the soldier and the artist was duly reported by Mrs. Havemeyer in her privately printed' memoirs. At one point, she wrote, Wellington bluntly told Goya that the portrait would never do and would have to be changed. In a rage, Goya started to pick up a pistol lying on a table near by, and Wellington went for his sword. "Fortunately the two great men were separated before they could do greater harm than to express their opinions of each other," wrote Mrs. Havemeyer. "Goya would never change the portrait nor allow Wellington any longer to pose for him." The artist had finished Wellington's face, and he painted the rest of the picture from a hired model.

[via Time]

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Here, via Kottke, is the story of George Millitt, a fifteen-year-old office worker in the Metropolitan Life Tower, stabbed to death while being pursued by a pack of girls trying to kiss him:

Yesterday he came down and remarked that it was the anniversary of the wreck of the Maine. He explained that he knew it because the ship had been blown up on his birthday and that he was 15 yesterday.

At once the girls began to tease him. They told him that on such an occasion he deserved a kiss, and every one of them vowed that as soon as office hours were over she would kiss him once for every year that he had lived. He laughingly declared that not a girl should get near him, and was teased about it all day.

As 4:30 o'clock came, and the boy's work was over, the girls made a rush for him. They tried to hem him in, and he tried to break their line. Suddenly he reeled and fell, crying as he did so.

"I'm stabbed!"

The text above comes from a 1909 story in the New York Times. The boy was stabbed by a sharp ink scraper he carried in his breast pocket. His tombstone reads:

LOST LIFE BY STAB IN FALLING ON
INK ERASER, EVADING SIX YOUNG
WOMEN TRYING TO GIVE HIM
BIRTHDAY KISSES IN OFFICE
METROPOLITAN LIFE BUILDING'