The most grievous betrayal, however, the one that finally numbed Caesar and stopped him in his desperate efforts to fight back, came from someone closer still. Caesar glimpsed, flashing through the melee, a knife aimed at his groin, held by another Brutus, Marcus, his reputed son. “You too, my boy?”30 he whispered, then fell to the ground. Not wishing to be witnessed in his death agony, he covered his head with the ribbons of his toga. The pool of his blood stained the base of Pompey’s statue. Dead, he lay in his great rival’s shadow.
