Every conspirator had agreed to participate in the attack and did so, stabbing wildly at Caesar’s face, his thighs, his chest, and, occasionally, at one another. Caesar attempted to wrestle away, turning his sinewy neck “from one to another of them with furious cries like a wild beast.” He managed finally to emit a single groan and to muffle his face in the fabric of his robe—precisely as Pompey had done off the coast of Egypt—before sinking to the floor. By the time his assailants rushed to the chamber doors, Caesar lay crumpled on the ground in a soggy purple heap, skewered twenty-three
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