Odessa Files
Publisher: Justin the Hun
2/06/01
Caesarean Edition
AMBITIOUS DICTATOR DEFEATED; VENGEFUL AMBITIOUS DICTATORS TAKE HIS PLACE
So much for “the good of Rome”.

ROME, ITALY—A conspiracy of senators led by Marcus Brutus assassinated Julius Caesar inside the Senate building just hours before he was to be crowned king of the Roman nation.

The assassination took place yesterday, March 15 44 B.C. (the Ides of March). Caesar entered the Senate building amidst the cheers from his many adoring followers and his fellow senators flanked him. As Caesar was leaving the Senate later on, these same senators stabbed him to death.

“Tyranny is dead!” shouted Caius Cassius, the second in command of the group of conspirators led by Marcus Brutus, who was at one point the Grand Magistrate of Caesar’s administration and the Roman leader’s best friend. Other conspirators included Casca, Decius Brutus, Trebonius, Caius Ligarius, and Cinna.

Soaked in the blood of their victim, the conspirators emerged from the Senate building and spoke to the gathered crowd. Cassius took half of them and told them what had happened and why it had happened, and who was expected to clean up the mess. Brutus did the same thing with the other half.

“Caesar was ambitious,” Brutus insisted. “He would harm Rome.” Claiming that he had acted “for the good of Rome” won Brutus much support. He obviously intended to rule Rome with Marc Antony and a third man, perhaps Cassius, as a new triumvirate. But then, he allowed Antony to address the crowds who remained for Caesar’s funeral.

“This really was not the best political move on Brutus’s part,” says Tirius Sulla, Odessa’s political consultant in Rome. “One of the first rules of politics is to never give the other guy a fighting chance. Though, maybe we should give Brutus the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he forgot that Antony was one of Caesar’s best friends. Perhaps he forgot that Antony was fiercely loyal to his old master. Or perhaps, as I believe, Brutus is just a moron.”

Antony’s eulogy completely erased any support for Brutus. “Friends, Romans, countrymen,” he began, “lend me your ears!” Antony then had to wait for the troublemakers and clowns of the crowd to hack off their ears and throw them at him. “Really, so immature…” he mumbled before continuing.

Antony, himself a fairly ambitious man, took over Rome with Lepidus and Octavius Caesar. This vengeful triumvirate/dictatorship chased the conspirators out of town and instigated a civil war. It looks like Rome is in even worse shape than when it was with Caesar in charge. Good job, Brutus!
OCTAVIUS DOES NOT WANT TO BE EMPEROR OR ANYTHING
Would never adopt name “Augustus”, or something crazy like that.

CONSUL PALACE—Octavius Caesar, the young nephew of the late Julius Caesar, recently acquired vast amounts of power when he entered into a triumvirate leadership of Rome with Marcus Antonius and Lepidus, but he does not want to be an emperor, or anything.

“Sure, I’m young and ambitious, and would like nothing more than to have even more power than I already have without any of this democracy junk holding me back,” says Octavius, “but I would never want to be an emperor or a king, or anything. No siree, not me.”

Julius Caesar, the only surviving member of the first triumvirate, was recently assassinated by Marcus Brutus and Caius Cassius because he stood a chance of becoming the first single ruler of Rome since Lucius Junius Brutus ousted the last king decades ago. Octavius, his nephew, would have succeeded Julius on the throne had his uncle become emperor, but, with the image of Caesar Sr.’s bleeding corpse still fresh in his mind, young Octavius says he would never dream of trying to become an emperor.

“Don’t be silly!” said a laughing Octavius. “There’s absolutely no way I’d try to eliminate Lepidus and Antony and become emperor of Rome. I mean, just look at what happened to my uncle!”

“There could be a small chance that the descendent of the ambitious Caesar has that same ambition,” said Artemidorus, a political insider who knows much about the internal politics of Rome, and who even tried to warn Caesar away from his attackers. “An empire was just within his grasp. He may want to take it back for himself, and start a line of Julian Emperors, or something.”

“’Augustus’,” Octavius goes on, “is a really dumb name. I mean, why on earth would I secretly be planning to take on the name ‘Augustus’? What’s more, I definitely would not exile that incompetent fool Lepidus—who I swear I did not bring into the triumvirate because I thought he would be easy to dispose of—and assassinate Marc Antony in Egypt, thus taking over the government as Emperor Augustus Caesar. That’s just crazy!”

“Letting another Caesar into a government position could be a bad idea, yes,” continues Artemidorous. “If he did become emperor, it would make the deeds of Brutus, who honestly wanted nothing more than to save Rome, useless. It would be a hideous irony.”
AUTOPSY REVEALS THAT CAESAR’S BLOOD CONTAINED HIV
Sweet revenge.

MORGUE—The autopsy performed on Julius Caesar’s corpse revealed that the dead ruler’s blood contained traces of the HIV virus, which is rather ironic considering Caesar’s killers washed their hands in that same blood.

“Let us wash our hands in his blood, that the people may see the purity of our cause!” said Marcus Brutus, leader of the conspiracy, after Caesar was stabbed to death. All the members of the conspiracy did so.

“Not only was this repulsive and terrible hygiene,” says Publius Gallus, the Roman coroner, “but with this new information, it could have been life-threatening.

“If those men had any cuts or open sores on their arms,” Gallus explains, “this infected blood could have entered their bloodstream and cursed them with the HIV virus.” He then grinned. “When you think about it, it’s like Caesar struck back from the grave.”

Caius Cassius, when informed of the news, was mortified. He’d been against the blood-wash from the start, and proceeded to yell at Brutus for an hour. Brutus, however, refused to believe the news, claiming that Gallus and his associates “made the disease up.”