Then two centurions appeared, armed to the teeth: Publius Sextius, known as ‘the Cane’, and Silius Salvidienus. Each held a torch and took up position beside the pyre.

Antony mounted the Rostra and raised a hand to request silence from the already agitated crowd, which was seething with violent emotions that threatened to spill over at any moment.

Brutus, hidden at the far end of the square, behind the trees of the Iuturna fountain, could see even at this distance the grotesque wax image of Caesar stabbed. He could hear in his mind the words that Caesar had said to him with his last breath, as Brutus had thrust his dagger into Caesar’s groin. ‘Even you. .’

He instantly understood what Cicero had meant to say at the session at the Temple of Tellus. All was lost. Nothing could stop a new, bloody civil war from breaking out.

All at once, in the sudden, mortal silence, Antony’s voice rang out.

‘Friends, Romans, countrymen! I have come to bury Caesar!’

Decius Scaurus and his companions, thwarted by the fury of Publius Sextius and deprived of the leadership of Mustela, had continued on their mission, but they never succeeded in closing in on the centurion, who had escaped down the parallel paths of the Apennines. Too late, however, for meeting his appointment with destiny.

Three days later they found the body of their commander, Sergius Quintilianus, at the side of the Via Cassia. His life had ended in combat.

They paid their last respects to him, simply, then burned his body on a pyre of woody vines. They threw their weapons into the fire as a final homage to his memory.

They brought his ashes back to the villa and buried them together with those of his son, at the foot of an old cypress, so they could rest, finally united, in the kingdom of shadows.