The fifteenth of March was a public holiday, marking the end of winter. From the early morning, crowds of people had been streaming out of the city. It was almost as if Rome were being evacuated. Families abandoned the busy streets and huddled houses and crossed the River Tiber. In the countryside, in huts made of branches or makeshift tents, they would set up picnics and consume large amounts of alcohol. It was said that the drinkers would live for as many years as they downed cups (in that case, as one wit had it, everyone ought to live for as long as Nestor, the classical equivalent of Methuselah). The Senate, however, had more serious business at hand—its last meeting under the Dictator before he departed from Rome on a military expedition to Parthia. It was due to be held not as usual in the Senate House in the Forum but in one of Rome’s most spectacular buildings, the 340-meter-long Theater of Pompeius just outside the city on the Field of Mars. During the first half of the morning, the Senators gathered in a ceremonial hall in the center of the complex.
