Omens :

I don't know if the omens were taken privately or not, but personnaly, I think they were not. Caesar was the Pontifex Maximus, he lived in the Domus Publica, his official residence, and certain sacrifices are recorded as having been performed in the Regia (very close to the Domus Publica). Since the duties of the Pontifex Maximus include the performance of sacrifices, the lack of accuracy in the different records allows us to assume that the omens were taken by Caesar as Pontifex Maximus (at his house or the Regia) before going to the Senate (independently of the Senate meeting or not, we don't really know). Of course, it was easy, afterwards, to say that the omens were bad, knowing what happened in the Senate !

Autopsy :

The only mention I've found of an autopsy after Caesar's assassination, is in Suetonius (82,3): "All the conspirators made off, and he lay there lifeless for some time, and finally three common slaves put him on a litter and carried him home, with one arm hanging down. And of so many wounds none turned out to be mortal, in the opinion of the physician Antistius, except the second one in the breast."


I've read somewhere that there was a mention of the physician Antistius in Scribonius Largus' "Compositiones" but I'm unable to retrieve it and the full text of the "Compositiones" is not available on the Web. Could somebody tell us more on this Antistius ?


Murder in the Senate :

Brutus says Caesar was ambitious and Brutus is an honorable man :-) first man in Rome, first to be autopsied, first to be murdered in the Senate. Even for such a great man, it's too much ! Ceasar was not the first to be murdered in the Senate, according to Plutarch (Life of Pompey 9,2-3) and Appian (Civil Wars I, 88).
Plutarch : "This marriage was therefore characteristic of a tyranny, and befitted the needs of Sulla rather than the nature and habits of Pompey, Aemilia being given to him in marriage when she was with child by another man, and Antistia being driven away from him in dishonour, and in piteous plight too, since she had lately been deprived of her father because of her husband (for Antistius had been killed in the senate-house because he was thought to be a partisan of Sulla for Pompey's sake), and her mother, on beholding these indignities, had taken her own life. "

Appian : "When Marius saw that his condition was hopeless he hastened to put his private enemies out of the way. He wrote to Brutus, the city praetor, to call the Senate together on some pretext or other and to kill Publius Antistius, the other Papirius, Lucius Domitius, and Mucius Scaevola, the pontifex maximus. Of these the two first were slain in their seats as Marius had ordered, assassins having been introduced into the senate-house for this purpose. Domitius ran out, but was killed at the door, and Scaevola was killed a little farther away."