Луций Корнелий Цинна
Upon awaking, the poet Helvius Cinna recalls having dreamt of receiving an invitation to dinner from Caesar and interprets the dream as an invitation to the dictator's funeral. As a personal friend of Caesar, he feels that it is his duty to go. On the streets, the political climate has changed after the speech Mark Antony delivered at the funeral ceremony and the hunting of Caesar's enemies begins. Cinna is mistaken for one of them, the consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna, and murdered by rioting plebeians.