Brutus, Caesar and the Ides of March Conspiracy

No one actually knows what Caesar's last words were. Without a doubt, Shakespeare's immortal Et tu, Brute? is an iconic line, but it isn't actually featured in any ancient sources. In fact, it's likely that the suddenness and savagery of the attack left Caesar without the ability to say anything meaningful enough to be remembered by posterity. This is certainly how But there's another tradition, reflected in Suetonius and Cassius Dio, which records Caesar uttering the Greek phrase, which in English is best rendered as This has long been assumed to be directed at Marcus Junius Brutus, a key figure in the plot to assassinate Caesar and perhaps the most notorious, but one who was so beloved by the dictator that there were even rumors in Rome that Brutus was Caesar's son. Though Caesar had conducted a decades-long affair with Brutus' mother, he was only 15 years older than Brutus, so the necessary timelines don't quite align. In truth, it's unlikely that Caesar was Brutus' father. Still, the two men were remarkably close, and Caesar certainly was a father figure to Brutus, even if he was not the man's biological father. And there's reason to believe that a young Brutus may have been craving a paternal presence in his life. His real father, a former tribune of the plebs, was executed by Pompey the Great after participating in a failed anti-Sullen uprising, when Brutus was only 8 years old. Not only did Caesar show great affection to young Brutus, he also didn't hesitate to take Brutus into the fold after Brutus had sided with Pompey, Caesar's rival and one-time friend, during the Civil War. It was a striking display of Caesar's famed capacity for clemency and generosity, qualities which had greatly endeared him to the downtrodden and poor of the moribund Republic. Caesar's history as a capable and often merciless military commander, one who'd brought vast sums of wealth into Rome's coffers by his brutal conquests, coexisted in delicate balance with the personal image he'd cultivated. Caesar the Merciful, Caesar the Benevolent, Caesar the Great Forgiver. Brutus' career flourished under Caesar's guidance. Caesar even went so far as to nominate him for a potential consul for the year 41 BC. With Caesar's popular backing, election to this high office was essentially assured. The strong bond between the two men made Brutus' betrayal all the more shocking to the Romans. Here was a young man turning a blade upon his lifelong benefactor and friend, and enlisting others to do the same. The horror of it would have left Caesar utterly bewildered for his few remaining moments of lucidity. What could motivate such treachery? The commonly held belief is that Brutus was offended by Caesar's breaches of Republican protocol and, despite his friendship, loyalty to the Republic trumped personal concerns. This is the surface-level reading of Brutus that survives in Shakespeare, a man torn between his personal affection for Caesar and his sacred duty as a Roman. There is something to this, and it makes for great drama, but it neglects a deciding factor in Brutus' decision, one that is often ignored, because the differences in Roman society and culture have made certain aspects of their thought and worldview entirely alien to us. If Brutus had merely acted out of disinterested concern for Republican traditions, he would not have raised a private army of his own after the assassination, and even paid these soldiers with coins he minted himself that bore his image. A startling breach of traditional Republican practice, though both actions were in keeping with precedent set by Caesar himself. In reality, there was another, more urgent motivation behind Brutus' decision to upend the entire Roman state. Brutus became an assassin because of the importance he placed on his familial legacy, something which was of the utmost significance to the Romans, especially those, like Brutus, of the ancient aristocratic clans. It's entirely possible that Brutus felt he was ordained by fate to overthrow the tyranny of Caesar, despite his personal feelings for the man. Brutus was a proud descendant of Lucius Junius Brutus, one of the most celebrated figures in the history of Rome, and the man credited with overthrowing the Tarquin monarchy and helping to found the Republic itself. Afforded with the myth and reverence so often bestowed upon national founding figures, the first Brutus was a benchmark for proper Roman behavior, which is to say that the ideology that sprung up around him was carefully curated by the elites to propagate the status quo. Because memory of this earlier Brutus was inherently political, it should come as no surprise that graffiti throughout the city mocked the latter Brutus for his acquiescence to Caesar's reign. Gossips accused him of cowardice for supposedly turning his back on the famous oath declared by his forebear that Rome would never again have a king. Lucius Junius Brutus was not less jealous in guarding the public liberty than he had been in achieving it. His first act was to secure the people, who were now jealous of their newly recovered liberty, from being influenced by any entreaties or bribes from the king. He therefore made them take an oath that they would not suffer any man to reign in Rome. We must pause here to reflect on how the Romans' profound reverence for their ancestors would have shaped Marcus Junius Brutus' thinking. Like all aristocrats, he would have been raised from birth to think of his clan as the most distinguished in Rome, and the one whose actions had contributed the most to the greatness, wealth, and prestige of the Republic. From boyhood he would have been regaled with tales of the heroics of past members of the Junia clan, and even on occasion shown their death masks. The understanding was that he must carry on their legacy and add to it with great deeds of his own. The conception of family was radically different from the nuclear family household model prevalent in the West today. The great families of Rome were large and sprawling, which is why it is more useful to think of them as clans, almost separate quasi-independent states that operated within the Roman Republic. The Latin word gens, that we translate as clan, can also be translated as nation, helping to illuminate how the great clans effectively functioned as private entities within the Republic, complete with their own assemblies, traditions, and religious rites that reflected each clan's history and ancient relationship with its unique patron deities. The family was all-encompassing in a way that we cannot quite process with our modern minds. Not only did it supersede the individual, it took on importance that rivaled and sometimes even exceeded devotion to the Republic itself. The most striking example of this occurred during the early Republic, when the Fabia Gens carried out a private war with the city of Valley, using only members of its own clan and their retainers to carry out armed conflict against another city. To a Roman, there was quite simply no turning your back on your family, the dead or the living, and to be accused of such was a profound insult to any dignified citizen. We can begin to understand, then, why unflattering comparisons between Brutus and his most prominent ancestor could have been so effective at moving Brutus to action on the Ides of March. But this deep and even controlling reverence for the past is still only half the equation. Romans also firmly believed that families had certain inborn characteristics, and that the past behavior of previous members of a clan provided an excellent forecast of what could be expected from the current generation. Part of this, of course, was of self-fulfilling prophecy, as young men raised with such a high degree of respect for their ancestors, even making religious sacrifices to them as quasi-divine figures, would consciously emulate the examples of their most distinguished forebears. The best-known example of this is Cato the Younger, who strove to replicate the iron will and moral fortitude of his great-grandfather, Cato the Elder. But though an inborn and preordained familial character seems preposterous on its face to us, the idea wasn't just non-controversial to the Romans, it was self-apparent, to the point that it seems to have been nearly universally accepted. Because this line of thinking was so prevalent, we see magisterial candidates without any accomplishment stand on, touting the achievements of their ancestors, and winning on this message alone. Strange as it sounds, the Romans did legitimately seem to have believed that those from distinguished family lines would go on to serve the Republic most capably. It's easier to process why these ideas were accepted when we remember that Romans placed far less of an emphasis on living as a discrete individual, and more of an emphasis on existing to further the ambitions and aims of familial units. But we must also note that the reason this view of the family found such ready acceptance in Roman ideology was that it helped those at the top entrench their positions and guarantee success for their descendants, even if they weren't particularly talented. For a Roman nepo-baby, it was a sweet deal indeed. So to some degree, we must accept that Brutus felt not only that it was his duty to rid the Republic of any potential monarch, but that it was within his inborn character to accomplish this. Feelings of personal friendship towards Caesar could hardly hold a candle to this deeper belief that if he failed to rise to the occasion and protect the Republic, he was unworthy of his name and therefore the privileged position that it had granted him at Roman society. These concerns cut to the core of Brutus's identity. Brutus knew what was expected of him and could not plead that he was exempt from this task simply because he bore deep affection for the one he was tasked with killing. As his quasi-mythical forebear, Lucius Junius Brutus had overseen the execution of two of his wife's brothers and even two of his own sons when they conspired to restore the Tarquin monarchy to power. After the royal property had been disposed of, the traitors were sentenced and executed. Their punishment created a great sensation owing to the fact that the consular office imposed upon the father the duty of inflicting punishment on his own children. He who ought not to have witnessed it was destined to be the one to see it duly carried out. Youths belonging to the noblest families were standing tied to the post, but all eyes were turned to the consul's children. The others were unnoticed. Men did not grieve more for their punishment than for their crime which had incurred it, that they should have conceived the idea, in that year above all, of betraying to one who had been a ruthless tyrant and was now an exile and an enemy, a newly liberated country, their father who had liberated it, the consulship which had originated in the Junian house, the senate, the plebs, all that Rome possessed of human or divine. The consuls took their seats. The lictors were told off to inflict the penalty. They scourged their bared backs with rods and then beheaded them. During the whole time the father's countenance betrayed his feelings, but the father's stern resolution was still more apparent as he superintended the public execution. Did this episode actually take place? Most likely not, but that hardly matters. The important thing is that the Romans believed it. The tale illustrated a fundamental idea that they had about themselves and the kind of people that they were supposed to be. Duty superseded sentimentality, always. Brutus would have known that as a scion of such a noble house, he was expected to kill anyone who aspired to monarchy, even those who were dearest to him. By motivating Brutus to assassinate a dear friend, the mythology of Rome's founding father as an implacable foe to kings had served its purpose. Order was restored and the senatorial elite could breathe easy that the great populare general and statesman was finally gone. The status quo was safe, or so they believed. While Shakespeare gets much of the history wrong in Julius Caesar, one important detail that he does get right is the agony, anguish, and conflict within Brutus as he weighs what he perceived as his duty to the republic against his personal affection for Caesar. This isn't something that Shakespeare added simply for the sake of drama. There's every reason to believe that Brutus was wracked with emotion in the lead up to the Ides of March, and that his ultimate decision was a heart-wrenching one, but one he felt he had no choice but to make. However, in Shakespeare's telling, even the act itself does not fortify Brutus's resolve, as he later has a vision of Caesar's ghost on the eve of the battle of Philippi, one that hints at the doom that awaits him for his act of betrayal. Given the recurring motif in Roman mythology of spirits demanding retribution for an unjust death, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that Brutus himself may have indeed been haunted by similar thoughts. Brutus's perfidy would have such an effect upon the Roman psyche that some 1300 years later, the great poet of the Italian peninsula would place Brutus, alongside co-conspirator Cassius, not only in the lowest level of hell, but within the jaws of Satan himself. Only Judas qualified to join them. The elder Lucius Junius Brutus also makes an appearance in the Inferno, but he is seen alongside virtuous pagans in the relatively mild first circle of hell, known as Limbo, which is in reality just a deficient form of heaven entailing no torture or torment for the souls confined there. This bitter irony goes to show that given a thousand years, history can forgive anyone, even a murderer, but that all depends upon how the murderer is remembered, and upon the identity of the murdered. Today, the memory of Brutus is more nuanced. A modern Dante could likely find another candidate to stuff in the devil's mouth. As ever, some still decry his betrayal, and others memorialize him as the last faithful son of the doomed Republic. There are no easy answers in appraising Brutus's legacy, but that only seems fitting. There were no easy answers for the man himself, either. Our memory of him should remain as conflicted and divided as the man was. The debates we have today about the worthiness of his actions surely pale in comparison to the ferocity of the war that raged within his soul. Hi, Gaius here. Thanks for being part of our efforts to shed light on more obscure topics related to the fascinating world of the ancient Romans. If you enjoy Titus's work here, please do us a favor by liking and subscribing. Gratias vobis ago.