Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

To begin with, he was a nephew of Cato, one of Caesar's most obdurate and steadfast enemies. It is not surprising, then, that Brutus was also an enemy of Caesar's to begin with. Indeed, he fought on Pompey's side in Greece and was taken prisoner when Pompey was defeated.

Caesar, however, followed a consistent policy of leniency toward his enemies, feeling, perhaps, that in this way he converted them to friends and healed the wounds inflicted by civil war. So Brutus was pardoned and set free.

The policy seemed to have worked in Brutus' case, for he behaved as though he were converted from a Pompeian into a sincere Caesarian. When Caesar went to Africa to take care of the senatorial armies there, those had, as one of their most important leaders, Cato, who was Brutus' uncle. And yet Brutus remained one of Caesar's lieutenants and served him loyally in the province of Cisalpine Gaul (in what is now northern Italy).

Later on, crucially and fatally, he abandoned Caesar once again. The later idealization of Brutus has him acting out of conviction and principle, but a glance at his career before the opening scenes of Julius Caesar would make it seem that he was, rather, a self-serving turncoat.

Brutus is unwilling that his lack of gamesomeness should interfere with Cassius' pleasures. He says:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 30-31

Cassius' full name is Gaius (or Caius) Cassius Longinus, and he is a capable soldier. He went with Crassus to the East as second-in-command. After the disastrous defeat which almost destroyed the Roman army, thanks in good part to Crassus' incapacity, Cassius took over and brought what was left of the army safely back to Roman territory.

He was also with Pompey at first, but after Pompey's defeat he reassessed the situation. He had not been captured, but it seemed to him that Caesar was sure to win, and Cassius intended to be on the winning side. He followed Caesar into Asia Minor and threw himself on the conqueror's mercy. Caesar pardoned him and let him serve under him.

Cassius married Junia, the sister of Brutus, and was, therefore, Brutus' brother-in-law.

But now that Brutus makes ready to leave Cassius, Cassius gently restrains him. He has a use for Brutus and to serve that use he begins, carefully, to seduce him with praise. He tells Brutus that he is too modest and does not sufficiently value himself, saying:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 35-38

Somehow the general idealization of Brutus is such that most of those who read or see this play imagine that Brutus is presented in heroic colors; and, indeed, the play is often produced with Brutus as the hero. Yet a close reading seems to show that Shakespeare is utterly out of sympathy with Brutus and makes him rather a despicable character.

Cassius bemoans Brutus' modesty, but there is no modesty in Brutus as portrayed by Shakespeare. Brutus always listens complacently to those who praise him, and praises himself often enough. Nor does Cassius for a moment really believe that Brutus is modest, for in the rest of the scene his attempt to win over Brutus to a desired line of action is pitched entirely to Brutus' overweening vanity.

Cassius' smoothly scheming flattery is interrupted by the sound of shouting in the distance, and Brutus cries out:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 79-80

The word "king" had a dread sound to Romans throughout their great days, a dread that dated back to the hated Tarquin (see page I-211). The tale of Tarquin was a heritage of every Roman schoolboy, as the tale of George III is of every American schoolboy, and a stanch republicanism was inculcated in the former case as it is in the latter.

Then too, in the two centuries preceding Julius Caesar's period of power, Rome had been more or less continuously at war with the various Hellenistic nations of the eastern Mediterranean, all of which were ruled by kings. Kings were the enemy and were therefore hated; and the kings were always defeated by the Roman republicans, so that the institution of monarchy had the aura of defeat about it.

Consequently, Caesar was in a dilemma when he took power over Rome. He simply had to reform the government, which had come to be utterly stagnant and unworkable, but he could not do so by ordinary legal means. That would require working through the Senate, and the Senate was hostile and obstructionist. Hence, he had to rule dictatorially, by decree.

The Roman system of government allowed for rule by decree under certain conditions. A special official could be elected for six months who would have the power to rule by decree. He was a "dictator" (from a Latin word meaning "to say," because what he said became law without further ado). A famous early (and legendary) dictator was Cincinnatus, who in 458 b.c. held the dictatorship for only a few days to meet an emergency.

In later times the device was broadened. In 81 b.c. the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla made himself dictator and held the post for two years. This was with the connivance of the Senate, whose cause Sulla favored.

Caesar took advantage of the broadening and turned it against the Senate. He had taken the power of a dictator during the civil war and at the time of the quadruple triumph had had himself declared dictator for a term of ten years. After the Spanish triumph, which opens this play, he was made dictator for life.

He used the dictatorship to bring about his program of reform. He tried to reform the Senate by wrenching it out of the hands of the few oligarchs who monopolized it and allowing the entry of important families from the provinces. He broadened the base of citizenship, revised the taxation procedure, reconstructed cities, improved trade, passed laws designed to strengthen the moral structure of society, and reformed the calendar so that it was almost the one we use today. He even established the first public library.

Yet although he was dictator for life, Caesar felt it was not enough. As merely dictator, his death would be the sign for a new struggle for power, and all his reforms would be undone. That placed a premium on his death and made his opponents eager for an assassination. If he were king, however, Ms power would merely descend to his nearest heir upon his death, and there would be far less point to killing him.

It was this desire of Caesar to make himself king-a desire imputed to him by the senatorial conservatives, and probably justly so-that was the chief weapon against him. The conservatives, who hated him and his reforms, emphasized his ambition for the kingship, hoping that the hated word would turn the populace against Caesar.

On the other hand, the conservatives also feared that the popularity of his reforms might more than make up for the fearsomeness of the word, and that the infatuated populace, caught up on the occasion of some holiday such as the present Lupercalian festival, would be stampeded into declaring him king and that the Senate would then be forced, much against its will, to go along. Once that was done, it would be too late to expect to turn back the tide of reform.

It was exactly this that Brutus feared when he heard the shouting.

Brutus' outspoken fear of Caesar as king heartens Cassius. He plays on that fear by describing the indignity of having to bow down to one who after all is but a man and perhaps not even as good a man as oneself. To make his point, he tells a tale of a contest between himself and Caesar.