Marcus Junius Brutus

Marcus Junius Brutus Caepio (85 BC – 42 BC), or simply Brutus, was a Roman patrician of the late Roman Republic. He was one of Julius Caesar's assassins.

Background

Marcus Brutus's father, a relatively unimportant politician, had the same name. His mother was Servilia Caepionis, half-sister of Cato the younger and mistress of Julius Caesar. Some sources refer to the possibility of Caesar being his real father, but this is unlikely since Caesar was fifteen years old at the time of Brutus' birth and the affair with his mother started some ten years later. Brutus' uncle Quintus Servilius Caepio adopted him when he was a young man and Brutus added his cognomen to his own name. His political career started when he became an assistant to Cato, during his governorship of Cyprus. During this time, he enriched himself by lending money to desperate people at high rates of interest. From his first appearance in the Senate, Brutus aligned with the Optimates (the conservative faction) against the First Triumvirate of Marcus Licinius Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar. He had every reason to hate Pompey, who had had his father murdered in 77 BC, during the proscriptions by Sulla.

When civil war broke out in 49 BC between Pompey and Caesar, Brutus followed his old enemy and present leader of the Optimates, Pompey. After the disaster of the Battle of Pharsalus, Brutus wrote to Caesar with apologies and Caesar immediately forgave him. Caesar accepted him into his inner circle and made him governor of Gaul when he left for Africa in pursuit of Cato and Metellus Scipio. In the next year (45 BC), Caesar nominated him to be a praetor.

Caesar's assassination and its aftermath

A conservative by nature, Brutus never concealed his convictions. However, it is now believed that he was a strong nationalist, and a fierce supporter of friends along bloodlines. He married Porcia Catones who was his first cousin and a daughter of Cato, and wrote a text praising his deceased father-in-law's qualities. Caesar was very fond of him and respected his opinions. However, Brutus, like many other senators, was extremely unsatisfied with the state of the Republic. Caesar had been made dictator for life and approved legislation to concentrate power in his own hands. Brutus began to conspire against Caesar with his friend and brother-in-law Cassius and other men, calling themselves the Liberatores ("Liberators").

Shortly before the assassination of Caesar, Brutus met with the conspirators and told them that, if anyone found out about the plan, they were going to turn their knives on themselves. On the Ides of March (March 15; see Roman calendar) of 44 BC, a group of senators called Caesar to the forum for the purpose of reading a petition, written by the senators, asking him to hand power back to the Senate. However, the petition was a fake. Mark Antony, learning of the plot, went to head Caesar off at the steps of the forum. However, the group of senators intecepted Caesar just as he was passing Pompey's Theater, and directed him to a room adjorning the east portio. As Caesar began to read the false petition, one of the senators, named Casca, pulled down Caesar's tunic and made a glancing thrust at the dictator's neck. Within moments, the entire group, including Brutus, were striking out at him. Caesar attempted to get away, but, blinded by blood, he tripped and fell; the men eventually murdering him as he lay, defenseless, on the lower steps of the portico. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the dictator directed his famous last words at him: Tu quoque, Brute, fili mihi ("You, too, Brutus, my son?") or Et tu, Brute ("And ^* you, Brutus?"). Suetonius stated that Caesar said, in Greek, "" (transliterated as "Kaì sú, téknon?", that is "Even you, my child?") (De Vita Caesarum, Liber I Divus Iulius, LXXXII). Shortly after the assassination, the senators left the building talking excitedly amongst themselves, and Brutus cried out to his beloved city: "People of Rome, we are once again free!"

However, the city itself was against them, because most of the population loved Caesar dearly. Antony, a close friend of the dictator's, decided to make use of the circumstances and, on March 20 spoke angrily against the assassins during Caesar's funeral eulogy. Since Rome no longer saw them as saviors of the Republic and they faced treason charges, Brutus and his fellow conspirators fled to the East. In Athens, Brutus dedicated himself to the study of philosophy and, no less importantly, to the raising of funds to support an army in the coming war for power.

Octavian and Antony marched their army toward Brutus and Cassius. After two engagements at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, during the first of which Cassius committed suicide, Brutus fled with his remaining forces. Seeing that defeat and capture was imminent, he committed suicide.

Chronology

85 BC – Brutus was born in Rome
58 BC – assistant to Cato, governor of Cyprus
53 BC – quaestorship in Cilicia
49 BC – follows Pompey to Greece, during the civil war against Caesar
48 BC – Pardoned by Caesar
46 BC – governor of Gaul
45 BC – praetor
44 BC – murders Caesar with other senators; goes to Athens
42 BC – death
- October 3 - First Battle of Philippi – defeated Octavian, but Antony defeated Cassius, who committed suicide
- October 23 - Second Battle of Philippi – his army was decisively defeated; Brutus escaped, but committed suicide soon after. However according to the play Julius Caesar, he asked his men Clitus, Dardanius and Volumnius to kill him. Each refused. Strato, however, consented, and held Brutus's sword while he fell on it. He died moments later.

Later evaluations of Brutus

Dante considered Brutus to be the epitome of shameful betrayal, and in his Inferno section of the Divine Comedy (Inferno, XXXIV, 64-67), portrayed Brutus being chewed, but never consumed, by Satan, along with Judas Iscariot (who betrayed Jesus) and Cassius at the very lowest level of Hell.

Shakespeare has Mark Antony describe Brutus as "the noblest Roman of them all" in the final scene of Julius Caesar. In modern productions of this play he is commonly portrayed as honorably motivated and his action tyrannicide rather than murder.

The phrase Sic semper tyrannis ("Thus always to tyrants") is attributed to Brutus at the assassination. It has been adopted as a motto by supporters of tyrannicide.

John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln was inspired by Brutus. Lamenting the negative reaction to his deed, Booth wrote in his journal on April 21, 1865, "^*ith every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for ... And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat."

External links

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Background

Caesar's assassination and its aftermath

Chronology

Later evaluations of Brutus

External links