If you missed why the aforementioned play is in the news cycle, be glad; it’s stupid reason. But it got me reminiscing. Like many schoolchildren in the Anglosphere, I was compelled by my English teacher to read the play when I was 15. Then, of course, we had to write an essay talking about–I have no idea–themes or something. Unless any of my old classmates care to chime in, I think it’s fair to say none of us cared that much. But I thought the play sucked. And that was the angle I took in my paper. Guess how that worked out for me? Now that I’m a little older, wiser, and better at explaining why I think things suck, I wanted to revisit that assignment and give it another go.
The thesis I was working with as an impudent teenager was essentially, “this play sucks; it’s super boring, especially if you compare it to the actual historical events depicted”. I’ve had many years to mollify my position and consider a more nuanced approach. So with the temperament I’ve gained since… I will be sticking to that same thesis. 15 year old Chris made a solid call.
Let me start in the middle of things with something everybody remembers from the play: certainly the most famous line is, “Et tu, Brute?” This is, of course, the line Caesar says as he’s being stabbed to death, which is the climax of the play as far as most people are concerned. It’s in Latin, but pretty easy to decipher (and you, o Brutus?) And it sounds kinda cool. I mean, everyone remembers it, at least.
That line is an anachronism: i.e. Caesar never said it.
“It’s a play, Chris. It’s fiction. That means it’s not real. Do… do you not get—”
Yeah, but where did it come from? Shakespeare probably got the idea from a now lost play composed by a preacher named Richard Edes, Caesar Interfectus (literally translated as “Caesar having been killed”). This play was composed in [bastardized neo-]Latin, and was performed for clergymen and others who knew the language, but probably lacked mass appeal, given that Latin had died out as a vernacular in England over a millennium earlier. The synopsis is pretty similar to Shakespeare’s work. It is possible that this line was popular enough for Shakespeare to decide to keep the line in Latin—I mean, it does have staying-power…
The line stands out because it’s a great example of why I hated that the play seemed to ignore historical accuracy: BECAUSE THE HISTORY IS FUCKING INTERESTING. Really, my beef is not with accuracy so much as that we have a rich narrative background that comes from both the real history and the mythologized version of history composed by classical historians that has been preserved for coming up on 2 millennia.
Our sources for the details surrounding Caesar’s assassination come from two historians, Suetonius and Plutarch, both of whom were writing a good century after Caesar’s death. Their accounts (links for Suetonius‘ and Plutarch‘s) are full of things that clearly never happened. For example, they discuss animals being sacrificed that were found to have no hearts, which is a bad omen that foretold Caesar’s assassination. So you have to take what the authors say with a grain of salt (or several). But they do convey impressions. Even if the details were wholly their invention, theirs is the story that has been passed on. And they have some cool details.
Now, Shakespeare may not have had access to Suetonius’ account directly (Suetonius’ work was extant to the best of my knowledge, and Shakespeare likely had an elementary grasp of Latin, but it’s improbable that he hunted down a copy and slogged through it), but he likely had Plutarch’s–an English translation of his works came out less than 20 years prior to Shakespeare’s composition. So I cannot begrudge the Bard for not having access to more details. But I can absolutely hold it against my English class for not exploring the history of the line, and I can begrudge textbooks for not adding a fucking annotation….*
*Yes, I’m sure some books do have annotations. We did not get those. I’m going to wager most people did not get those.
So what were Caesar’s last words? Plutarch doesn’t relay that information. Suetonius tells us that he believes the likely history is that Caesar’s last words probably were more akin to “OWW! FUCK I’M BEING STABBED!” rather than something pithy. But, he reports that “others have written” his last words, upon seeing Marcus Brutus, were, in Greek, “Kai su, teknon?”, which translates to, “And you, child?” The intent was to convey intimate familiarity, as opposed to derision, so a more fluid translation would probably be “And you, my child?”
“Okay, Chris, those lines are still functionally the same. What’s your point?”
Because there’s context to those last words that makes them much more dramatically compelling when you’re in on them, and Shakespeare never lets us in on them (but I will, dear reader). Moreover, the entire scene is way more dramatically engaging when you read the historians’ accounts than when you read Shakespeare’s play—especially when you literally just read it, as is the norm in English classes. The events of the whole play make immense dramatic sense when given historical context, but Shakespeare omits so much meaningful content that when I read this play, I was disappointed. And I want you to all be disappointed too.
Here’s a brief-ish history of Caesar and the events surrounding the times depicted in Shakespeare’s eponymous play: Rome was a republic that was expanding to control a lot of the Mediterranean. Three men: Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus formed a political alliance called the Triumvirate (the three men), and became major political players in Roman politics. Pompey had fought in some civil wars and conquered land in the Near East. Crassus, contender for literally the richest man in history, raised a private army and was killed when he tried to invade the Persian Empire, which at the time controlled piece of what we now associate with the Middle East. Caesar exploited political loopholes to invade Gaul (roughly modern France) without the Senate’s go-ahead, and wound up conquering the whole thing. With Crassus dead, Pompey and Caesar were the two most powerful men in the Republic, and neither was the type to want to share power. Politics ensued, particularly via a schism between the Optimates and Populares (roughly speaking, a conservative pro-Senate faction and a reactionary populist faction, respectively), and Caesar staged a coup that launched a 5 year civil war, ending with him being declared dictator for life and Pompey being executed by the ruler of Egypt (a Roman client state). A year later, Caesar would be assassinated, and another civil war would break out, ending with Caesar’s heir and adopted son Octavian as sole Emperor of Rome.
In this history lies a cast of characters, and Shakespeare does include many heavy hitters. What we don’t really get is how these characters relate to each other in a historical context.
Shakespeare’s play starts after the civil war with Pompey and Caesar. Depending on the starting timeframe, Caesar is either a dictator for a 10 year term, or dictator for life (his title is upgraded over time), and he’s introduced the Julian calendar. The past couple years have been absolutely crazy politically, and Caesar’s defeat of Pompey would set the stage for the trajectory of Western Civilization. Caesar, who has aligned himself with the Populares, has just vanquished the Optimates faction, the allies of the Senate. Caesar and Pompey were not the only people aligned with these factions. For a good 50 years prior to the defeat of Pompey, a series of civil wars had been fought between these factions. Pompey actually got his start in these wars (and his father was a general in these as well). He would channel that success into campaigns of conquest against some of the successor states of Alexander the Great, conquering lands that now include modern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine. He brought Rome immense wealth from these campaigns, and would have been known by the masses regardless of their political affiliations. In 49 BC, Caesar received an order from the senate to resign his command of his legions after his conquest of Gaul. He refused, and marched his troops on Rome to stage a military coup. Pompey and the allies of the Senate spent the next 3 years fighting him. Towards the end of this civil war, Caesar is appointed as a dictator for a 10 year term, which was unprecedented in the history of the Roman Republic that was nearly 5 centuries old. This would soon be turned into a lifetime appointment, which is what ultimately triggered the conspiracy for his assassination.
Shakespeare sets up this backstory in the introductory scene by having two supporters of Pompey bump into some commoners who are eager to attend a processional parade of Caesar. Here is how Pompey’s place in this narrative is delivered:
Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?
What tributaries follow him to Rome,
To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels?
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climb’d up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The livelong day, with patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,
To hear the replication of your sounds
Made in her concave shores?
And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out a holiday?
And do you now strew flowers in his way
That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood? Be gone!
Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude.
The supporters of Pompey are portrayed as pompous assholes who basically just go up to pro-Caesar commoners and scoff, “Ugh, um, Caesar wasn’t that great. Don’t you know that Pompey was cool?” That’s all the background we are given on Pompey, who again was a veteran conqueror who just got done losing a war defending the integrity of a nearly 500 year old system of representative government.
Here is how Caesar is introduced:
Flourish. Enter CAESAR; ANTONY, for the course; CALPURNIA, PORTIA, DECIUS BRUTUS, CICERO, BRUTUS, CASSIUS, and CASCA; a great crowd following, among them a Soothsayer
There is a brief introduction of Caesar’s wife, a soothsayer tells Caesar to “beware the Ides of March”, Caesar dismisses him, and leaves.
From a staging standpoint, the crowd and followers tell us Caesar is important, yes, but we’re really never given much more than “hey, so Caesar is popular”. Which is fine for an establishing set, I guess, but not enough to hang the narrative on, as far as I’m concerned.
From there, Cassius and Brutus have a back-and-forth, with Cassius trying to convince Brutus that Caesar might be becoming too powerful. We are then introduced to Marc Antony; he’s established as Caesar’s confidant, and Caesar suggests he’s worried about Cassius scheming against him.
CAESAR: Antonius!
ANTONY: Caesar?
CAESAR: Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
ANTONY: Fear him not, Caesar; he’s not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman and well given.
CAESAR: Would he were fatter! But I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock’d himself and scorn’d his spirit
That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Such men as he be never at heart’s ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.
I rather tell thee what is to be fear’d
Than what I fear; for always I am Caesar.
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,
And tell me truly what thou think’st of him.
Sennet. Exeunt CAESAR
This is the background we have on our main characters. Caesar is popular, Cassius doesn’t like it and is trying to turn Brutus against him, and Brutus is considering it. Caesar trusts Antony but not Cassius. There was some guy named Pompey some assholes thought people should like. Oh boy, what’s going to happen next!?
So for starters, we are told fuck all about the massive historical event that has just concluded. Rome stands on a precipice, the world may never be the same, and that is apparently completely inconsequential to all of these characters, in spite of the fact that ALL OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS FOUGHT IN THE FUCKING CIVIL WAR. Mere months, if not days, before this opening event, these people were in a goddamn war that stood to alter the course of a 500 year old republic, on opposite fucking sides, and it apparently doesn’t fucking matter for their characterization.
Here’s a historical synopsis of the characters we are introduced to at the time the play starts:
Marc Antony was one of Caesar’s military officers in the Gallic wars, and upon Caesar’s ascension to Dictator, Antony became his second in command. He’s the Alexander Hamilton to Caesar’s George Washington.
Cassius (first name Gaius) fought with Pompey and the Optimates alongside his brother-in-law Brutus, but his biological brothers Quintus and Lucius Cassius fought for Caesar. Cassius also fought at the same battle that felled Crassus years earlier, a humiliating defeat as far as the Romans were concerned, but lived to tell the tale.During the course of the war, Caesar intercepted Cassius, a naval commander, and personally met him to ask for his surrender. Cassius agreed, and Caesar made him a general and sent him to Egypt (a client state of Rome’s) to help with a nascent rebellion caused by dynastic strife.
Caesar would defeat Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus, even though Pompey had a 2:1 troop advantage. Brutus was at the battle, which Caesar knew. He issued a command to his troops specifically demanding that Brutus only be taken alive, and that if he refused to surrender, they should stand down. Why such a sweet deal? Caesar had a fondness for Brutus. Plutarch says that the first time Caesar heard Brutus speak in public, he made this comment, “I know not what this young man intends, but, whatever he intends, he intends vehemently.” Possible contributing factor: Caesar happened to be in love with a woman named Servilia, who happened to be Brutus’ mother. He first met her when they were teenagers, and they maintained a relationship in spite of their later marriages, which caused a bit of a scandal. Oh, and Caesar was pretty sure BRUTUS WAS HIS SON. After the battle, Caesar and Brutus made up quickly, and Caesar gave him a cushy government job well out of the way of fighting.
Caesar actually intended to let Pompey live so he could pardon him publically, humiliating his political rival and buying him ethos that he wasn’t just a tyrant out to seize a throne, but a legitimate claimant to the power he demanded. Pompey fled to Alexandria in Egypt, which at the time was ruled by a 13 year old Ptolemy XIII, younger brother to Queen Cleopatra–who was recently ousted by Roman forces. Ptolemy had Pompey killed in a misguided attempt to gain Caesar’s favor. Caesar arrived shortly after and got pissed off. He contemplated conquering Egypt outright, but reconsidered after having a hot, naked affair with 21 year old Cleopatra (again, Caesar was married at the time; also, he was 52), merely securing her rulership over the territory. They also had a son together, the creatively named Ptolemy Caesar. Ptolemy XIII’s and other Greek (Pontic) forces attacked Caesar at Alexandria but were defeated. Ptolemy drowned, the Library of Alexandria was burned in the process, and Cleopatra was reinstated as queen along with her younger brother Ptolemy XIV. Cleopatra and her son would move to Rome to be near Caesar, which too caused a bit of a scandal.
Shakespeare’s play mentions, let alone shows, basically none of this. Instead, he gives us 2 acts of Cassius being a schemer trying to manipulate a principled yet easily-manipulated Brutus into killing Caesar because it’s what the public wants, and Caesar being a popular guy who gets a giant ego and ignores his wife’s pleas not to go to the Senate on the Ides of March. That’s fucking stupid compared to any of the historical accounts we have. Caesar is a military and political genius who just spent the last two decades turning himself into the most powerful man in the Western world and held unprecedented political power in Rome. Cassius and Brutus fought against Caesar in the war he instigated as a military coup. Nonetheless, Caesar pardoned both of them immediately and treated Brutus as his (literal) son.
The basic conflict of these characters where Shakespeare starts his play is “the war is over but the struggle is not; it’s something that must be finished personally”. Caesar has to balance his political ambitions with maintaining a working relationship with the Senate, but when Caesar goes too far and extends his dictatorship to a lifetime tenure, Cassius has his motivation to rally allies to take out Caesar in spite of his clemency. But Shakespeare said, “fuck that”, and completely removes these stupidly compelling motivations from his narrative. The Senate just kinda decides to make Caesar king. We don’t even get the Senate talking about why the fuck they’re going to make Caesar king; it’s all 2nd hand hearsay from the conspirators, who are already inexplicably opposed to Caesar, and some of them made out to be scheming assholes. There isn’t any semblance of, “yo, you know how Caesar spent the last several years using the army without the consent of the Senate and staged a coup that started a war we all fought in? Well, I hear he’s going to move for a lifetime appointment as dictator!”
Instead, this is Cassius’ self-serving, manipulative argument to Brutus:
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caesar’?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ’em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk’d of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass’d but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brook’d
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.
In the 3rd act of the 5 act play, we come to the assassination of Caesar, which up to this point is built up to be the story’s apotheosis.To set this particular scene, Caesar enters the Senate on the ides of March despite the warnings of danger. Some of the Senators have conspired to assassinate Caesar. They come up to him with fairly mundane politics, and then stab him to death. Afterwards, the conspirators leave the building eager to tell the world that Caesar is dead. Both the historians and Shakespeare are in accord with this, and certainly there is room for drama there.
Here is how Shakespeare writes the assassination scene from the initiation of the attack:
CASCA: Speak, hands for me!
-CASCA first, then the other Conspirators and BRUTUS stab CAESAR
CAESAR: Ettu, Brute! Then fall, Caesar.
-Dies
After this, the conspirators run outside and speak to a crowd. The “friends, Romans, countrymen” line soon follows. The rest of the act is a back and forth between the crowd, and mostly Brutus and Marc Antony.
And that’s it. That’s the climactic scene.
Now, I’ll concede I know very little about Elizabethan-era theater. It’s possible that Shakespeare had elaborate choreography. And certainly directors have the capacity to enliven the scene. But when you’re reading it in English class, it’s short and boring. You get the famous line and then Caesar “dies”. That’s the terminus of the life of one of history’s most influential and effective statesmen and conquerors, and it’s fucking quick and boring. People who get hit by a bus get more exciting write-ups in the local paper.We aren’t seeing the scions of the Republic making the last stand against a tyrant finalizing his authority, we’re seeing manipulated and manipulating politicians assassinating a man who lost a battle with his ego and was a dick to his wife. Is that an interesting premise for a drama? Sure, I guess. But there is so much more to the story of Julius Caesar than that.
The Roman historians give us a far more action-packed struggle. I’ve merged the accounts as described by Plutarch and Suetonius, and trimmed some stuff, but I’ve kept the essense and formatted it a bit for flow. Here’s how they tell the same scene:
-Tullius seized Caesar’s toga with both hands and pulled it down from his neck. This was the signal for the assault.
Caesar: “Why, this is violence?!”
-Casca gave him the first blow with his dagger, in the neck, not a mortal wound
-Caesar caught Casca’s arm and ran it through with his stylus, but as he tried to leap to his feet, he was stopped by another wound.
Caesar turned about, grasped the knife, and held it fast.
Caesar: “Accursed Casca, what does thou?”
Casca, to the others, in Greek: “Brother, help!”
-When Caesar saw that he was beset on every side by drawn daggers, he muffled his head in his robe, and at the same time drew down its lap to his feet with his left hand, in order to fall more decently, with the lower part of his body also covered.
-And in this wise he was stabbed with three and twenty wounds, uttering not a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke,
-When Marcus Brutus rushed at him, Caesar said in Greek: “You too, my child?”
-Caesar pulled his toga down over his head and sank… against the pedestal on which the statue of Pompey stood, and the pedestal was drenched with his blood
-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.
-The senators burst out of doors and fled, thus filling the people with confusion and helpless fear, so that some of them closed their houses, while others left their counters and places of business and ran, first to the place to see what had happened, then away from the place when they had seen.
Caesar’s famous last words make basically no sense in the context of the Shakespearean play, given that we have no reason that Caesar would care about Brutus in particular. Brutus is a senator, and we’re told he’s at least not a completely self-serving asshole (that he’s noble, even), but we’re never given and reason to think that Caesar cares deeply about keeping Brutus’ approval. In the play, Brutus is just another senator as far as Caesar would be concerned.
Shakespeare has the full line as “Et tu, Brute! Then fall Caesar!” I know fuck all about the stylistic methods of Shakespeare other than I know to circle “iambic pentameter” on a multiple choice test, and I’m guessing the “Then fall Caesar” was in to make the line work in his stylistic intention. “Then fall Caesar” is just such a pointless redundancy when Caesar is literally falling, and it saps the preceding line of its full gravitas. And again, the lack of familial context renders the line nonsense. In the play, Brutus is set up as noble, but why would that be what fills Caesar with regret?
In Shakespeare, we have a senator trying to act in a way he sees as noble assassinate a politician because he was essentially tricked into doing so by another politician. With the historical context, we have fucking patricide. The obvious literary connection is with Oedipus, but Oedipus’ tale is a tragic one (neither he nor his father knew they were related). The plot in Oedipus was ironic, and irony is modus operandi of the divine realm who control the fate of men. In the Oedipus myth, his parents abandon him for death after the Oracle tells his parents their son will kill them. Oedipus fulfills the prophecy even though he acted without the knowledge that he was killing his father and marrying his mother. The Caesarian history of Plutarch and Suetonius still pays deference to the divine control of the world (hence all the nonsense about omens)but contextually, not even the mythologized account of the classical historians paints an ironic twist on Caesar’s death. But Shakespeare tries to make it tragic anyway for some fucking reason. The general angle he plays is that Brutus was trying to do the right thing, but was being manipulated, and this ultimately led to his undoing in the final act.
The historical account dispenses with this more grandiose element and gives us an extremely human drama. Brutus, whether or not he knew he was killing his father, was still killing someone he knew cared about him. Caesar resigned himself to fate because it’s one thing to be attacked by politicians, but wholly another to see your own son want you dead. With Shakespeare’s “then fall Caesar”, Caesar’s last word is his own name, cementing his character as an inexplicable egomaniac. In the history books, his last words is “[my] child”. In his last moments, he wasn’t dying as a dictator being felled by enemies, he wasn’t a king being deposed by senators, he was a father dying in his son’s arms. All his fame and prestige melt away to nothing in that instant; the famed, larger-than-life conqueror is, in that moment, relegated to nothing more than a father with a conflicted relationship with his son.And as he lies bleeding on the ground covering his face from the world and God, we wonder, does he feel merely shame, or does he in his final moments bleed out wracked with guilt? The historians let us linger on that. Shakespeare never brings it up.
And so, Caesar may be dead, but the fate of the Republic still remains uncertain. Historically, the civil strife continues down a similar vein: the Populares/Caesarians have the question of “who shall succeed Caesar?”, and the Optimates must now figure out how to go about rebuilding the Senate to its former authority. The factions are still fighting, albeit the look of the fight has changed. Because Shakespeare omitted this historical background, the only question his characters can ask is “who shall succeed Caesar?”
In the immediate aftermath of the death of Caesar, the historians paint a picture of elated Senators rushing into the streets to rebuild democracy, only to be met with desertion from the people. Hope and jubilance quickly turns to fear and despondence. The fighters in this civil war have struggled, met a great victory after losing the civil war, but it seems to be for not. Dramatically, not a bad spot to me in for your conclusion of the middle act. In Shakespeare, the people aren’t struck by a sensible fear for being directly involved with political turmoil, but are instead a bunch of fickle mush-heads eagerly awaiting outside to crown a new king to the guy who gives them the best speech for some reason. Brutus and Antony vie for this position, with Brutus being shown essentially as a democrat trying to do right by the people, and Antony turning into a conniver.
Historically, Caesar’s death didn’t have such rapidly dramatic consequences. The Senate and other arms of the government still existed and functioned. Nevertheless, Caesar was a powerful figure with wide popularity in the public and the military. Anyone who could harness that influence could become powerful indeed. So who is the heir to that power? Enter Octavian, the new wild card in all this. Octavian was Caesar’s adopted son (he was largely raised by Caesar’s sister Julia), and according to his will, his sole heir. Caesar’s biological son to Cleopatra (who were both in Rome when he was assassinated) was snubbed. Octavian was only 18 at the time of Caesar’s death, but he was already a budding statesman and quickly started building his claim to Caesar’s legacy. He would even skirmish both politically and militarily with Antony, but by 42 BC, two years after Caesar’s death, a second triumvirate was formed, this time led by Octavian, Antony, and a former general of Caesar’s named Lepidus. Despite the tensions, Octavian and Antony became allies (each had married into the other’s family), and they sought to weaken the influence of the Optimates like Caesar’s triumvirate before them. Anticipating that the fighting was not over, in this meantime, Brutus and Cassius had taken control of provinces in the eastern portion of the nascent empire.
While Shakespeare keeps the outline of the emergence of the Second Triumvirate and Cassius and Brutus anticipating a fight against it, he spends his forth act focusing on Brutus and Cassius. Brutus accuses Cassius of having Caesar assassinated for money (an ahistorical fact as far as our sources know), but they reconcile after Cassius helps Brutus work through guilt he now has because his wife decided to kill herself because she felt neglected (another ahistorical fact directly contradicted by our sources). Caesar appears as a ghost to Brutus and tells him he’s going to die in battle—this is a reference from Plutarch.
Act 5 centers around the battle of Philippi, the decisive fight between the Optimates, led by Brutus and Cassius, and the Populares in the Triumvirate of Antony and Octavian. There were actually two battles over the course of 3 weeks. In the first engagement, troops commanded by Brutus faced off against troops commanded by Octavian, and Antony’s forces faced those of Cassius. Initially, Brutus managed to beat back Octavian. However, Antony beat Cassius. Cassius was led to believe through false intelligence that Brutus had been killed. Assuming failure was imminent, he took his own life (in the custom of the time, it was a way to regain/maintain honor). Brutus managed to rally Cassius’ troops and fight the battle to a draw. Both forces bided time for the next 3 weeks for various reasons before reengaging. Fighting was fierce, but Brutus was ultimately defeated. He took his own life at the conclusion. To his credit, Shakespeare essentially keeps true to the gist of this (and I have no quarrel with condensing the events for dramatic flow).
Still, even for the parts where he preserves the historical narrative, the utter lack of historical context renders the narrative impotent, especially given the subtext we ought to have. This is the last stand of the Optimates. When we opened, Cassius and Brutus just got done surrendering against Caesar and his man Antony in a war to preserve the Senate from usurpation by Caesar. Though the war was over, they regrouped and took out Caesar personally, son killing father. And yet it wasn’t enough. Antony regrouped, and Caesar’s new heir Octavian continued the Caesarian legacy, and Cassius and Brutus took up arms one last time. Brutus, illegitimate son of Caesar fought valiantly against Caesar’s adopted son. Cassius, the man who had been leading the resistance, was bested by Caesar’s military right hand man. Those who fought for the Senate and the People of Rome were vanquished at last at Philippi.
Where Shakespeare deviates from the historical account is adding a speech by Antony in the aftermath of the fighting declaring Brutus to be the “noblest Roman”, as he was the only one who acted without self-serving motives. The historians give a less blunt conclusion: Antony has the body of Brutus draped in his finest purple cloak (purple being a sign of nobility), and reflects upon the fact that Brutus joined the Caesarian conspiracy on condition that Antony’s life would be spared. A thief later stole the cloak, and Antony had the thief executed. Brutus was cremated, and his ashes were sent to his mother Servilla. His wife was said in some accounts to have killed herself out of grief, but Plutarch expresses skepticism over this.
Shakespeare ends the play with hints of strife to come between Octavian and Antony, which he will cover in his subsequent play, Antony and Cleopatra. However, the link between these stories is substantially weakened by Cleopatra and Caesar’s relationship never being explored in either play, which strikes me as a rather sizable dramatic omission.
I guess what I’m saying is that Shakespeare is basically a cross between George Lucas and Zach Snyder, and “Julius Caesar” is a cross between the Star Wars prequels and the DC cinematic universe.