Marcus Junius Brutus
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Marcus Junius Brutus (85 BC – 42 BC), or Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, was a Roman senator of the late Roman Republic. He was one of Julius Caesar's assassins.
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[edit] Background
Marcus Brutus's father, M. Iunius Brutus, was legate to Cn. Pompeius Magnus. 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 was known as Q. Servilius Caepio Brutus for an unknown period of time. 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 at high rates of interest. He returned to Rome a rich man, where he married a woman named Claudia Pulchra. 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.
[edit] 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. Around 45 BC, he divorced Claudia and married Porcia Catonis 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 intercepted Caesar just as he was passing Pompey's Theater, and directed him to a room adjoining the east portico. 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.[citation needed] In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the dictator directed his famous last words at him: Et tu, Brute? or And [even] you, Brutus? Suetonius stated that Caesar said, in Greek, καὶ σύ, τέkνον; (transliterated as "Kaì sú, téknon?", that is Even you, my child?), translated in Latin as Tu quoque, Brute, fili mihi? (You, too, Brutus, my son?) (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, delivered a brief and undramatic eulogy at Caesar's funeral, as according to Roman tradition. Ironically, Brutus was named as a minor beneficiary in Caesar's recorded will, along with Antony.
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 by running on his sword while held by a second. This was considered a noble Roman death. Eleven years later, Octavian waged a battle at Actium against Mark Antony and became the sole ruler of Rome. He accepted the surname Augustus.
* Brutus was never actually proven to be guilty of conspiracy, though many people believe him to be.
[edit] 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 – supposedly 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.
[edit] 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 and Gaius Cassius Longinus 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. John Wilkes Booth is supposed to have shouted the phrase from the theatre's stage after assassinating Abraham Lincoln.
- John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, was inspired by Brutus. Booth's father Junius Brutus Booth was named for Brutus, and Booth (as Mark Antony) and his brother (as Brutus) had performed in a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in New York just six months before the assassination. Lamenting the negative reaction to his deed, Booth wrote in his journal on April 21, 1865, while on the run, "[W]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."
- In the Masters of Rome novels of Colleen McCullough, Brutus is portrayed as a timid intellectual poseur who hates Caesar for personal reasons. Cassius and Trebonius use him as a figurehead because of his family connections.
[edit] Family tree
- (1)=1st husband/wife
- (2)=2nd husband/wife
- x=assassin of Caesar
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[edit] External links
Media on Marcus Junius Brutus in the Wikicommons.
Categories: Cleanup from September 2006 | All pages needing cleanup | Articles with unsourced statements | Ancient Roman politicians | Ancient people who committed suicide | Roman generals | Regicides | Historical figures portrayed by Shakespeare | Iunii | Politicians who committed suicide | Suicides by sharp instrument | 85 BC births | 42 BC deaths | Heirs of Caesar
