"If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer:"

[Dreadnought]

"Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more."​

Vote in the poll! Was Brutus an honorable, well-intentioned individual who sacrificed everything for the good of his nation and people? Or, instead, was he a naive murderer, one who let patriotic delusions of grandeur cloud his moral judgement?

What would you do, if you were in Brutus's place?

(This is more a moral discussion than a historic one.)

 

[downtown]

Brutus is an American Treasure.

 

[madviking]

If this is a moral discussion, then I cannot see how you can justify Caesar's murder.

 

[Save_Ferris]

Killing a dictator does not mean killing one person. It means either saving or killing a million lives.

Also, why does Brutus have an Ohio State flap on his crotch?

 

[Antilogic]

Killing a dictator does not mean killing one person. It means either saving or killing a million lives.

That's an awfully modern connotation of the word "dictator". There was a time when both "dictator" and "tyrant" didn't have the modern negative connotations.

 

[Ice_Tyrant]

At the very best, Brutus is still a murderer.

 

[aelf]

Are we talking about the real Brutus or the Shakespearan one?

 

[Thorgalaeg]

That's an awfully modern connotation of the word "dictator". There was a time when both "dictator" and "tyrant" didn't have the modern negative connotations.

Yep. In Rome dictator was a special public charge with absolute powers. However it was supposed to be elected for war times only. Caesar wanted to be dictador forever, which was against the laws of the Republic, so from this point of view he was also a tyrant (tyrant being who takes power illegally according to orignal Greek meaning) and killing him would be as justified as killing a rober or any other criminal. Another matter is if Caesar was a good leader and if killing him made things worse, of course seeing the whole picture after 2000 years.

 

[downtown]

Also, why does Brutus have an Ohio State flap on his crotch?

It's a QB Towel!

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You know, there is good reason to believe that Brutus was actually Julius Caesar's biological son. Caesar is well known to have had a long term affair with Brutus's mother. When killed he did not say "et tu Brute" as Shakespeare portrayed him, but may have said "καὶ σὺ τέκνον" ("You too, my child?") as Suetonius claimed.

As a Patricide, under Roman law Brutus ought to have been tied up in a bag filled with rats and thrown into the Tiber river to drown as the creatures gnawed away his flesh.

 

[Flying Pig]

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Lovely speech, excuse any errors as I am doing it from memory. Antony is spot on; Caesar may not have been a freedom-loving democrat, but that does not excuse his murder, especially not given what followed.

 

[holy king]

Killing a dictator does not mean killing one person. It means either saving or killing a million lives.

it can also mean killing tens of thousands in the ensuing civil war.

which, in ceasar's case, it kind of did.

 

[Traitorfish]

He liked the idea of his aristocratic faction wielding political power better than he liked thge idea of Caesar's aristocratic faction wielding political power. Don't see what's particularly noble about that goal, but I don't see what's particularly ignoble about killing another toff to get it. It's just a thing that happened.

 

[Dreadnought]

Are we talking about the real Brutus or the Shakespearan one?

The Shakespearean Brutus has a certain bit of flair, but either one would suffice.

 

[Murky]

Many historians have class bias so you have to take what they say about Caeasar with a grain of salt.

Julius Caesar was a reformer and he was assassinated because he wanted to undo the ruling class. He posed a great threat to the oligarchs of the time. He wanted to create an egalitarian society, not necessarily a crown for himself as some would have you believe.

See Michael Parenti - The Assassination of Julius Caesar

Link to video.

 

[aelf]

The Shakespearean Brutus has a certain bit of flair, but either one would suffice.

I can't comment on the real Brutus, but IIRC the Shakespearan one is a failed Stoic who is being led by the nose by Cassius. On that basis, I don't find him particularly admirable or his moral judgement particularly sound.

 

[Traitorfish]

Many historians have class bias so you have to take what they say about Caeasar with a grain of salt.

Julius Caesar was a reformer and he was assassinated because he wanted to undo the ruling class. He posed a great threat to the oligarchs of the time. He wanted to create an egalitarian society, not necessarily a crown for himself as some would have you believe.

See Michael Parenti - The Assassination of Julius Caesar

Link to video.

Eh, Parenti's work on Caesar is pretty questionable. His project is using Caesar as a basis for the construction of an archetype of popular "progressive" dictatorship, more or less as a way of offering some theoretical grounding for his sympathies with modern and contemporary left-authoritarian regimes. He claims that he's writing "people's history", but his book is far closer to something emerging from the offices of an Official CP c.1960 on the need to support such-and-such "national liberation movement" than anything by Lefebvre or Thompson. He might have a few insights, I don't know enough about the period or his work to say, but overall it's to be avoided.

 

[Murky]

Eh, Parenti's work on Caesar is pretty questionable. His project is using Caesar as a basis for the construction of an archetype of popular "progressive" dictatorship, more or less as a way of offering some theoretical grounding for his sympathies with modern and contemporary left-authoritarian regimes. He claims that he's writing "people's history", but his book is far closer to something emerging from the offices of an Official CP c.1960 on the need to support such-and-such "national liberation movement" than anything by Lefebvre or Thompson. He might have a few insights, I don't know enough about the period or his work to say, but overall it's to be avoided.

I don't see it that way. Caesar was a Populares and was killed in similar fashion to another Populares, Tiberius Gracchus.

Tiberius Gracchus' overruling of the tribunician veto was considered illegal, and his opponents were determined to prosecute him at the end of his one year term, since he was regarded as having violated the constitution and having used force against a tribune. To protect himself further, Tiberius Gracchus sought re-election to the tribunate in 133 BC, promising to shorten the term of military service, abolish the exclusive right of senators to act as jurors, and admit allies to Roman citizenship.

As the voting proceeded, violence broke out on both sides. Tiberius' cousin, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, saying that Tiberius wished to make himself king, led the senators down towards Tiberius. In the resulting confrontation, Tiberius was beaten to death with the chairs of the senators and thrown into the Tiber.[21] Several hundred of his followers, who were waiting outside the senate, perished with him. Plutarch says, "Tiberius' death in the senate was short and quick. Although he was armed, it did not help him against the many senators of the day."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius_Gracchus

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

If we're talking real history, and not the Shakespearean version thereof, Brutus and the conspirators are hardly the models for honor. Brutus believed that he was eliminating a tyrant, and that once eliminated, the Republic would be restored and so would liberty. Unfortunately for the conspirators, it was Caesar who was seen as the defender of the common people, and of their liberty. The conspirators were only defending their interests at the expense of the people, and they did not get the warm popular reception they were expecting.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't see it that way. Caesar was a Populares and was killed in similar fashion to another Populares, Tiberius Gracchus.

The populares weren't a coherent political faction, it just meant a member of the senatorial class who appealed to the plebeians. It was a matter of political strategy, not of principle, and plenty of senators moved back and forth between each camp at will. You really can't paint them as some sort of Classical equivalent to the Jacobins. Individuals like the Grachii, who did appear to have at least some sincere commitment to populist politics, were an exception, and notable precisely because they were the exception; they represent no archetypal poluaris.