Oct 11, 2008

Julius Caesar | The Character of Brutus: Is He an Honorable Man?

A discussion of the character of Brutus. Is he an "honorable man"?

The use of the word "honorable" in explicit or implicit conjunction with the name of Brutus has become a coded way of casting doubt upon the motives and morals of a speaker's opponents. Today, when said with a knowing inflection, the statement that someone is an "honorable man" recalls Marc Antony's famous funeral oration in which he subtly twists the word "honorable" into its opposite meaning. When Marc Antony tells the crowd after Caesar's assassination that Brutus is "honorable," his ultimate innuendo is that his reputation as a man of principle is now proven false by the heinous crime...