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If you had been an eyewitness to Caesar’s murder and the speeches, whose funeral speech would have moved you more, Brutus or Antony? Why?

Both speeches contain some powerful and skilled rhetoric.  If I were an eyewitness to the scene, I think both would have been effective, but the effects would differ.  Brutus' speech would have "moved" me more initially, because that is its intent.  Brutus uses emotional appeal and rhetorical questions to stir the heart of his listener.  Antony's speech is also powerful, but its power lies in its intellectual appeal and its emotional ending.  Antony's speech makes his audience think.  He skillfully points out the fallacies in Brutus's speech without directly stating them himself.  He uses repeition and rhetorical questions to cause his audience to see the situation for what it is.  Then the speech ends with him becoming so emotionally stirred he cannot continue.  Antony's speech contains the elements of emotion and intellect making it an overall more powerful speech.

What I recognized as so powerful in Antony's speech was how he simply told the conspirators what to think.  Brutus does a nice job withhis rhetorical questions in getting the commoners to realize they didn't want to be "slaves", but Antony comes out and tells the people they should be inspired to rage and mutiny. (I know Antony didn't actually tell them that, but the tone of his speech made it very apparent.)

Everybody who was present almost had to follow Antony because he spoke last.  Brutus should have recognized how fickle and easily persuded these people were (remember Flavius yelling at them in Act 1.1?), and he shouldn't have left them alone with Antony.  After seeing Antony cry and show you Caesar's brutally hacked body, wouldn't you be upset with Brutus also?

Most definitely Antony's speech would have been the most moving. Antony must have been charming and knew how to seduce a crowd; think of his many love affairs. (Didn't he have three women pregnant at the same time, one of them Cleopatra?) Caesar was his friend and mentor, so his speech would have been full of passion and pain. I'd like to have witnessed that speech.

1.                              These speeches have very different goals.  Antony wishes to win over the crowd - Brutus only wishes to express his reasoning.  Brutus does not attempt to persuade the crowd; instead, he actually announces he will kill himself if they wish it.  However, his honesty and his reasoning do have an effect on the audience.  Unfortunately, the quite miss Brutus' point... he tries to explain that he loves Rome too much to have it surrended to a tyrant, and yet the crowd is willing to make him one when he is done speaking.

Antony's speech is meant to be persuasive.  Like Brutus, he does sway the crowd, but more to his point - which is that the conspirators must be killed and that Caesar is a hero and victim.  Brutus is straightforward and honest, while Antony is skilled in rhetoric and uses these skills to manipulate.  While his goal should not (necessarily) be seen as self-serving, he does manipulate.  He uses flattering speech, cadence, and dramatic pauses - not to mention props, such as Caesar's bloody toga - to whip the audience up into a riotous frenzy.  It works, too, and all Brutus' careful reaonsing and planning is quickly turned against him

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sakar

In reply to #6:

hie ur speech is cul ....gal....

Both speeches contain some powerful and skilled rhetoric.  If I were an eyewitness to the scene, I think both would have been effective, but the effects would differ.  Brutus' speech would have "moved" me more initially, because that is its intent.  Brutus uses emotional appeal and rhetorical questions to stir the heart of his listener.  Antony's speech is also powerful, but its power lies in its intellectual appeal and its emotional ending.  Antony's speech makes his audience think.  He skillfully points out the fallacies in Brutus's speech without directly stating them himself.  He uses repeition and rhetorical questions to cause his audience to see the situation for what it is.  Then the speech ends with him becoming so emotionally stirred he cannot continue.  Antony's speech contains the elements of emotion and intellect making it an overall more powerful speech.