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'A Roman's part': Ciceronian decorum

The peculiar quality of Roman constancy in Julius Caesar, I have suggested, derives from the mingling of its Senecan and Ciceronian definitions. While Senecan Stoic constancy involves an element of pretence, it is Cicero who explicitly recommended his readers to model their behaviour on 'Roman actors'. Shakespeare's Romans, however, take from Cicero's image not its ostensible point—the need to choose appropriate roles—but rather its implications of externality and performance.

For Cicero, every human being has three personae or roles which must be played consistently—the role of a human being, the role of oneself as an individual, and the social role—but the first two must take precedence over the last. In Julius Caesar—from the opening lines in which Flavius and Murellus berate the plebeians for violating decorum by appearing on the street 'without the sign of [their] profession' (1. 1....

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1. Introduction
2. 'A thing unfirm': the world of Julius Caesar
3. 'True fixed and resting quality': Senecan constancy
4. Roman opinion
5. 'A Roman's part': Ciceronian decorum
6. 'Like Brutus, like himself
7. Copyright