SOURCE: “Politics and the Ethics of Intention: Brutus' Glorious Failure,” in The End of the Ancient Republic: Essays on ‘Julius Caesar,’ Carolina Academic Press, 1982, pp. 39-61.

[In the following essay, Blits studies the motivations of Brutus, and finds that in his inability to reconcile virtue and political action, Brutus ultimately fails to realize his idealized intentions for Rome.]

Edward Gibbon, the historian of Rome, begins his study of Brutus by drawing attention to the wide discrepancy between his illustrious reputation for patriotic virtue and his actual contribution to his country:

The memory of Caesar, celebrated as it is, has not been transmitted down to posterity with such uniform and encreasing applause as that of his Patriot Assassin. Marc Antony acknowledged the rectitude of his Intentions. Augustus refused to violate his Statues. All the great Writers of the succeeding Age, enlarged on his Praises, and more than two hundred Years after the Establishment of the Imperial Government the Character of Brutus was studied as the Perfect Idea of Roman Virtue. In England as in France, in modern Italy as in ancient Rome, his name has always been mentioned with Respect by the Adherents of Monarchy, and pronounced with Enthusiasm by the Friends of Freedom. It may seem rash and invidious to appeal from the Sentence of Ages; yet surely I may be permitted to enquire, in what consisted The Divine Virtue of Brutus?

The few Patriots, who by a bold and well concerted Enterprize, have delivered their Country from foreign or domestic Slavery, [among whom Gibbon includes “the elder Brutus”] … excite the warmest Sensations of Esteem and Gratitude in those breasts which feel for the interest of Mankind. But the Design of the younger Brutus was vast and perhaps impracticable, the Execution feeble and unfortunate. Neither as a Statesman nor as a General did Brutus ever approve himself equal to the arduous task he had so rashly undertaken, of restoring the Commonwealth; instead of restoring it, the Death of a mild and generous Usurper produced only a series of Civil Wars, and the Reign of three Tyrants whose union and whose discord were alike fatal to the Roman People.

The sagacious Tully often laments that he could be pleased with nothing in the Ides of March, except the Ides themselves; that the Deed was executed with a manly Courage, but supported by childish counsels; that the Tyranny survived the Tyrant; as the Conspirators, satisfied with Fame and Revenge, had neglected every Measure that might have restored public Liberty. Whilst Brutus and Cassius contemplated their own Heroism with the most happy Complacency, Marc Antony who had preserved his Life, and the first Magistracy of the State by their injudicious clemency, seized the Papers and Treasure of the Dictator, inflamed the People and the Veterans, and drove them out of Rome and Italy, without any other Opposition than some grave Remonstrances which the Patriots vainly addressed to the Consul.¹

Gibbon is of course speaking of the “historical” Brutus, but everything he says applies with at least equal force to Shakespeare's Brutus. Shakespeare has Brutus make all the mistakes Gibbon lists, and others. Moreover, just as Gibbon in answer to his own question says Brutus' virtue consisted in his disinterested intention,² so Shakespeare reworks his source materials so that Brutus' concern for pure intentions becomes the decisive cause of the conspirators' major errors and defeat. Yet Shakespeare's Brutus, like his historical model, enjoys the highest esteem and respect for his virtue. Nearly everyone in the play loves or admires him:³

O, he sits high in all the people's hearts;
And that which would appear offence in us
His countenance, like richest alchemy,
Will change to virtue and to worthiness.

(I.iii.157-160)

Cassius bows to his judgment out of love and respect for his “noble mind” (I.ii.308). Portia loves him dearly and looks up to him as the model Roman. Caius Ligarius considers him the “Soul of Rome” and pledges to do anything, even “things impossible,” if only Brutus leads him (II.i.321-325). Lucilius gladly risks life and honor for him, and Brutus' defeated soldiers finally measure their own worth by how devotedly they served him. Even his enemies honor him highly. Octavius pays his virtue last respects, and Antony's final words laud his disinterested motives:

This was the noblest Roman of them all.
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only,(4) in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, “This was a man!”

(V.v.68-75)

To most Shakespearean critics, too, Brutus seems the perfect idea of Roman virtue. Mungo MacCallum, perhaps the play's most respected and influential 20th Century critic, expresses a conclusion shared by many. While stressing that Shakespeare actually “heightens the folly” of Brutus' mistakes by altering Plutarch's account so as to point up his Stoic intentions, MacCallum nevertheless argues that the playwright “screens from view whatever in the career of Brutus might prejudice his claims to our affection and respect.” Indeed, while “to Plutarch Brutus is, so to speak, the model republican, the paragon of private and civic virtue,” to Shakespeare, MacCallum believes, he is even more. Plutarch reports that

Brutus in a contrary manner [to Cassius], for his virtue and valiantness, was well-beloved of the people and his own, esteemed of noble men, and hated of no man, not so much as of his enemies, because he was a marvelous lowly and gentle person, noble minded, and would never be in any rage, nor carried away with pleasure and covetousness, but had ever an upright mind with him, and would never yield to any wrong or injustice, the which was the chiefest cause of his fame, of his rising, and of the good will that every man bore him; for they were all persuaded that his intent was good.⁵

Shakespeare, “adopt[ing] and purif[ying]” this conception of Brutus, “carries much further [the] process of idealization that Plutarch had already begun.”⁶ In MacCallum's eyes, neither Rome's defeat, nor Brutus' heightened folly in contributing to that defeat, detracts from his stature as the paragon of civic as well as private virtue.⁷

Impressed by his Stoic principles, even the best critics have taken Brutus' republicanism for granted. Although recognizing something ambiguous about his virtue, Allan Bloom's interpretation of Caesar rests squarely on the traditional view that “virtue, to [Brutus], is incorporated in the life of a good citizen.”⁸

The motivation of both Brutus and Cassius are truly republican, with the difference that, according to the formula of the time, the one hated tyranny, and the other, tyrants. … Both positions reflect elements in the republican character; the one presents the principles, the other, the passions which must be combined for a republican regime to endure. … Both Brutus and Cassius are noble Romans, the sort of men who made republican Rome the glory of political history.⁹

Yet Brutus' patriotism is not so unproblematical. His Stoic ethics of intention, depending on an opposition between self-interest and duty, proves to contain an antirepublican disdain for the success of his own political cause and even for the welfare of his country. Far from representing the principles of republican Rome, Brutus' celebrated virtue is, on the contrary, at once a reflection of and a reaction to the rise of imperial Rome.¹⁰

The first three sections of this essay will concentrate on the meeting at Brutus' house shortly before Caesar's assassination, when the conspiracy's intended moral figurehead becomes its political brains, as Brutus makes three important decisions against Cassius' better judgment: 1) not to swear an oath of resolution, 2) not to include Cicero in the plot, and 3) not to kill Antony along with Caesar. The last two sections will then consider Brutus' notion of the general good and the specific connection between his virtue and the rise of imperial Rome.¹¹

1

The conspirators arrive at Brutus' house with “their hats … pluck'd about their ears, / And half their faces buried in their cloaks” (II.i.73-74). Although the night is so unusually bright that he can read without a candle (44-45), Brutus immediately assumes the conspirators' concealment is a sign of shame. His strong aversion to stealth, which seems of a piece with his devotion to the common good, leads him to believe they are ashamed to show their faces even “by night, / When evils are most free” (78-79). He regards their concealment not as a reasonable precaution in the pursuit of an honorable cause, but as a tacit confession that their cause is unjust. Justice, he believes, is public in every respect, and thus he considers the cloaked conspirators merely a “faction” (77). Their partial appearance betokens a partisan purpose. This moral revulsion to their covert activity is emblematic of his political decisions.

Brutus asks the other conspirators to give him their “hands over all, one by one.” But when Cassius then proposes they “swear [their] resolution,” Brutus immediately objects.

No, not an oath. If not the face of men,
The sufferance of our souls, the time's abuse—
If these be motives weak, break off betimes,
And every man hence to his idle bed.
So let high-sighted tyranny range on,
Till each man drop by lottery. But if these,
As I am sure they do, bear fire enough
To kindle cowards and to steel with valour
The melting spirits of women, then, countrymen,
What need we any spur but our own cause
To prick us to redress? what other bond
Than secret Romans, that have spoke the word,
And will not palter? and what other oath
Than honesty to honesty engag'd,
That this shall be, or we will fall for it?
Swear priests and cowards, and men cautelous,
Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls
That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear
Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain
The even virtue of our enterprise,
Nor th' insuppressive mettle of our spirits,
To think that or our cause or our performance
Did need an oath; when every drop of blood,
That every Roman bears, and nobly bears,
Is guilty of a several bastardy,
If he do break the smallest particle
Of any promise that hath pass'd from him.

(114-140)

Brutus' spirited objection presents a manly challenge: those needing to swear their resolution lack even the strength of women. His first decision is thus often praised for expressing republican sentiments. For example, Norman Rabkin, calling him “the ardent republican, the ideal Roman,” argues that

Brutus is right. What good is an oath which merely ornaments an action conceived in honor and love of country? Moreover, he is right practically. Any member of the band so inclined could break the oath to his own advantage and warn Caesar, but none does so in the absence of an oath. Oaths then are meaningless.¹²

Rabkin may have a point, but it is not Brutus'. Brutus objects not because a sworn oath would be superfluous, but for the opposite reason. He objects because swearing would be meaningful. Because it compels obedience, swearing an oath would “stain” the conspirators' “motives” and give the assassination the wrong meaning. The conspirators must do nothing that would belie virtue as their only concern.

Brutus' veto rests on a crucial distinction between a sworn oath, i.e., one sworn to the gods, and an oath exchanged among the conspirators, which, witnessed by no one save the “secret Romans” themselves, consists entirely in the integrity of their word. He objects to the former in the name of the latter because he considers swearing a sign of “need” (cp. 123 and 137). Brutus believes that virtuous men practice virtue for its own sake and not for the sake of its extrinsic consequences. Such men therefore need nothing but their virtue to spur their action. Since their virtue is unconditional, they do their duty because it is right, not because it is compulsory. Swearing an oath, however, suggests just the opposite, that the actors' resolution depends on outside compulsion or supports. By calling upon the powerful gods to witness our oaths, swearing enforces our promises through fear of divine punishment for perjury. A sworn oath is thus a sign of moral weakness, for, rather than pledging the strength we have, it provides the strength we need. To suggest that the conspirators swear an oath is, then, to “think” that they “did need” one. It is to “stain” their “virtue” by doubting their “motives.”¹³

2

The second decision enlarges upon the rationale of the first.¹⁴ Cassius asks whether they should sound out Cicero, adding that he thinks he will stand very strong with them. Several others agree, including Metellus Cimber:

O, let us have him, for his silver hairs
Will purchase us a good opinion,
And buy men's voices to commend our deeds.
It shall be said his judgment rul'd our hands;
Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear,
But all be buried in his gravity.

(144-149)

But Brutus quickly vetoes the proposal:

O, name him not; let us not break with him;
For he will never follow any thing
That other men begin.

(150-152)

One important effect of this decision is to deprive the conspiracy of Cicero's vast rhetorical abilities. As Bloom remarks, it is hard to believe that the man universally acknowledged the greatest orator in Roman history would not have presented the reasons for the assassination at Caesar's funeral better than Brutus did.¹⁵ However, the issue of Cicero's rhetoric is subordinate to the issue of his “judgment.” Brutus rejects including Cicero because he objects to prudence on principle.

For Brutus, his rivalry with Cicero involves not only who will be the conspiracy's acknowledged leader, but also, and especially, what “shall be said” to have “rul'd [the assassins'] hands.” Brutus knows that both would add respectability to the plot, but each for opposite virtues: Brutus for the purity of his intentions, Cicero for the prudence of his judgment.¹⁶

According to Brutus' conception of virtue, since virtue is voluntary, an action possesses no moral significance except insofar as it is voluntary. Its moral element therefore lies wholly within its initial inception or inward prompting—what Brutus calls “the first motion” (64)—and not in its ultimate outcome or outward consequence. It rests in the actor's will or intention, not the action's results. The actor's motives are thus the sole standard for judging the justice of an action. Standing above its outcome, virtue consists in choosing the right end rather than in achieving it, in aiming straight rather than in hitting the target. Moreover, since virtue is a disposition or attitude of the mind, it does not require knowledge. Exclusive regard for intention makes judgment superfluous while making justice inherently good.¹⁷

Prudence, on the other hand, is essentially instrumental. While presupposing a moral purpose, it deals directly with means rather than with ends. As Metellus Cimber's unfortunate metaphor of commerce signifies, it is always exercised for the sake of an end outside its own activity and not simply for its own sake.¹⁸ Cassius is correct when he reminds Brutus:

Of your philosophy you make no use,
If you give place to accidental evils.

(IV.iii.144-145)

But whereas Stoic wisdom patiently endures such evils,¹⁹ prudence is concerned with carefully avoiding them. To follow its counsels is therefore tantamount to conceding that virtue is not the only good or perhaps even the highest good and that happiness is indeed affected by things independent of one's will. It amounts to acknowledging that virtue is neither selfless nor self-sufficient, that its practice includes a consideration of extrinsic consequences and depends on the support of external goods.

Brutus rejects Cicero, then, for essentially the same reason he rejected swearing an oath. To be ruled by Cicero's “judgment” is to “make no use” of his own “philosophy.”²⁰ The second decision goes beyond the first, however, in pointing up how concerned Brutus is with what others will say or think about his motives. An honorable reputation is as important to him as to any other Roman. But whereas a more traditional Roman would seek honor for his beneficial actions, Brutus seeks fame and glory for his honorable motives. Brutus, whose character in part combines personal ambition and selfless principles, fears that the reputation “the sagacious Tully” would lend the conspiracy would compromise the one he seeks for himself.²¹ The third decision will show how far he is prepared to go to avoid the compromising appearance of prudence.

3

Decius next raises the question of whether only Caesar should be killed, and Cassius, thinking to events beyond the assassination, urges that Antony should also fall lest in sparing him the conspirators in effect save Caesar. But Brutus objects. His objection, however, has almost nothing to do with Antony. It is concerned instead with how the conspirators' motives for killing Caesar will appear. “Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,” he explains,

To cut the head off and then hack the limbs,
Like wrath in death and envy afterwards;
For Antony is but a limb of Caesar.
Let's be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,
And in the spirit of men there is no blood.
O, that we then could come by Caesar's spirit,
And not dismember Caesar! But, alas,
Caesar must bleed for it. And, gentle friends,
Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;
Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds.
And let our hearts, as subtle masters do,
Stir up their servants to an act of rage,
And after seem to chide 'em. This shall make
Our purpose necessary, and not envious;
Which so appearing to the common eyes,
We shall be call'd purgers, not murderers.
And for Mark Antony, think not of him;
For he can do no more than Caesar's arm
When Caesar's head is off.

(162-183)

Brutus' opposition springs from a paramount concern for the conspirators' reputation, not their eventual success. Killing Antony, he fears, would cause them to be “call'd” the wrong thing because the additional violence would give the wrong impression of their “purpose” for killing Caesar.

Critics often point out that Brutus, unable to permit himself full consciousness of what he is doing, tries to transform Caesar's assassination into something it is not. He tries to purify the deed of any taint of butchery by raising it to the level of pious sacrifice.²² He attempts this, however, not to cloak the deed with false appearances, but so the truth can be seen. The assassination must seem to be exactly what it is. Insisting on moral transparency, he demands that the assassination be performed in such a way as will show that the killers' “purpose” was “necessary, and not envious.” Their actions must assure “the common eyes” that their intention was free from any interested or passionate motive.

Imitating the indirect ways of “subtle masters,” the conspirators must show that their hearts were not in their action, that Caesar's death was nothing but a reluctant concession to justice. They must therefore not only act dispassionately and limit the violence by sparing Antony; they must also seem reluctant to kill Caesar, for reluctance, even more than dispassion, attests to disinterestedness. Reluctance to do their duty will show that their action was prompted by nothing but their duty—a paradox that helps explain why Brutus, although very careful to conceal his internal torments after deciding to kill Caesar, is willing, even eager, to let others see how painful it was for him to choose public duty over personal friendship.

But Brutus knows that protests of reluctance, while important, are not enough. “Though now we must appear bloody and cruel,” he explains to Antony after Caesar's death,

As by our hands and this our present act
You see we do, yet see you but our hands
And this the bleeding business they have done.
Our hearts you see not; they are pitiful;
And pity to the general wrong of Rome—
As fire drives out fire, so pity pity—
Hath done this deed on Caesar.

(III.i.165-172)

Because men tend to judge intentions by results, it is most important to Brutus that Caesar's death promise the assassins no personal gain. Others, including Caesar's partisans, may benefit, but not the assassins (III.ii.42-48). Their action, in fact, must entail a deep and conspicuous personal loss. The sacrifice of his “best lover” shows that Brutus acted “for the good of Rome” (III.ii.46). “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.” (III.ii.22-23) What men give up, not what they gain, shows their disinterestedness. Accordingly, when Cassius says he still fears Antony “For the ingrafted love he bears to Caesar,” Brutus replies,

Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him:
If he love Caesar, all that he can do
Is to himself: take thought, and die for Caesar.

(II.i.184-187)

Men's loves are measured by their losses. The purity of a man's intentions is best shown by the sacrifice of what he holds most dear. As the purity of an act is best revealed by its imprudence, the ethics of intention, disdaining prudence, ultimately courts political defeat.²³

4

Brutus' conception of the general good lacks a public or republican spirit. Before the conspirators arrive at his house, Brutus, having deliberated alone all night, reviews the considerations that led him to conclude Caesar must be killed. His speech begins,

It must be by his death: and for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general.

(II.i.10-12)

Brutus affirms (as any republican might) that he will act for the sake of the general good. But what he means by “the general” is unrelated to republicanism.²⁴ His Stoic soliloquy is devoid of considerations of republican freedom, honor, and tradition. In it, he never equates monarchy and tyranny; he shows no shame at living in awe of an equal; and while ignoring the sacred oath his ancestor made the Romans swear never to tolerate another king in Rome, he expresses readiness to accept Rome's return to monarchy providing only that reason continue to rule the king monarchically. Perhaps most telling, he never even mentions Rome.

What Brutus means by “the general good” is indicated by the way in which he begins the speech. Focusing on his own “part,” he denies any “personal cause” against Caesar. He sees dedication to the general good in terms of the motives for, not the results of, his actions. Brutus thus confuses impartiality with public-spiritedness. His failure to recognize a middle ground between base self-interest and noble self-sacrifice leads him to believe that sacrificing his own private satisfaction is the same as serving the public good. Brutus is thus dedicated to the general good chiefly in the negative sense of being willing to accept self-sacrifice, but not in the positive sense of actually benefiting his country. As is true of Stoicism in general, his virtue is related principally to enduring evils, not to bestowing goods.

To be sure, Brutus also wishes to live up to his illustrious name and emulate his revered ancestor, Junius Brutus, the founder of Rome's liberties. This is the side of him that Cassius appeals to when trying to arouse his republicanism to overcome his Stoic patience:

O, you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
Th' eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.

(I.ii.156-159)

And Cassius' efforts have an effect best seen in Brutus' patriotic response to his anonymous note:

Shall Rome stand under one man's awe? What, Rome?
My ancestors did from the streets of Rome
The Tarquin drive, when he was call'd a king.
“Speak, strike, redress!” Am I entreated
To speak, and strike? O Rome, I make thee promise,
If the redress will follow, thou receivest
Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus.

(II.i.52-58)

All the republican considerations missing from his Stoic deliberations are present here. Far from tolerating a king in Rome providing the king could remain virtuous, Brutus is now unwilling to endure Rome's standing under “one man's awe” under any conditions. The issue is no longer the overthrow of monarchy in Caesar, but of republicanism in Rome. Accordingly, Brutus does not present himself as Rome's disinterested arbiter, standing dispassionately over his country's fate. Instead, imagining himself petitioned by Rome, he pledges himself to an apostrophized Rome and, in further contrast to his Stoic soliloquy, emphasizes his own hand in the promised action. Whereas in the other speech he never mentions Rome, in this one (II.i.46-58) he mentions Rome as many times as in the rest of his lines combined.²⁵ What matters to him now is Rome's redress, not his own motives. Concern for his country's well-being replaces concern for the purity of his own intentions.²⁶ Cassius' republican instigations, however, have only a short-lived effect. The conspirators soon arrive, and Brutus' civic virtue gives way again to his Stoicism.²⁷ Without constant prodding, his virtue lacks a genuine public dimension. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the end of his life.

Although he seems willing to sacrifice every personal good to the common good, what Brutus finally sacrifices is not so much himself as his country. Brutus says he knows “no personal cause” to act against Caesar. And at Caesar's funeral, just as he argues that the sacrifice of a dear friend shows that he killed Caesar for the good of Rome, so he also declares his willingness to kill himself for that cause: “as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country to need my death.” (III.ii.26-28) But Brutus does not die for his country, or even thinking of his country. His thoughts center on himself as he prepares to die, and he judges his life by a standard wholly unconnected with “the good of Rome.”

          Countrymen,
My heart doth joy that yet in all my life
I found no man but he was true to me.
I shall have glory by this losing day
More than Octavius and Mark Antony
By this vile conquest shall attain unto.
So fare you well at once; for Brutus' tongue
Hath almost ended his life's history.
Night hangs upon mine eyes; my bones would rest,
That have but labour'd to attain this hour.

(V.v.33-42)

Brutus says he has labored his whole life only “to attain this hour.” But his hour of triumphant “glory” is also his country's “losing day.” What he has striven his entire life to attain stands apart from, or above, the downfall of his country. His personal moral victory shines through and eclipses the “vile conquest” of Rome herself. Similarly, just as his decisions as the conspiracy's leader are made not with a view to the political results of the conspirators' actions but with a view to the rectitude of their intentions, so too, running upon his sword, his dying thought is not of Rome or of the effects of his actions but of the goodness of his will:

          Caesar, now be still;
I kill'd not thee with half so good a will.

(V.v.50f.)

In the end, Brutus' ethics of intention, rather than extending his view to the whole community, narrows his vision to a purely personal concern. He ultimately values the purity of his soul above the welfare of his country.

5

Brutus heralds the rise of a postrepublican, apolitical or antipolitical moral virtue. His ethics of intention, reflecting the transition to or the emergence of imperial Rome, is essentially a sign of deep disenchantment. It marks a world in which political action and victory have lost their noble quality because political causes have lost their public character.

In the earlier days of the Republic, Romans strove for Rome's highest honors by competing with one another against her foreign enemies. In winning conquests for Rome, they also won honor and glory for themselves. Their private ambitions were at once served and ennobled by their public service. The public realm, linking together self-interest and duty, allowed men to rise above their merely private concerns while at the same time devoting themselves to something they could love as their own. By the time of Caesar, however, Rome's vast expansion had seriously diminished her public realm.

When could they say, till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walks encompass'd but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.

(I.ii.152-155)

Since actions derive their meaning chiefly from the causes they serve, Rome's “universal” empire (I.i.44) robs her political life of its ennobling spirit by reducing political causes to private causes. Only one man in Caesar—Young Cato—dies in battle for his country. And just as his appearance is largely unexpected, so, too, the standard others use for measuring his nobility is the action of a man who kills himself to show personal loyalty to a friend (V.iv.9-11).²⁸ With this single exception, the Romans serve their various leaders rather than their country under their leaders and measure their own worth by what amounts to private “service to [their] master[s]” (see esp. V.v.53-67).

Brutus' ethics of intention is a reaction to this degradation of political life.²⁹ It attempts to show or to find nobility in a world in which political victories become “vile” because no political action or cause is any longer truly public. As opportunities for public action and hence noble victories diminish, nobility does not so much disappear as it comes to be viewed in a radically new light. The dignity of intention rises as the dignity of action falls. Rather than seen chiefly in terms of action, nobility becomes internalized and, thought to dwell wholly within the actor himself, is understood in separation from or opposition to political action.³⁰

Brutus' conception of honor reflects this new light. Honor was traditionally thought to be primarily an external reward for virtuous actions. Volumnia can speak of Coriolanus' “deed-achieving honour” (Cor. II.i.161), i.e., the honor he achieved for his deeds. No one would describe Brutus' honor in that way, least of all Brutus himself. Brutus begins his funeral oration by reminding the crowd of his honor:

Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear. Believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe.

(III.ii.13-16)

“Honour” here signifies a virtuous disposition, not a noble reward. It is the standard for judging rather than the recognition for performing a certain action. Like “honesty” (which is even more closely associated with Brutus), it is a virtue or virtuous motive rather than virtue's noblest effect; and, again like “honesty,” it has the sense rather of abstaining from wrongdoing than of actually conferring benefits. Characteristically, Brutus believes that, if the people keep in mind that he is honorable, they will be convinced that Caesar's killing was just. Honorable motives by themselves make for an honorable deed. Since intentions are everything, the actions of an honorable man are just simply because he is honorable. They are and remain honorable whatever their consequences or success.³¹

Brutus' virtue also reflects Rome's emerging regime insofar as imperial Rome has no public life. It is especially fitting that Antony eulogizes Brutus for his disinterestedness, for even though Brutus considers him his moral opposite, Antony proves to epitomize the postrepublican notion that one can gain more by losing politically than by winning.³² Brutus' virtuous self-denial is of a piece with Antony's sensual self-indulgence. They are the twin representatives of the new Rome. The one is duty, the other desire, separated from public concerns; and in imperial Rome, as we find in Antony and Cleopatra, there is “no midway / ’Twixt these extremes at all.” (A & C III.iv.19-20) Characterized by a middle void, imperial Rome has nothing that can mediate between desire and duty.

Whereas citizen virtue, combining elements of “realism” and “idealism,” adds nobility to self-interest and friendship or fraternity to justice, and in so doing both ennobles and moderates these two extremes, Brutus' virtue, recognizing only the noble and not the necessary as just, lacks moderation and ultimately even more. In the end it lacks humanity. If man is somehow connected to both what is above and what is below him, his humanity depends on recognizing these two aspects of his nature and giving each its due. It may even be that man is man by virtue of that middle ground or part of the soul that mediates between these extremes, for neither extreme is distinctly human; one is bestial, the other divine. Brutus shows he recognizes this, at least in some sense, when he fears that Caesar would sink to the level of the lowest beast if, upon reaching the highest rung of ambition's ladder, he thought himself a god (II.i.10-34). To remember one's humanity means to remember one's place “in between.” But this is just what Brutus forgets in practicing a moral virtue that disdains political results.

There is something brutish about Brutus or his “idealism.” As Caesar's last words to him suggest (III.i.77), in killing Caesar he does indeed manage to live up to his name, but in a way he never meant. When Antony demands to be told why Caesar was dangerous, Brutus answers,

Or else were this a savage spectacle.
Our reasons are so full of good regard,
That were you, Antony, the son of Caesar,
You should be satisfied.

(III.i.223-226)

The assasssins' deed would be savage, he says, unless their reasons could overcome the natural love of one's own.³³ Yet it is in trying to demonstrate just such disinterestedness that Brutus proves to be truly brutish.

Moments after the assassination, he exhorts the killers:

          Stoop, Romans, stoop,
And let us bathe our hands in Caesar's blood
Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords:
Then walk we forth, even to the market-place,
And waving our red weapons o'ver our heads,
Let's all cry, “Peace, freedom, and liberty!”

(III.i.105-110)

This speech and the bloody ritual it ushers in remind us of Brutus' vain hope to kill Caesar without spilling his blood so that the conspirators' impersonal motives will be apparent to everyone. The speech and ritual are the solemn fulfillment of his wish to convert the assassination into a religious sacrifice. But what exactly does Brutus sacrifice? Unwilling to swear an oath to the gods lest it stain the conspirators' motives, he is willing to make the assassination a human sacrifice to the gods in order to demonstrate those motives. His moral idealism requires the barbaric sacrifice of human blood. Brutus expresses manly contempt for “such suffering souls / That welcome wrongs.” Yet, unable to reconcile virtue and prudence, he ultimately pursues defeat. The defeat, however, is not his but Rome's. Unlike a soldier who sacrifices his own life for his country's victory, Brutus sacrifices the prospect of his country's victory for something entirely his own. Some Shakespearean critics, in important respects the spiritual heirs of postrepublican Rome, consider Brutus “the noblest Roman of them all” and admire him for prizing his ideals more than his country:

The life of Brutus, as the lives of such men must be, was a good life, in spite of its disastrous fortunes. He had found no man who was not true to him. And he had known Portia. The idealist was predestined to failure in the positive world. But for him true failure would have been disloyalty to his ideals. Of such failure he suffered none. Octavius and Mark Antony remained victors at Philippi. Yet the purest wreath of victory rests on the forehead of the defeated conspirator.³⁴

But Shakespeare finds such idealism a degenerate form of nobility. Brutus' moral purity is his central moral as well as political defect. Rather than raise him to man's highest moral levels, his desire to place pure duty or justice over every ordinary human attachment finally degrades his humanity.

O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

(III.ii.106-107)

The idealistic attempt to rise above every attachment to one's own proves in the end not to be a divine willingness to sacrifice one's own well-being for the sake of a higher good, but an inhuman willingness to sacrifice the welfare and happiness of those one seems selflessly to serve. Deprecating political results, Brutus ultimately disdains humanity.

Notes

1. “Digression on the Character of Brutus,” in The English Essays of Edward Gibbon, ed. Patricia B. Craddock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 96f.

2. Ibid., 98.

3. E. A. J. Honigmann, Shakespeare: Seven Tragedies (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 42f.

4. The Arden edn., like most recent edns., follows the Quarto (1691). The usually authoritative First Folio reads, “He, onely …” In a sense both are right. Properly speaking, “only” does double duty here, modifying what precedes and what follows it.

5. Brutus, 29.2-3; Shakespeare's Plutarch, ed. W. W. Skeat (London: Macmillan and Co., 1875), 129.

6. Shakespeare's Roman Plays and Their Background (London: Macmillan and Co., 1967), 249, 234, 233.

7. Edward Dowden (Shakespeare: His Mind and Art [3rd edn.] [New York: Harper and Brothers, n.d.] 249), an important 19th Century critic, goes further:

   In Julius Caesar Shakespeare makes a complete imaginative study of the case of a man predestined to failure, who, nevertheless retains to the end the moral integrity which he prized as his highest possession, and who with each new error advances a fresh claim upon our admiration and our love.

   Consider also Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, 98.

8. Shakespeare's Politics, 92. Bloom sees the problem of Brutus' virtue not in terms of its antirepublicanism but rather in terms of his hypocritical refusal to acknowledge the necessary conditions of his high-minded virtue; see ibid., 96ff.

9. Ibid., 94.

10. Paul A. Cantor (Shakespeare's Rome [Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1976]), while offering an excellent discussion of the connection between imperial Rome and the ethics of intention (145-154), follows Bloom in taking for granted that Brutus' virtue is essentially republican or public spirited (37f.). Cantor, in other words, fails to see the basic similarity between the apparent moral opposites, Brutus and Antony.

11. Recent studies of Brutus' Stoicism include Marvin L. Vawter, “‘Division 'tween Our Souls’: Shakespeare's Stoic Brutus,” Shakespeare Studies, Vol. 7 (1974), 173-195, and Ruth M. Levitsky, “‘The Elements Were So Mix'd …’” PMLA, Vol. 88, No. 2 (March 1973), 240-245.

12. Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York: Free Press, 1967), 108f.

13. Ernest Schanzer to the contrary notwithstanding (The Problem Plays of Shakespeare [New York: Schocken Books, 1965] 46), Shakespeare alters Plutarch's account of Brutus to give central importance to his ethics of intention and its political effects. In Plutarch nothing is said about Brutus' role in the first decision (or even that a decision, strictly speaking, was taken); the issue is not the conspirators' ability to maintain their “resolution” but to keep their “secret”; furthermore, “having never taken oaths together, nor taken or given any caution or assurance, nor binding themselves one to another by any religious oaths,” they do not forswear a religious oath in the interests of another, purer sort of oath (Brutus, 12.6; Skeat, Shakespeare's Plutarch, 114). Note that the conspirators' meeting as a whole is Shakespeare's invention.

14. Critics have failed to see the relation between the first decision and those that follow, or even that they are related. Either approving or simply ignoring the first decision while generally criticizing the others, they misjudge its significance because, like Rabkin, they look to the wrong sort of evidence. The question is not whether the conspirators need to swear an oath, but why Brutus insists they prove they do not. His insistence, not their resolution, is the real issue. By recognizing this, we can see that the three decisions are in fact a concatenation.

15. Shakespeare's Politics, 98; also MacCallum, Shakespeare's Roman Plays, 249.

16. Here I borrow from Bloom (Shakespeare's Politics, 98) where a similar formulation is used. Bloom, however, sees Brutus' imprudence not as a matter of principle but as the unwitting result of his rashness and hypocrisy; see ibid., 92-101.

17. See esp. Cicero, De Finibus, III.

18. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1112b12ff.

19. I.ii.137-139; IV.iii.66-69, 189-191; V.i.101-108.

20. Stoicism differs from Aristotle's teaching in regarding moral virtue as the highest good and consequently in making moral choice the final as well as the efficient cause of action. It differs from Kant's teaching, on the other hand, in considering the moral life to be the life according to nature and in holding that the virtuous man is always happy.

21. In Plutarch (Brutus, 12.1-2; Cicero, 42.1) the conspirators as a group, not Brutus alone in opposition to their collective judgment, decide to exclude Cicero, and not because of his unwillingness to follow another's lead but because they fear his natural timidity, increased by age, would blunt the edge of their ardor at a crisis demanding speed.

22. E.g., Bloom, Shakespeare's Politics, 96; Brents Stirling, Unity in Shakespearean Tragedy (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1956), 46.

23. In Plutarch Brutus does not spare Antony for the sake of how the assassins' motives will appear. Moreover, his naivete has a different quality there from what it has in Shakespeare. Plutarch reports that all the conspirators except Brutus thought Antony should be killed because he was wicked and naturally favored monarchy, was held in high esteem by the soldiers, and, particularly, because in addition to a mind bent to great actions he also had the great authority of the consulship, being then consul with Caesar.

    But Brutus would not agree to it. First, for he said it was not honest; secondly, because he told them there was hope of change in him. For he did not mistrust but that Antonius, being a noble-minded and courageous man (when he should know that Caesar was dead) would willingly help his country to recover her liberty, having them as an example to him, to follow their courage and virtue.

    (Brutus, 18.2-3; Skeat, Shakespeare's Plutarch, 119f.)

    Whereas in Plutarch Brutus expects a virtuous example to have a virtuous effect on the “noble-minded” Antony, in Shakespeare he dismisses him as politically harmless because he considers him morally despicable (II.i.185-190). In Plutarch he expects too much; in Shakespeare, too little. In both accounts he believes that strength comes from virtue, but in Shakespeare he believes that vice renders a man negligible in every respect while in Plutarch he believes that even a man like Antony can be “noble-minded and courageous.” In sparing Antony, Shakespeare's Brutus seems at once more naive and less generous than his historical model.

    We should also note that Shakespeare makes Brutus' most notorious blunder—agreeing to arrange Caesar's funeral as Antony would have it—merely the culmination of his previous decisions. Brutus agrees to Antony's proposal so he can “show the reason of our Caesar's death” (III.i.237). By “show,” however, he means to demonstrate by action as well as to tell. He offers Antony the last word at the funeral (III.i.226-252) and then begs the crowd to stay and listen (III.ii.57-63), not so much because he thinks he will give unanswerable reasons for Caesar's death, but because he wants to demonstrate his disinterestedness by allowing Caesar's loyal partisan to speak. As least as important to him as what he will say is that both he and Antony will announce that Antony speaks by the assassins' permission (III.i.235-251; III.ii.56-63, 83-85). Antony does indeed speak “For Brutus' sake” (III.ii.58, 67). By allowing Antony to praise their victim's glories, the conspirators will show their honorable motives. See the text at n. 33 below.

    For an excellent discussion of how Shakespeare modifies Plutarch's account both to make Brutus' “responsibility” for the error “undivided” and to remove “all the explanatory circumstances” for the decision, see MacCallum, Shakespeare's Roman Plays, 249f. Note also that Shakespeare even takes from Plutarch Antony's cunning reason to bury Caesar honorably and gives it to Brutus (Algeron de Vivier, “Julius Caesar,” in Shakespearean Studies, ed. Matthews and Thorndike [New York, 1916; rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962], 261).

24. Saying he does not see “in what point of view [Shakespeare] meant Brutus' character to appear” in this soliloquy, Coleridge (Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare [London: George Bell and Sons, 1908], 313) remarks that “surely nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him—to him, the stern republican.” Note that the soliloquy is Shakespeare's invention.

25. Brutus mentions Rome twelve times altogether, six in these thirteen lines. This soliloquy is also the only speech in the play to begin and end with the speaker's name.

26. In Lucrece, Junius Brutus is so contemptuous of the wish to show pure intentions that he criticizes not only Lucrece's soft husband, Collatine, for not revenging her rape, but Lucrece as well for killing herself to prove her “mind” was “pure” (1. 1704): “Why Collatine, is woe the cure for woe? / Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds? / Is it revenge to give thyself a blow / For his foul act by whom thy fair wife bleeds? / Such childish humour from weak minds proceeds; / Thy wretched wife mistook the matter so, / To slay herself that should have slain her foe.” (11. 1821-1827) Republican Rome might be said to combine the qualities of Junius Brutus and Lucrece.

27. Note that Brutus' three decisions are decreasingly republican. The first contains his only mention of tyranny (II.i.118).

28. Young Cato dies declaring himself “A foe to tyrants, and my country's friend” (V.iv.5), but it is unclear whether he is honored for his action or for “being Cato's son” (V.iv.9-11).

29. Consider Caius Ligarius, who regards Brutus as the “Soul of Rome” (II.i.321) and is the only character to look to him from the start to lead the conspiracy. Ligarius, a “mortified spirit” (II.i.324) who almost literally embodies the ethics of intention, suffers an unjust fate which shows what his limited actions could not show—that he is too noble to live at Caesar's continued sufferance. While accompanying Brutus to Caesar's house, he does not proceed to the Senate and so has no hand in the deed for which the mob punishes him; II.i.215-220, 310-334; II.ii.111-113; III.iii.35-38.

30. For the difference between the pagan hero and the Christian hero or martyr (“witness”), see Augustine, The City of God, X.21. Among many allusions throughout Caesar to the coming of Christianity with its new sort of hero are the conversation immediately preceding Brutus' first decision in which “the high east” is said to stand directly beyond the Capitol (II.i.101-111); Decius' interpretation of Calphurnia's purported dream concerning Caesar's death, in which, as Samuel Johnson (1765) says, “There are two allusions: one to coats armorial … ; the other to martyrs. … The Romans, says Decius, all come to you, as to a saint, for reliques; as to a prince, for honours.” (quoted by Dorsch, Julius Caesar, 55f.); and the number of Caesar's wounds, which in Plutarch, Suetonius and Appian are twenty-three but in Shakespeare thirty-three (V.i.53). (For the symbolic significance of this number in Shakespeare, see Howard B. White, Copp'd Hills Toward Heaven: Shakespeare and the Classical Polity [The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970], 75.) For other allusions, see Roy W. Battenhouse, Shakespearean Tragedy (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1969), 92f.

31. See Norman Council, When Honour's at the Stake (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 60-74, and note esp. his remarks on Casca's alchemical metaphor at I.iii.157-160 (63).

    The difference between the spirit of Brutus' virtue and republicanism is further indicated by the following Shakespearean revision. According to Plutarch, when Portia disclosed to Brutus that she had gashed herself in the thigh to prove herself worthy of his trust, “Brutus was amazed to hear what she said unto him, and lifting up his hands to heaven, he besought the goddess to give him the grace he might bring his enterprize to so good pass that he might be found a husband worthy of so noble a wife as Portia.” (Brutus, 13.6; Skeat, Shakespeare's Plutarch, 116) In Shakespeare, Brutus, hearing of her proof, also prays to the gods to “Render me worthy of this noble wife!” but is silent about the success of the republican cause (II.i.302f.).

32. See Cantor, Shakespeare's Rome, 148ff.

33. Hence Caesar's last words to Brutus in Suetonius, “And thou, my son?” (Divus Julius, 82) become “Et tu, Brute?” (III.i.77) in Shakespeare.

34. Dowden, Shakespeare, 272.