'A thing unfirm': the world of Julius Caesar

Shakespeare is of course not in any sense original in associating Rome with constancy. The equation of Roman and Stoic virtue had been a commonplace ever since Cicero. Many of the traditional Roman virtues, as defined by the Romans and by later tradition, can be seen as radiating from the central virtue of constancy: fortitude, justice, temperance, fides, gravitas, all involve steadiness and steadfastness, a refusal to be shifted from one's duty. Rome itself, the Eternal City, is an archetype of stability and permanence, with its straight roads and marble columns and arches, enduring even in ruins—though those ruins also imply the limits of worldly constancy. Rome's solidity, rationality and order are embodied in the 'Roman' simplicity and clarity of Julius Caesar's structure and language.

These Roman qualities are set, however, against a background of mutability, uncertainty, and mystery. It is most potently embodied in the storm, in which Rome is invaded by supernatural disorder: wild beasts roam the streets, the dead walk, and normality is transformed to 'monstrous quality' (1. 3. 68). 'Are you not moved,' Casca demands of Cicero, 'when all the sway of earth / Shakes like a thing unfirm?' (3-4). The subliminal pun suggests that Rome's 'sway', its civilized political order, rests on shaky foundations.¹²

The storm is all the more terrifying because, though it seems meaningful, its meaning is obscure. Characters suggest incompatible explanations: it is a sign of civil war in heaven or divine anger with mankind (Casca, 1. 3. 11-13), of the unnaturalness of Caesar's tyranny (Cassius, 1. 3. 68-77), of Caesar's impending death (Calphurnia, 2. 2. 30-1) or some other catastrophe (Caesar, 2. 2. 28-9), or simply a natural phenomenon. Cicero, who takes the last view (1. 3. 30), sums up:

Indeed it is a strange-disposèd time;
But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.

(1. 3. 33-5)

In a play centrally concerned with the problems of knowledge, judgement, and factual and moral error, Cicero's may be taken a choric comment applicable to much more than the storm.¹³

The disorder and uncertainty of the storm scenes colour the imaginative world of Julius Caesar to a surprising degree. All the major characters are complex and changeable, moved by feelings they do not fully understand; the play has a strong undercurrent of powerful, repressed emotions, reflected in imagery of fire, blood, and violence.¹⁴ Similarly, the macrocosm of Rome rests on the dangerously volatile and emotional plebeians. Rome itself is in a process of change from an old to a new order. The characters attempt to control this process, but we know in hindsight that their predictions are wrong and their actions tragically misguided; they move and act in darkness, unsure of anything. Looking into the future near the end of the play, Brutus and Cassius see only that 'the affairs of men rest still incertain' (5. 1. 95), and Brutus utters a heartfelt prayer:

O that a man might know
The end of this day's business ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known.

(5. 1. 123-6)

His response to the uncertainty of life is a Stoic fatalism: since it is impossible to predict or control the future, one must be prepared to accept with courage and calmness 'the worst that may befall' (96).

The world of Julius Caesar is indeed one which naturally leads to Stoicism. Though in theory Stoic ethics rests on a dogmatic theory of knowledge, in practice the close association between Stoicism and scepticism suggests that it can equally be a response to ignorance. The most dramatic example of this is Montaigne's Pyrrho, the sceptic who resorted to an arbitrary and inflexible consistency in a world where no rational certainty was possible. Shakespeare's Romans, in rather the same way, try to create their own constancy within a mutable world. They do this partly through the permanence and stability of Roman institutions, and partly through aspiring as individuals to the virtue of constancy: to be unmoved, unchanged, always the same, rationally consistent and predictable, in a changing world. The ideal of Shakespeare's Romans is to be, in Casca's words, 'not moved, when all the sway of earth shakes like a thing unfirm'.¹⁵