Ducret 2024 Brutus

2017

This paper briefly revisits the plot of William Shakespeare's play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar and seeks to reflect on power and human behavior at the dusk of the Roman Republic. The play, in fact, portrays the tragedy of Brutus, who, moved by idealism and the impetus to protect the Republic, betrayed Caesar and participated in the conspiracy to kill him. The article ends with considerations about love, ideal and treason.

Undergraduate paper.

What’s the “problem” with Julius Caesar? Shakespeare’s play has drama, eloquence, rhetorical power, thrilling history, and brilliant character portrayals. It is a director’s and actor’s dream, with four extremely well-delineated male roles: Caesar, Brutus, Antony and Cassius. As well as all this reads on the page, in a live performance directors are confronted with four characters competing for the role of protagonist. Where there are few problems with having characters like Henry IV, Prince Hal, Hotspur and Falstaff all in one play — each a powerful archetype — having four military men with large egos, all desiring to possess or dispose power is a very different thing altogether. This paper discusses various theories of where the hero, if any, might be, in Julius Caesar, and relates how a 1967 production in San Francisco resolved the balance in favor of Marc Antony as an amoral key protagonist.

2013

The aim of the thesis is to establish a sense of continuity in the development and transmutation of the character of Julius Caesar from history to epic and drama. The research question is: what elements from Caesar's self-representation, constituting themes and characterization, have been transmitted to his epic and dramatic representation? The groundwork of my study is formed by an analysis of Caesar's self-representation in his Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars as fundamental for the establishment of his specific epic-dramatic image. Epic Caesar is characterized by exceptional speed, leading to his transcendence of ordinary temporality; this supernatural asset distinguishes him as a certain quasi-divine presence. Caesar's dramatic aspect is expressed in the heightened sense of self-dramatization achieved by the self-referential use of the third person, the utilization of dramaturgical techniques and by highlighting the performativity of war and the gaze of the commander. The fusion of author and protagonist exemplified in Caesar's works allows their assessment both on a level internal to the narrative, and on an external, or meta-level, as part of the author's political and personal propaganda. A chapter on ancient historiography, focusing primarily on events not described in the Commentaries, explores the development of Caesar's epic-dramatic character in the light of his dramatization by the historical canon and the Late Republican performative milieu. One epic (Lucan's Civil War) and three dramatic case studies (Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, George Chapman's The Tragedy of Caesar and Pompey and Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra) are investigated in the light of the set of qualities, identified as intrinsic to Caesar's agenda set in his own works. By drawing parallels between Caesarean self-characterization and its interpretation by the dramatists I aim to elucidate the Commentaries' potential for thematic influence, created by the unique blending of author and protagonist.

2004

Gaius Julius Caesar was a ruthless military leader, a dangerous politician, and a cunning historian. “A General’s Self-Depiction” examines an important episode in the Commentarii de Bello Gallico to assess the political motivations underlying the account. The details of Caesar’s first British expedition (55 B.C.E.) are scrutinized for deliberate inaccuracies and strategic shadings of the truth to disclose the long-term political goals behind the nuances and “spin” of his British narrative. I prove that Gaius Julius Caesar was a calculating, purposeful man, who had both stated and self-interested unstated goals in nearly every undertaking. Degree Type Open Access Senior Honors Thesis Department History and Philosophy First Advisor Dr. James P. Holoka

Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 2015

Contrarily to most traditional accounts on the foundation of the Republic, Dionysius describes the passage from the Tarquins' monarchy to the Republic as a lawful constitutional reform, in which L. Junius Brutus played a pivotal role. In my paper I analyze the speech that Brutus delivers to the Roman patricians to endorse the establishment of a new government in Rome. The new constitution, although remaining essentially monarchical, will keep its autocratic nature concealed from the people. Throughout this paper, I show how Dionysius in his presentation of Brutus picked up elements both related to the senatorial propaganda against M. Junius Brutus -Caesar's murderer, who claimed descent from L. Brutus and the tyrannicide Ahala -and, at the same time, the character of Augustus's newly-founded government. This account may thus be regarded as Dionysius' own elaboration of Augustus's constitutional reform.

English Studies, 2010

This essay examines the interrelation of cause, reason and motive as it is explored in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The frequency with which the words cause and reason recur in connection with Brutus, and the complexity of the manner in which the various meanings of the words are played off against one another, suggest that the thematic interest in the problem of defining human motivation is central to the concerns of the play as a whole and to the understanding of this character in particular. What is remarkable is that while Brutus insistently invokes reasons for his decision to kill Caesar he never actually gets around to specifying them in unequivocal terms, so that the audience is left frustrated in its desire to understand what it is that impels him. What Shakespeare would appear to be doing then is deliberately problematizing the issue of human motivation, tantalizingly holding out the prospect of explanatory closure without actually supplying it, so that what we are left with is a sense of the ultimate indecipherability of human conduct. While Shakespeare's Hamlet is giving full rein to the ''antic disposition'' he has chosen to assume, comporting himself with such exaggerated eccentricity as to arouse concern in all who know him, other characters in the play are no less energetically engaged in the task of seeking out an explanation for his conduct. Has it been provoked by anguish over his father's premature death, by dismay at his mother's precipitous marriage, by the torment of thwarted love, or by some other less obvious malaise? The entire court of Elsinore mobilizes itself around the pursuit of what is supposed to be a single underlying reason for the young man's perverse behaviour, striving-as Polonius laboriously expresses it-to ''find out the cause of this effect, / Or rather say the cause of this defect, / For this effect defective comes by cause'' (2.2.101-3). 1 But the quest for such a unitary cause is destined to failure, as Hamlet himself intimates when he warns that those intent on unravelling the secret meaning of his actions will never succeed in plucking out the heart of his mystery (3.2.368-9).

Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2023

The current (albeit dated) introduction to the Loeb edition (H.M. Hubbell, 1939) of Cicero's Brutus is uncharitable. It claims that the text "bears many marks of hasty composition and of lack of revision," and "conveys the impression of rapid dictation" (p.

Sydney Studies in English, 2008

2017

Well-known as a brilliant general and politician, Julius Caesar also played a fundamental role in the formation of the Latin literary language and remains a central figure in the history of Latin literature. With twenty-three chapters written by renowned scholars, this Companion provides an accessible introduction to Caesar as an intellectual along with a scholarly assessment of his multiple literary accomplishments and new insights into their literary value. The Commentarii and Caesar’s lost works are presented in their historical and literary context. The various chapters explore their main features, the connection between literature, state religion and politics, Caesar’s debt to previous Greek and Latin authors, and his legacy within and outside of Latin literature. The innovative volume will be of great value to all students and scholars of Latin literature and to those seeking a more rounded portrait of the achievements of Julius Caesar.