An Honorable Man

Damian Lewis performing an excerpt from Marc Antony's funeral oration speech from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  Wonderfully done.  It is a reminder of the brilliance of Shakespeare's language.  How many of these phrases have become a part of our common heritage, so easily familiar to us four hundred years later?

 

What remains most puzzling about the assassination is the lack of thorough planning by the conspirators beyond the act of killing Caesar.   Though there were many plotters, Brutus, because of his reputation for integrity, fidelity to the Republic, and possibly because of the rumor that he was Caesar's son (probably not), was the key participant, and it was Brutus who insisted that Caesar be the sole target.  Antony, Caesar's chief subordinate, who could have easily been killed, was instead deliberately spared.  It was as if the conspirators thought once Caesar was dead the Republic would spontaneously regenerate itself, a fatal error, compounded by allowing Antony to speak at Caesar's funeral.

In reality we don't know precisely what Antony said, and he certainly would not have said it in the same tone as Lewis.  Immediately after the assassination, public opinion was divided in Rome.  Antony would have been speaking in a public forum to a large crowd without the benefit of modern amplification.  His speech, of necessity, was pitched more broadly and more loudly.  Whatever he said, it was effective, rousing the crowd, generating outrage and anger.  What was now a mob left the scene and began hunting down the conspirators who had fled to their homes and strongholds.  Eventually they were to flee Rome altogether.  Within two years, most of the conspirators were dead.

Caesar's death triggered more than a decade of civil wars.  First, between his supporters and his killers and then among his supporters culminating in the conflict between Octavian (Caesar's nephew) and Marc Antony and Cleopatra.  It was only with Octavian's victory at Actium in 31 BC, Antony and Cleopatra's suicides the following year, and, by order of Octavian, the murder of Caesarion, the 13-year old child of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, that the civil strife ended.