Julius CaesarWilliam Shakespeare

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, performed by 1599, draws on Plutarch's lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony. The five-act tragedy centers less on Caesar's ambition than on the men who kill him and what follows.

The conspirators, led by Cassius and joined by Brutus, persuade themselves that Caesar's rise to sole power must be stopped for the good of Rome. Brutus weighs the case in soliloquy: he has no personal grievance; he acts on fear of what Caesar may become. The assassination in the Capitol (Act III) is the hinge. Antony's funeral oration turns the crowd against the killers. Civil war follows. At Philippi, Brutus and Cassius die by their own hands. Octavius and Antony remain.

The play is the tradition's great English text on honor, tyranny, and political friendship. Brutus claims the murder is sacrifice, not butchery. Antony proves that rhetoric and feeling can unmake a public argument. Caesar's ghost and the misread omens keep fate and will in view. Later political thought returns to the scene whenever it asks whether the killing of a ruler can preserve a republic or only destroy the killers.