The Eternal City trembles and the very foundations of the Republic crack as the Dictator Perpetuo falls to a band of Senators upon this most dreadful day
Julius Caesar, Dictator Perpetuo of Rome, was this morning assassinated within the Theatre of Pompey, falling before an assembly of some twenty-three Senators armed with daggers concealed beneath their togas. The attack came as Caesar took his seat, at which moment the conspirators descended upon him with sudden and terrible violence.
Sources present at the scene report that Casca struck the first blow, followed swiftly by the others. Caesar is said to have defended himself briefly before recognizing among his attackers the face of Marcus Junius Brutus — the man whose very name recalled the ancient liberators of Rome — at which moment he ceased to struggle and drew his toga about his face to meet his end with the dignity of a Roman.
"Et tu, Bruté? — Then fall, Caesar."— Last words attributed to Gaius Julius Caesar, Theatre of Pompey
The body bore three-and-twenty wounds. Each wound a letter in the alphabet of treachery, physicians summoned to the scene report that but a single wound to the chest proved fatal. The Senate hall fell into immediate panic, with citizens fleeing into the streets crying that tyrants walked among them.
This correspondent, who was present in the Forum when word arrived, reports that Fear itself ran through the streets of Rome, knocking upon every door and window, and that even the boldest of men were seen to pale.
Mark Antony, granted the right to speak at Caesar's funeral by a perhaps overly trusting Brutus, delivered an oration so powerful it shook the very stones of the Forum. Beginning with "Friends, Romans, countrymen" — he spoke with calculated precision.
Antony repeatedly styled Brutus an "honourable man" with an irony so sharp as to provoke the assembled citizens to fury. He displayed Caesar's bloodied toga, and read aloud a will bequeathing Caesar's gardens to the people and seventy-five drachmas to every Roman citizen.
By the time Antony had finished, the tide of Roman opinion had turned with the force of the Tiber in flood, and the conspirators' cause was lost.
"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears."— Mark Antony, Forum Romanum
Those close to Caesar reveal that this morning was not without its warnings. Caesar's wife, Calpurnia, besought him urgently not to attend the Senate, having been visited by dreams that spoke to her of blood and death. She saw Caesar's statue spouting blood while Romans bathed their hands in it and smiled.
Caesar was briefly persuaded to remain at home — but Decius Brutus arrived and, sweet as honey laid to trap a fly, convinced the great man that Calpurnia had misread her dreams, and that the Senate awaited him with great honours.
Most fatally, a soothsayer had warned Caesar days prior. As Caesar passed him on the way to the Capitol, he called out — "The Ides of March are come." The soothsayer replied simply: "Aye, Caesar — but not gone." (Note the grim wordplay — "come" and "not gone" — a pun on Caesar's fate.)
Marcus Junius Brutus descended to the Forum Romanum and addressed the populace, defending the actions of those he called liberators. He declared the deed was done not out of malice toward Caesar the man, but out of love for Rome and fear of tyranny. "Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more" — a pairing of opposing loves that placed Brutus's duty to the state above his loyalty to his friend.
The crowd appeared briefly swayed by Brutus's logical and reasoned argument. He appealed to their minds rather than their hearts — a choice that would ultimately cost him the day, for Antony, who followed him, would appeal to their hearts instead.
In granting Antony permission to speak, Brutus sealed his own fate — a fatal miscalculation that this correspondent fears shall be debated for centuries.
Political cartoons use imagery and humor to satirize the powerful and highlight important themes. The cartoon below satirizes Caesar's pride and Cassius's manipulation.
The men who killed Caesar this morning called themselves liberators. They claimed to act in the name of the Republic, of freedom, of Rome herself. But we ask: what Republic is preserved by murder? What freedom is born from treachery?
We do not dispute that Caesar was ambitious. Ambition is a fire that warms those near it and burns those too close. Caesar stood too close to that fire — but so, we fear, shall Rome now stand, as the conspirators have lit a greater conflagration than they imagined.
Marcus Brutus, the man whose bloodline traces to the very man who freed Rome from its last tyrant, acted out of genuine principle. We do not doubt his sincerity. Yet in attempting to save the Republic, the conspirators may have destroyed it. By inviting Antony to speak — by trusting the loyalty of a man whose devotion to Caesar was well known — Brutus has handed Rome to chaos.
What ought a citizen to do when the law is threatened by one who governs it? When the powerful grow too powerful? When ambition eclipses wisdom? When friendship wars with duty? These are the questions Julius Caesar's death has left to us — and to every generation that shall follow.
The Roman Times holds that Caesar's death solves nothing. Rome needed reform, not regicide. The Republic needed strengthening, not a sword. We mourn the man and fear the consequences. History itself has changed its course today, and none of us shall live to see where it leads.
Rome has lost its greatest son and most divisive figure. Caesar blazed across the sky of Roman history like a comet — brilliant, unmistakable, and gone too soon. Born to the patrician Julian clan, he rose through military conquest, political cunning, and sheer force of personality to become Dictator Perpetuo of the Roman world.
He conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon, and defeated Pompey. He was, by his own admission, not afraid of death — and he proved it today. He is survived by his wife Calpurnia and his adopted son Gaius Octavius.
His final words, reportedly spoken upon recognizing Brutus among his assassins: "Et tu, Bruté?"
✦ REQUIESCAT IN PACE ✦Marcus Junius Brutus, Senator, soldier, and the man whom even his enemy Mark Antony called "the noblest Roman of them all", died upon his own sword at the plains of Philippi. He had led the forces of the Republic in a final, unsuccessful stand against the Second Triumvirate.
Brutus was a man of honour that was both his shield and his undoing. He killed a friend in the name of Rome, and paid for it with everything he had. He is survived by no one — his wife Portia preceded him in death.
History will debate his choice for as long as Rome endures.
✦ REQUIESCAT IN PACE ✦Portia, daughter of the philosopher Cato and devoted wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, was consumed by grief so powerful it took on the force of a living thing and destroyed her. She was one of the few who knew of the conspiracy before it took place — a burden she bore by wounding her own thigh to prove her constancy to her husband.
When Brutus fled Rome and the cause seemed lost, Portia is reported to have swallowed hot coals. Rome mourns a woman of extraordinary loyalty and courage that would shame the bravest soldier on the field.
"I am not well in health, and that is all." — Portia, Act II
✦ REQUIESCAT IN PACE ✦Powerful, proud, and ultimately blind to his own vulnerability.
Honourable to a fault — his idealism proved the Republic's undoing.
Ruthlessly loyal — his oration turned grief into revolution.
The lean and hungry architect of the plot — envy and vision combined.
Tribunes chastise Caesar's celebrating crowd. The soothsayer warns of the Ides. Cassius begins seducing Brutus toward conspiracy, appealing to his republican ideals.
Brutus, tormented, resolves to join the plot. Portia pleads with him. Caesar ignores Calpurnia's dreams and Artemidorus's letter of warning, and proceeds to his doom.
The assassination. Antony's devastating funeral oration. The mob erupts in riot. Brutus and Cassius are forced to flee Rome entirely.
The Triumvirate consolidates power. Brutus and Cassius quarrel then reconcile. The Ghost of Caesar visits Brutus, promising to meet him at Philippi.
The Battle of Philippi. Both Cassius and Brutus die by their own hands. Antony eulogises Brutus as "the noblest Roman of them all."
Shakespeare's tragedy compels its audience to grapple with questions as urgent today as in Caesar's Rome. Chief among these is the tension between personal honour and political necessity — embodied in Brutus, who kills a friend out of principle and destroys himself in the process.
The play asks: what makes a tyrant? Is ambition alone sufficient cause for murder? And perhaps most powerfully — can the end ever truly justify the means?
Most haunting is the play's treatment of fate. Soothsayers, omens, and ghosts suggest Caesar's end was written long before any conspirator raised a blade.
"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once."
— Julius Caesar, Act II · Metaphor: death as something one can taste
"There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."
— Brutus, Act IV · Metaphor: opportunity compared to a tide
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."
— Cassius, Act I · Allusion to astrology; Rhetorical appeal (Logos)
"This was the most unkindest cut of all."
— Mark Antony, Act III · Metaphor: Brutus's betrayal as a literal and figurative wound
"This is the noblest Roman of them all."
— Mark Antony on Brutus, Act V · Irony: the enemy's eulogy as the highest praise