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Hard to say. Antony obviously doesn't think so when he counters Brutus' actions with his ideals in the funeral speech in which he describes Brutus and the conspirators as honorable men: Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through;/See what a rent the envious Casca made;/Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd;/And as he pluck'd his cursed steel away,/Mark how the blood of Caesar follow'd it. However, the divide between Brutus' ideals and his bloody actions is where the problem seems to be. In Brutus' soliloquy, he states that he has no "personal cause" to attack Caesar, but only the "general: he would be crowned". Yet, we've seen Cassius persuade Brutus, playing on Brutus' own sense of honor, and even compares Brutus with Caesar, asking "why should that name be sounded more than yours?". It could be that Brutus is only drawn into the conspiracy out of arrogance. |
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His chief enemy answers the question thus: Antony: This was the noblest Roman of them all: All the conspirators save only he Did that they did in envy of great Caesar. He only, in a general honest thought And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle, and the Elements So mixed in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world 'This was a man.' 5.5.73-80 Antony has far less positive than this to say, sarcastically, of Brutus being 'honorable' in the heat of his oratory to the crowd. But then again, he also claims to be no orator while he works the crowd with the expertise of a Madison Ave. marketing mogul. I think expedience, anger, emotion, practicality and necessity, at the time, were driving his couched condemnation of Brutus. Otherwise, he would have no reason to recant so strongly in the above summation. Even Octavius concurs in his direct response to Antony: According to his virtue let us use him With all respects and rights of burial. Within my tent his bones tonight shall lie, Most like a soldier, ordered honorably. 5.5.81-84 It's ironic that in trying to prevent Rome's transition from a great Republic to a dictatorship, Brutus was indirectly responsible for the instigation of many years of Roman tyranny. It also cost him his friendships, the lives of his wife and friends, and in the end his own life. |
