“The Fault is Not in Our Stars:” A Reading of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

In William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the Bard invites us to examine the decline of the Roman republic as it teeters on the edge of becoming an empire ruled by a single man. In many respects, Julius Caesar could rightly be read as the second part of a trilogy of Roman plays beginning with Shakespeare’s Coriolanus which takes place in the 6^th century BC, and concluding with Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra which takes place in the 1st century BC, the latter of which settles any question about whether or not Rome will be ruled by a single man. But back in Coriolanus, Rome was still a small, austere, disciplined polis facing myriad threats from abroad (i.e. from other small tribes and cities like the Volscis) while also facing threats from within (i.e. anger and hunger among the people which fuels tensions between the Plebians and Patricians). In its infancy, the Roman republic relied on its warriors like Martius, later dubbed “Coriolanus,” to defend the regime and prevent a dreaded return to the rule of foreign kings, like the Tarquins, who were triumphantly banished from the city at the founding of the republic. As such, in the early years of the Roman republic, the rule of one-man was reviled above all else –and Shakespeare, despite living under a monarchy himself, shows himself to be deeply fascinated by the republican political regime, both its virtues and its vices. How does a republic arise? What allows it to endure? Does it face any natural threats? Is a republic ultimately preferable to a monarchical political regime?

Taking place approximately 450 years after the events of Coriolanus, Julius Caesar presents us with a very different state of affairs in Rome. Across four centuries, all of Italy has now come under the shadow of Rome’s military prowess (there are no longer small groups like the Volscis left to defeat in battle), and Rome has managed to conquer and incorporate all manner of different cultures into its capital city, with cultures spanning the known world from Spain to Greece and the Middle East, with Rome’s major nemesis, Carthage, eventually defeated in the Punic Wars (264-146 BC). Rome has since been ensconced in ceaseless military conflict, leaving an indelible impact on the character and civic virtue of the Roman people. In the opening scene of Julius Caesar, we see a rowdy crowd of Plebians, mostly cobblers and carpenters, gathered in the streets to praise Julius Caesar while their elected Tribunes (two of whom are Murellus and Flavius) chide them for not working and shame them for flocking to a dangerous demagogue like Julius Caesar –“Hence! Home, you idle creatures,” they shout, “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!” Here we see the Patricians are deeply skeptical of Caesar and they are fearful of being brought down to “servile fearfulness” if Caesar is to become king. Unlike in Coriolanus, now the Plebians possess a greater degree of leisure which allows them to enjoy holidays and entertainment. Their garments are made of fine silks, they accept all manner of different religions, and they dwell within a new cosmopolitan, multi-cultural world. There are now competing trades in Rome –an Aristotelian division of labor—yet still the Plebians are chastised as “idle” for being a pampered populous. This is a far cry from the desperate, starving situation in Coriolanus. And the idleness of the Plebians highlights a major problem facing Rome –namely the slow, gradual rise of decadence and luxury. Greater education and sophistication serves as a wonderful addition to any body politic at its heights, but at its worst it can lead to extreme decadence. Since opulence has taken root in Rome, the Patricians busy themselves seeking to preserve and protect their own private wealth, while the Plebians desperately search for their own riches to feed their growing appetite for entertainment. In many ways, wealth has corrupted the republic, and the people no longer live under the pressure of necessity. Meanwhile, the population of the city has swelled to such an extent that there is now unfamiliarity and contempt among the people. Once a city of thousands in Coriolanus, Rome has now ballooned into a global hub of millions in Julius Caesar. Notably, there are some Patricians who have warned against the pursuit of such an empire, especially figures like Cato the Elder.

As Rome has quietly devolved into an empire stretching across the Mediterranean, so too has corruption spread. Foreign military conquests are ongoing and the Consuls are hailed at home with elaborate widespread celebrations, while nothing short of victory is expected. Consuls have grown inordinately wealthy in their conquests, enriching themselves and their soldiers, allowing them to buy political favors and garner private wealth-friendly policies, while also serving as de facto tax collectors over their conquered lands. They earn the trust and support of the Plebians by bribing them with land and grain via controversial redistributive agrarian laws. Meanwhile, military expeditions cover longer periods of time (under “proconsulships”), and so the former custom of serving a single year has since been replaced in favor of lengthier consulships (allowing men like Julius Caesar to spend many years fighting in Gaul). Here, we can see cracks beginning to emerge in the Roman republic as endless foreign conquests are undermining the regime. As Rome has grown larger, certain republican institutions no longer function properly, and the prolongation of military commands have played a chief role in degenerating Rome from a city of citizens into an empire of subjects (as noted by Machiavelli in the Discourses on Livy). In short, Rome is losing its republican traits and is beginning to look more like an imperial monarchy, the kind which Shakespeare was subject to in his day.     

Presently in the play, the great general Julius Caesar is hailed as a man of the people –a populist defender of the Plebians, a man who prefers to be called “imperator” (or military general) rather than “rex” (or king). Caesar is now returning home to celebrate his most recent military victory, proudly displaying public trials as entertainment for the masses. Whereas Coriolanus once pridefully refused to put on a show and perform a part for the Plebians, Julius Caesar is now fully willing to a stage a theatrical scene to bolster himself. The Patricians have learned a new sense of shameless in proudly displaying their wounds in public before the Plebians, losing their old sense of pride that Coriolanus once possessed. However, Caesar’s most recent military victory is unique. Instead of conquering foreign enemies, Caesar has actually triumphed over his fellow Patrician and Consul, Pompey the Great and his sons (approximately 45 BC). In doing so, Caesar has effectively paved the road for himself to become Rome’s singular ruler. Welcoming Caesar home from this fateful victory are huge swelling crowds who adorn his statues with diadems and hail Caesar as Rome’s new kingly leader (a la Alexander the Great). Even Caesar’s struggle with “falling sickness” (or epilepsy) is not enough for the Plebians to consider that perhaps Caesar is not fit for the highest office. Defenders of Caesar suggest that his “falling sickness” is actually a divine sign of godlike superiority, while critics claim it is an infirmity which shows Caesar’s lack of divinity. At this time, Rome is also in the midst of celebrating the feast of Lupercal (the Lupercalia), a festival honoring a rural deity associated with Pan who is connected with the legendary history of the founding of Rome. According to popular tradition, the festival is intended to bring fertility (Lupercal was also the name of a mythological cave where Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf). During the festival, the young men don goatskins around the Palatine (Palace) hill under the superstition that striking women with the goatskin strips will bring fertility –Caesar hopes the festival will cure his own wife Calphurnia (or Calpurnia) of her sterility. I should note that, historically speaking, Caesar’s return to Rome after defeating the lineage of Pompey would likely have occurred several months earlier in October while the Lupercalia would have occurred later in February, but Shakespeare is granted a certain degree of creative license in this instance.

As Caesar is paraded through the streets like a “Colossus” and a “god,” he is accosted by a strange soothsayer who warns him to “beware the ides of March” (or beware the fifteenth day of March). In some ways this scene is similar to Macbeth’s fateful decision to heed an inexplicable dark prophecy by a trio of weird sisters, as well. Caesar hears this unknown soothsayer and eventually allows his mind to become poisoned by strange, otherworldly, supernatural phantasms. As part of the great relaxing of Roman culture, there comes a population with enfeebled minds, who allow themselves to be swept up in such supernatural fancies. It shows a growing passivity among the character and soul of the Roman people, as the citizens of Rome now spend a great of time contemplating strange “superstitions,” “fantasies,” “dreams,” “warnings,” “prophecies,” and “evil portents.” For example, Calphurnia experiences a troubled nightmare of Caesar’s statue flowing with blood and this dream starts to weigh heavily on Caesar’s decision whether or not to visit the senate (though he is eventually persuaded to by an alternative interpretation of the dream, as opposed to a claim that the dream lacks significance at all). New religious beliefs have fundamentally changed Rome (note that there were no soothsayers featured in Coriolanus). In the early Roman republic, politics existed devoid of ethereal religious beliefs and instead the city embraced a civic religion wherein the gods were honored as a matter of political recourse, and the people’s spiritual horizon did not extend much farther beyond the city, but gradually Rome has now tragically bred itself a society of dreamers, with expansive universalist horizons, who increasingly have come to rely on divine invocations in order to make decisions. In time, Caesar’s superstitious wonderment leads him to worry about omens, visions, and dreams as he is regularly found looking upward toward an endless horizon in the heavens, hoping to find answers in mysterious supernatural signs. At one point, he exclaims in wonder, “What can be avoided whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?” At another point, he demands that priests make necessary sacrifices, plucking the entrails of a beast in order to help decide whether or not he will venture outside his house. This is no longer a republic governed by rhetoric and reason. Whereas once people accepted that the gods help those who help themselves, now there is a newfound fatalism, passivity, and an excessive reliance on the gods among the people. It is magical, superstitious thinking. But the broader growth of unreason in the city is another reminder of the cracking of the Roman regime, as people like Caesar often find themselves hopelessly struggling to make sense of a wild, untamed natural world (physis) which is constantly changing. Notably, there are still some Patricians like Cassius and Cicero –a Greek philosopher in Rome— who remain unconvinced of these divine supernatural claims.

Suffice it to say Cicero is not the only Patrician who has been influenced by Greek philosophy. We also meet the likes of Cassius and Brutus. Cassius is Brutus’s brother-in-law and he is something of a brooding intellectual. Despite being proximal to Caesar’s inner circle, Caesar has never fully trusted Cassius. According to Caesar, Cassius “thinks too much: such men are dangerous,” and Cassius “reads much, he is a great observer, and he looks quite through the deeds of men.” What does this tell us about the kinds of people Caesar holds in high regard? He claims that he prefers men who are fat and well-rested, he likes men of eros, who are content with music, theater, and art –men who casually enjoy their lives, rather than leaders who are filled with reason and civic virtue. Caesar embraces this burgeoning sense of eros, rather than thumos, as it proliferates throughout the empire. Likewise Caesar holds Brutus in high regard –a man descended from a noble ancient Roman family who now remains satisfied with his leisure to the utmost extent, while Cassius is kept at arms length by Caesar. In response, Cassius remains bitterly resentful of Caesar for parading around like a “god.” Cassius uses his dirty tricks to persuade Brutus to eliminate Caesar and thereby hopefully save the republic (Cassius recalls an incident in which he once rescued Caesar from drowning in the Tiber, and another time in which Caesar fell ill in Spain, thus demonstrating that Caesar is vulnerable and hardly a super-human being). Both Cassius and Brutus lament the loss of ancient Rome together –“Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble blood!” And eventually Brutus is persuaded by a large group of fellow politicians to kill Caesar “boldly” but not “wrathfully,” in other words to be “sacrificers” rather than “butchers.” Regarding the need to be rid of Caesar and thereby redeem the city of Rome, Cassius explains:

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves that we are underlings” (1.2.134-140).

On the surface, Cassius and Brutus represent different Greek schools of thought. Cassius is akin to an Epicurean, one who thinks humans should live a life devoted to intellectual pleasure, with a broad view of qualified atheism which suggests that if the gods even exist at all, they quite evidently do not care for the affairs of humans. According to Cassius’s brand of Epicureanism, one should withdraw from politics and simply enjoy life as it is; draw inward and pursue the joys of the philosophic life. Likewise, Brutus represents a Stoic. He seeks to find contentment in his station –if he were born a slave then he should be happy in enslavement, and if he were born a king, he should also find contentment in his kingship. The goal of the Stoic is to live happily in accordance with his duty. Yet this presumes that someone like Brutus actually possesses a detailed and comprehensive understanding of his own station in order to faithfully execute his obligations. Notably, both Epicureanism and Stoicism are distinctly different from the ancient Roman way of life. Why are politicians like Cassius and Brutus accepting these un-political philosophies? The arrival of Greek philosophy in Rome poses a certain degree of danger to social stability –it risks the loss of civic virtue. Philosophy offers ways of understanding and inquiring into the world, but it does not give us rules by which we must live. In other words, there are no ten commandments of philosophy. As an example, the Greek influence upon Rome is further evidenced in the figure of Cicero who privately declares nasty things about Caesar in Greek rather than Latin (which leads Caska to brush it aside, remarking “it’s Greek to me,” though in truth, the real Caska actually knew how to speak Greek). At any rate, in spite of their fond nostalgia for a fabled golden age, both Cassius and Brutus are actually products of this ascendant Roman empire, a global project which is becoming increasingly Hellenized and influenced by unique versions of Greek schools of thought. Both Cassius and Brutus have adopted these Greek schools of thought, which encourage retirement from political life, because Romans are now turning to various cosmopolitan oddballs who have arrived in the city and begun questioning the regime. Cosmopolitanism has turned the city’s gaze eastward beginning with Greece and Egypt, and onward with the center of political life eventually shifting to Constantinople, eventually culminating with the adoption of Christianity, marking the death knell of classical antiquity. Whereas in Julius Caesar, Rome is influenced by Greece; in Antony and Cleopatra, Rome is influenced by Egypt. Notably, Shakespeare does not continue his Roman plays with the arrival of Christianity since his plays are focused more on the difficult questions of politics and philosophy, rather than theology.

As in King Lear and The Tempest, a foul thunderstorm strikes Rome; the arrival of a natural storm foreshadows the forthcoming political storm. Now, a conspiracy of Patricians including Marcus Brutus (“Brutus”), Cassius, Casca, Decius Brutus, Cinna, Metellus Cimber, Trebonius, and Caius Ligarius all stab Caesar to the death on the floor of the senate in a grisly scene that occurs midway through the play (Act III, scene i). As Caesar stares on in disbelief, his final remarks are directed to Brutus —“Et tu, Brute? – Then fall, Caesar.” Once again, even in his final hour, Caesar’s judgment is called into question as his preferred confidants like Brutus are revealed to be traitors. “Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!” sounds the rallying cry. And as the body of Caesar is grotesquely put on display before the masses (“the ruins of the noblest man”), Brutus speaks before a huddled crowd in attempt to persuade them that the singular death of Caesar will now reverse the deteriorating course of the republic. Unfortunately, Brutus is the person who delivers this speech, rather than Cicero, the great orator of the age. But Brutus is not the only person who preys upon the emotions of the crowd. He makes yet another foolish decision in allowing Marc Antony to speak at Caesar’s funeral, as well. Marc Antony says:

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears”
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them:
The good is oft interred with their bones.
So let it be with Caesar” (3.2.74-78)

In further addressing the crowd, Antony predictably rouses the rabble as Pericles once did in Athens and he reminds the people of all the good things Caesar once accomplished for Rome, showcasing Caesar’s sympathy for the poor, as well as Caesar’s thrice refusal of the crown at the Lupercal. It is a speech filled with pathos as he reads Caesar’s will, in which every Roman citizen is granted 75 drachmas. Antony then elevates himself and incites a mob against the conspirators as Cassius and Brutus are chased out of the city. Rome’s growing embrace of irrationalism culminates as a frenzied horde descends upon Cinna in the streets and promptly begin ripping him apart limb from limb (though this man is actually revealed to be Cinna the poet, not Cinna the conspirator). It is a monstrous demonstration of what happens when Rome is flooded with eros and religious superstition rather than reason and prudence –the triumph of emotion over reason shows the very same kind of herd mentality that has occurred throughout history, memorably within the Jacobin mobs during the French Revolution. The mob’s fanatical obsession with martyrdom has long served as a common trait worthy of praise by wayward crowds throughout history. Now the Plebians act as an unprincipled multitude, demanding the rule of one-man as Rome officially descends into an empire (recall Virgil’s Aeneid which we might rightly interpret as a powerful piece of propaganda designed to reframe Roman history as if naturally pre-ordained toward the rule of one-man).

At any rate, Antony’s speech wins out over Brutus and a fractious new triumvirate is formed consisting of Antony, Octavius (Caesar’s adopted son), and Lepidus. Notably, Marc Antony is similar in character to Brutus –Antony is a known playboy, he likes music, food, drink, and sex. He is the exact kind of figure Caesar explicitly trusted. Whereas the people once flocked to Caesar, now they flock to Marc Antony. With the energy of the masses behind them, the new triumvirate begins exterminating all alleged enemies of Caesar –especially Cicero, whose Philippics were a condemnation of Marc Antony as modeled on Demosthenes’s Philippics against Philip of Macedon. Naturally, Cicero is murdered by the regime along with some seventy other senators. In the brewing civil war, Brutus is haunted by the ghost of Caesar but he still fights at the Battle of Philippi anyway (in spite of Cassius’s more sensible recommendations to wait and draw out the triumvirate’s armies). And during the course of battle, Cassius mistakenly believes his friend Titinius has been killed so Cassius commits suicide on the very same sword he used to stab Caesar. Cassius, the Epicurean, has become superstitious of late, and his death also marks the death of reason in Rome. Meanwhile, Brutus receives word that his wife Portia (daughter of Cato) has also committed suicide by consuming hot coals –a brutally painful way to die– however Brutus is unfazed by her death (he merely states solemnly, “I have the patience to endure it now”). He decides to heed the prior warning of Caesar’s ghost, further cementing the idea that Rome has tragically turned to otherworldly superstitions, as Brutus orders a soldier named Strato to hold his sword while he runs through it, killing himself, and apparently avenging Caesar at the same time. When the opposing armies arrive on the scene, Octavius claims control of the remaining soldiers while Antony mourns the death of Brutus who “was the noblest Roman of them all.” Octavius remains strategic while Antony is overcome with passion. Do we believe Antony when he says Brutus was truly “the noblest Roman of them all?” After all, Brutus failed in his mission to restore the former glory of the republic. The closing lines praising “this happy day” are reserved for Octavius who orders that Brutus be buried with honor like a soldier. By now, the storm has passed over Rome but the tension within the triumvirate (particularly between Antony and Octavius) is only just beginning. In the end, the murder of Caesar (which is naturally interpreted by the Plebians as martyrdom) has not been a deliverance for Rome, and the tragic state of Rome’s decline continues unabated.

Using Plutarch as his chief source (that is, Sir Thomas North’s translation of the Parallel Lives), Shakespeare likely penned Julius Caesar to mark the opening the new Globe Theatre in 1599. Julius Caesar offers a relatively short tragedy that is slightly over half the length of Hamlet, and it is ostensibly about the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar, and the civil war that followed. But on a much deeper level, Julius Caesar explores the tragic decline and fall of a republican regime of self-governance –a tragedy which exposes an overwhelming sense of decay facing a republic, a state of affairs which can hardly be blamed on any single demagogic figure like Caesar or Antony. The play examines a unique question about human history: Do human beings make history, or does history make human beings? In many ways, the premise of Shakespeare’s tragedies is that human beings make history (we are not bound by intractable divine forces) however human beings are often bound by particular political circumstances (i.e. the happenstance of being born during the rising Roman republic, or the Italian Renaissance, or the decadent Roman empire). Perhaps there is a certain science of politics which, when properly studied, fosters a degree of skepticism toward the inevitable demagogues and martyrs who are ceaselessly worshipped by the passion-loving masses. Tragically, men of learning like Cassius are still powerless to prevent or escape from this civic decline, and they forced to watch the growth of luxury and superstition, the rise of frenzied mobs, and the terminus of a once noble republic which devolves into a fearsome empire ruled by one-man.

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For this reading I used the impressive Arden edition of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar along with Paul Cantor’s excellent lectures.