The Young Brutus

• Marcus Junius Brutus Caepio (c.85-42) often referred to as Brutus was a politician of the late Roman Republic, murderer of Gaius Julius Caesar and one of the last defenders of the republic. Father Brutus was killed in 78 by Gnaeus Pompey, a young general who was to become famous. 
• The boy was educated by the half-brother of his mother Servilia, Marcus Porcius Cato, and later adopted by a relative of his mother, Quintus Servilius Caepio.
•  To honor his adoptive father, the young man started to call himself Marcus Junius Brutus Caepio. He is best known in modern times for taking a leading role in the assassination of Julius Caesar.
• Brutus was considered to be a friend of Caesar, who sent him on an important mission to the east, made him governor of Cisalpine Gaul (i.e., the Po plains) in the years 46-45, choose him as praetor for the year 44 and promised him the consulate in 41. No man had received similar, extravagant honors.

~ In February 44, Caesar showed clearly that he would never restore the republic that he had overthrown. He received the senators as a king (not rising from his seat when they entered the room), wanted himself to be crowned (text) and had himself proclaimed dictator for ever. All this was extremely unrepublican, and Brutus decided that he had to act.

~ Some 60 senators conspired to assasinate the dictator, and Brutus, who was close to Caesar, became one of the leaders of the plot. His brother Decimus and his friend Cassius were also involved. It would be easy to kill Caesar, who had disbanded his bodyguard, trusting that nobody would like to run the risk of a new civil war (Sulla had done the same).

~ As he took his seat, the conspirators gathered about him as if to pay their respects, and straightway Tillius Cimber, who had assumed the lead, came nearer as though to ask something. When Caesar with a gesture put him off to another time, Cimber caught his toga by both shoulders. As Caesar cried, 'Why, this is violence!', one of the Cascas [two brothers in the Senate] stabbed him from one side just below the throat. Caesar caught Casca's arm and ran it through with his stylus, but as he tried to leap to his feet, he was stopped by another wound. 


~When he saw that he was beset on every side by drawn daggers, he muffled his head in his robe, and at the same time drew down its lap to his feet with his left hand, in order to fall more decently, with the lower part of his body also covered. And in this wise he was stabbed with three and twenty wounds, uttering not a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke, though some have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he said in Greek, 'You too, my child?'

~ Brutus is invariably connected to the sudden changes which brought to an end the Roman royal era - the banishment of the kings and the creation of one of the earliest republican institutions. The new form of government was so successful in governing that even the Caesars of later Rome, when the republic fell into decline, could not entirely separate themselves from it. 


~ Monarchy continued to be deeply unpopular in Rome and its people believed that only barbarians could still accept the concept of kingship. All these facts explain why the emperors felt the need to hide their royal status behind republican titles and forms. - One can go as far as saying that the empire created by Caesar and Augustus was a republic led by a monarch.

~ It was claimed that the name Brutus had been an old Italic term meaning "rebel slave". That could explain the name Brutium which was given to the southern extremity of Italy, which served as a refuge to fugitive slaves.