by Isaac Asimov
I have the patience to endure it now.
—Act IV, scene iii, lines 189-91
Brutus adhered to that school of philosophy called Stoicism. It had been founded, some three centuries earlier, by a Greek philosopher, Zeno of Citium (who possibly had Phoenician ancestry as well). He lectured at a Stoa Poikile (a "painted porch"; that is, a corridor lined with frescoes) in Athens. From this porch the philosophy took its name.
Stoicism saw the necessity of avoiding pain, but did not feel that choosing pleasure was the best way to do so. The only safe way of living the good life, Stoics felt, was to put oneself beyond both pleasure and pain: to train oneself not to be the slave of either passion or fear, to treat both happiness and woe with indifference. If you desire nothing, you need fear the loss of nothing.
Brutus, with his "Why, farewell, Portia," was greeting the death of a loved one with the proper Stoic response.
But why didn't he tell Messala that he already knew of the death in detail and had just been discussing it with Cassius? One theory is that, having written the proper Stoic scene with its "farewell, Portia," Shakespeare felt it presented Brutus in an unsympathetic light. He felt, perhaps, that an English audience could scarcely feel the proper sympathy for so extreme a Roman attitude; they would feel it repellently heartless. He therefore wrote the earlier scene in which Brutus is still Stoical but shows enough feeling to grow angry with Cassius. Then, the theory goes on, both versions appeared, through carelessness, in the final printed copy of the play.
Yet it seems to me that this cannot be so. Shortly after Messala enters, Cassius, still brooding over the news, says to himself:
Portia, art thou gone?
—Act IV, scene iii, line 165a
To this Brutus makes a hasty response:
No more, I pray you.
—Act IV, scene iii, line 165b
It is as though he does more than merely neglect to tell Messala of his knowledge. He takes special pains to keep Cassius from telling him.
Why? Perhaps precisely so he can strike the proper Stoic note. Since he already knows and the shock is over, he can greet the news with marvelous calm, and strike a noble pose.
We might find an excuse for him and say that he was seizing the opportunity to be ostentatiously strong and Stoical in order to hearten his officers and his army with a good example. On the other hand, he might have done it out of a vain desire for praise. After all, as soon as Brutus makes his Stoic response, Messala says, worshipingly:
Even so great men great losses should endure.
—Act IV, scene iii, line 192
If this is so, and certainly it is a reasonable supposition, what a monster of vanity Shakespeare makes out Brutus to be.
Cicero is dead
Before Messala has the news of Portia's death forced out of him, he delivers the news of the proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate. Dozens of men of senatorial rank have been executed. What's more, says Messala:
Cicero is dead, And by that order of proscription.
—Act IV, scene iii, lines 178-79
As soon as the Second Triumvirate was formed, Cicero, knowing that any accommodation between Octavius and Antony would have to be at his own expense, tried to escape from Italy. Contrary winds drove his ship back to shore, however, and before he could try again, the soldiers sent to kill him had arrived.
Those with him, his servants and retainers, made as though to resist, but Cicero, sixty-three years old and tired of the wild vicissitudes of public life, found at the end the physical courage he had so conspicuously lacked throughout his life. Forbidding resistance, he waited calmly for the soldiers and was cut down on December 7, 43 b.c., twenty-one months after Julius Caesar's assassination.
… toward Philippi
Brutus, meanwhile, has told of the news he himself has received; news to the effect that the triumvirs are on the move eastward, taking the offensive. He says:
Messala, I have here received letters
That young Octavius and Mark Antony
Come down upon us with a mighty power,
Bending their expedition toward Philippi.
—Act IV, scene iii, lines 166-69
Philippi was an important city in the province of Macedonia, and was located about ten miles north of the Aegean Sea. It had been built up on the site of an earlier village in 356 b.c. by Philip II, King of Macedon and father of Alexander the Great The city was named for Philip.
… taken at the flood…
The question now is how best to react to the Triumvirate offensive. Cassius takes the cautious view. He suggests their forces remain on the defensive.
'Tis better that the enemy seek us;
So shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers,
Doing himself offense, whilst we, lying still,
Are full of rest, defense, and nimbleness.
—Act IV, scene iii, lines 198-201
Brutus, however, disagrees. He points out that the provinces between the enemy army and themselves are angered by the looting they have undergone and would join Antony and Octavius. Their own army, on the other hand, is as large as it is ever likely to be, and if they wait it will start declining. He says, sententiously, in a famous passage:
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
—Act IV, scene iii, lines 217-20
Once again, Brutus contradicts Cassius and has his way and the result proves his judgment to be wrong. Throughout the play, Brutus consistently misjudges the moment when the tide is at the flood, and to place this passage in his mouth seems to intend irony.
… this monstrous apparition
Brutus makes ready for sleep, in an almost family atmosphere of concern for his servants (and he is portrayed most nearly noble, in good truth, here). He settles down to read a book when suddenly he cries out:
Ha! Who comes here?
I think it is the weakness of mine eyes
That shapes this monstrous apparition.
—Act IV, scene iii, lines 274-76
It is the ghost of Caesar, which Brutus boldly accosts. It tells him only that they will meet again at Philippi.
One might suppose that this was a Shakespearean invention, introduced for dramatic effect, for the chance of turning lights low, producing shadows, and chilling the audience, but, in actual fact, Shakespeare does not have to invent it. The report that Caesar's ghost appeared to Brutus is to be found in Plutarch.
It is with a forward look to this scene, perhaps, that Shakespeare had had Mark Antony speak earlier of "Caesar's spirit."
It proves not so. ..
The fifth act opens in the plains near Philippi, with the opposing armies facing each other and waiting for battle. Octavius, looking at the scene with grim satisfaction, says:
Now, Antony, our hopes are answered;
You said the enemy would not come down,
But keep the hills and upper regions.
It proves not so…
—Act V, scene i, lines 1-4
What had happened between the acts was this. Brutus and Cassius, crossing the straits into Macedonia from Asia Minor, encountered a portion of the triumvir army near Philippi. If the conspirators had attacked at once, they ought to have won, but before they could do so, the rest of the triumvir army arrived and it was a standoff.
The triumvir army now outnumbered the conspirators but was weaker in cavalry. What is more, it was Brutus and Cassius who had the strong position in the hills, while Antony and Octavius occupied a marshy and malarial plain.
Brutus and Cassius had only to stay where they were. It would have been suicidal for Antony and Octavius to try to charge into the hills. Yet to stay on the plains would expose them to hunger and disease.
Indeed, Octavius was already sick, although this doesn't appear in the play. Octavius seemed always to be sick before a bat
tle. In this case, he fell sick at Dyrrhachium (on the coast of what is now Albania) and had to be carried by litter the 250 miles to Philippi.
Cassius opposed battle, maintaining that by waiting it out, the enemy would sooner or later have to retreat and that the effect would be one of victory for the conspirators. He was manifestly correct in this and Antony, putting himself grimly in the conspirators' place, was sure that was exactly what they would do.
Antony still did not count on the egregious stupidity of Brutus. Brutus again opposed Cassius and favored immediate battle. Once again Brutus insisted on having his way. Once again Cassius gave in.
… the Hybla bees
A parley between the opposing commanders was arranged before the battle. Perhaps an accommodation could be arranged. That could not be, however, for the conversation quickly degenerated into recriminations. At one point, Cassius refers bitterly to Antony's oratory (thinking perhaps of the funeral speech) and says:
But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees,
And leave them honeyless.
—Act V, scene i, lines 34-35
Hybla was a town in Sicily, on the southern slopes of Mount Etna, and some forty miles northwest of Syracuse. It was famous, almost proverbial, for its honey.
… Brutus, thank yourself
In the wordy quarrel, Antony does have the best of it and Cassius finally is forced to become aware of Brutus' misjudgments. He says to Brutus angrily:
… Now, Brutus, thank yourself;
This [Antony's] tongue had not offended so today,
If Cassius might have ruled.
—Act V, scene i, lines 45-47
Surely he must have thought how, in all likelihood, the conspirators would have been long in control of Rome if only Antony had been killed along with Caesar, as he had advised.
Was Cassius born
There is nothing, then, but to make ready for the actual battle. Cassius is seriously depressed, perhaps because it has been borne in upon him, forcefully, how wrong Brutus has been all through, and because he bitterly regrets all the times he gave in wrongly.
It is now October 42 b.c., more than two and a half years since the assassination of Caesar, and Cassius says to his aide:
Messala,
This is my birthday; as this very day
Was Cassius born.
—Act V, scene i, lines 70-72
Since we don't know in what year Cassius was born, we can't say how old he was on the day of the Battle of Philippi. However, Plutarch refers to him as older than Brutus (a view Shakespeare adopts) and Brutus may have been born in 85 b.c. It would seem then that Cassius must be in his mid-forties at least and possibly pushing fifty.
Cassius does not find the fact that the battle will be fought on his birthday to be a good omen. He does not want to fight it. He says to Messala:
Be thou my witness that against my will
(As Pompey was) am I compelled to set
Upon one battle all our liberties.
—Act V, scene i, lines 73-75
This is a reference to the fact that it is Brutus, not Cassius, who is pushing for battle. Cassius, who let himself be overruled, reminds himself, sadly, that Pompey was similarly forced into battle at Pharsalia, six years before, by the hotheads among his councilors, when cautious delay might have served his cause better.
… I held Epicurus strong
To unavailing regret that he had allowed himself to be swayed by Brutus, Cassius finds trouble in supernatural omens. He says:
You know that I held Epicurus strong,
And his opinion; now I change my mind,
And partly credit things that do presage.
—Act V, scene i, lines 76-78
Epicurus of Samos was a Greek philosopher who was a contemporary of the Zeno who had founded Stoicism. Epicurus' philosophy (Epicureanism) adopted the beliefs of certain earlier Greek philosophers who viewed the universe as made up of tiny particles called atoms. All change consisted of the random breakup and rearrangement of groups of these atoms and there was little room in the Epicurean thought for any purposeful direction of man and the universe by gods. Omens and divine portents were considered empty superstition.
Now, however, Cassius begins to waver. It seems two eagles, having accompanied the army from Sardis to Philippi, have now flown away, as though good luck were departing. On the other hand, all sorts of carrion birds are now gathering, as though bad luck were arriving.
Cassius' pessimism forces him to question Brutus as to his intentions in case the battle is lost. Brutus answers in high Stoic fashion. His actions will follow:
Even by the rule of that philosophy [Stoicism]
By which I did blame Cato for the death
Which he did give himself. ..
—Act V, scene i, lines 100-2
Stoicism held it wrong to seek refuge in suicide. The good man must meet his fate, whatever it is, unmoved. Cassius asks, sardonically, if Brutus is ready, then, in case of defeat, to be led in triumph behind the conqueror's chariot through the Roman streets (and, undoubtedly, with the jeers of the Roman populace ringing in his ears).
At once, Brutus' Stoicism fails him. As long as his Stoic demeanor brings him praise, it is well. If it is going to bring him disgrace he abandons it But he does so with characteristic self-praise:
No, Cassius, no; think not, thou noble Roman
That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;
He bears too great a mind.
—Act V, scene i, lines 110-12
Since both plan to die in case of defeat, they may never meet again. Brutus says:
Forever, and forever, farewell, Cassius!
—Act V, scene i, line 116
Cassius answers in kind and both are now ready for the battle, which takes up the rest of the play.
… the word too early
On both sides there was double command. Cassius on the seaward side opposed Antony; Brutus on the inland side opposed Octavius. The fortunes differed on the two flanks. Brutus had the advantage over Octavius and advanced vigorously. He sends messages of victory to the other flank by Messala, saying:
… I perceive
But cold demeanour in Octavius' wing,
And sudden push gives them the overthrow.
Ride, ride, Messala!
—Act V, scene ii, lines 3-6
But even now, in the midst of victory, Brutus judges wrongly. Brutus should, at all cost, have kept his part of the army from advancing in such a way that they could not support the other part in case of need. Instead, his men are overvictorious and fall to looting, when they ought to have wheeled down upon Antony's men.
Antony's army manages instead to drive hard against Cassius' wing. That wing breaks and flies and can receive no help. Titinius, Cassius' aide, says bitterly:
O Cassius, Brutus gave the word too early,
Who, having some advantage on Octavius,
Took it too eagerly; his soldiers fell to spoil,
Whilst we by Antony are all enclosed.
—Act V, scene iii, lines 5-8
In Parthia …
Cassius' depression now costs him the final price. He does not realize the exact magnitude of Brutus' victory and therefore does not understand that even allowing for his own defeat, the battle is no worse than drawn.
A band of Brutus' horsemen making their way toward him is mistaken by him for the enemy. When his aide, Titinius, reconnoitering, embraces them gladly, the nearsighted Cassius thinks he is taken prisoner and that his own capture is imminent.
Cassius therefore calls his servant, Pindarus, saying:
In Parthia did I take thee prisoner;
And then I swore thee, saving of thy life,
That whatsoever I did bid thee do,
Thou shouldst attempt it.
—Act V, scene ii, lines 37-40
In Parthia, at the Battle of Carrhae, eleven years before, Cassius had carried through the greatest military achievement of his life. He had carefully husbanded
the downhearted remnants of a defeated army and had safely brought them back to Syria.
He had not despaired then, but he did now. He orders his slave to kill him with the same sword that had once pierced Caesar. It is done and Cassius dies.
The last of all Romans …
When the news of Cassius' death is brought to Brutus, he comes to view the body and says:
O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!
O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!
Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords
In our own proper entrails.
—Act V, scene iii, lines 94-96
His eulogy over Cassius is:
The last of all Romans, fare thee well!
It is impossible that ever Rome
Should breed thy fellow…
—Act V, scene iii, lines 99-101
The statement is a gross exaggeration. Except for his conduct at the Battle of Carrhae, Cassius had shown little real ability. Even in organizing the successful conspiracy that killed Caesar, his weakness in allowing the stupid Brutus to guide affairs ruined all.