Brutus: The Noble Conspirator

340 Pages·2017·20.766 MB·English

by  Kathryn Tempest

BRUTUS
i
ii
BRUTUS
THE NOBLE
CONSPIRATOR
kathryn tempest
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
iii
Copyright © 2017 Kathryn Tempest
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948509
ISBN 978-0-300-18009-1
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
iv
Contents
List of Illustrations and Maps vi
Preface ix
A Note on the Text xiv
Introduction: Brutus and the Biographical Tradition 1
1 Becoming Brutus 15
2 Independent Operator 33
3 The Politics of War 56
4 Thinking about Tyrannicide 78
5 After the Assassination 105
6 Reviving Republicanism 142
7 Brutus’ Last Fight 173
8 Death and Legend 211
Conclusion: The Many Faces of Brutus 232
Appendix 1: Key Dates 238
Appendix 2: After the Assassination – Chronology and 241
Sources
Endnotes 259
Bibliography 296
Index 307
v
ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
Illustrations
1. Denarius, 43–42 bc: Brutus and crossed daggers (RRC 508/3;
© Trustees of the British Museum)
2. Senatus Populusque Romanus (courtesy of Hannah Swithinbank)
3. Capitoline Brutus, c. 300 bc (Rome, Musei Capitolini; © 2017 Photo
Scala, Florence)
4. Denarius, 54 bc: Libertas and Lucius Junius Brutus (RRC 433/1;
© The Trustees of the British Museum)
5. Denarius, 54 bc: Lucius Junius Brutus and Servilius Ahala (RRC 433/2;
© The Trustees of the British Museum)
6. The Roman Forum (courtesy of Hannah Swithinbank)
7. Jean- Léon Gérôme, ‘Death of Caesar’, 1859 (© Walters Art Museum,
bequeathed by Henry Walters)
8. Kai su, House of the Evil Eye, Roman mosaic at Antioch (Hatay
Archaeological Museum at Antakya; Inventory no. Antakya 1024)
9. Denarius, 43/42 bc: Apollo and Victory (RRC 506/2; © The Trustees of
the British Museum)
10. Philippi today (courtesy of Si Sheppard)
11. Augustus of Prima Porta, after 20 bc (Vatican, New Wing; © 2017 Photo
Scala, Florence)
12. Michelangelo, Brutus, 1538, detail (Florence, Bargello; © 2017 Photo
Scala, Florence – courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali)
vi
ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS vii
Maps
1. The City of Rome xv
2. Italy in the Late Republic xvi
3. The Roman Empire in the First Century bc xvii
4. Provinces and Kingdoms of the East xviii
5. Commanders in the Mediterranean in 43–42 bc 180
6. Greece and Macedonia, and the Battles of Philippi 196
viii
PREFACE
But on the day of Brutus’ judgment, Caesar came without scroll or
senate to declare verdict.
‘You demean yourself, dear Brutus’, he said almost gently, ‘attempting
suicide like this. But death for you, my friend, is not an option. You will
live forever’, eyes sad, ‘in the shadow of my name.’
And Brutus did live forever. He found himself not dead but filled
with youth and eternity. Ashamed of his past, he travelled the worlds as
Marcus, boundless centuries of world after world, from one galaxy to
another, finding no peace.
A shadow . . . If anyone spoke his name, it was in the same sentence
as Caesar. Never just Brutus.
— Eugene Bacon, 2015, ‘Being Marcus’, New Writing 12.3, 351
This extract from a short piece of fictional writing shows that the name of
Marcus Brutus may suddenly pop up anywhere, even, as in this story, as a
personal trainer at a fitness studio, somewhere on Earth in the twenty- first
century. Condemned by Caesar’s ghost to a lifetime of immortality, he has
seen his reputation wax and wane throughout history. He has witnessed his
own reception: as Caesar’s assassin in Shakespeare and the eternal traitor
chewed by Satan in Dante’s Inferno, and he disdains it. ‘History has forgotten
the real Brutus’, the reader is caused to reflect; the memory of his life has
been eclipsed by that of Caesar. And here lies part of the problem in recon-
structing a biography for Brutus; from the moment he stabbed Caesar, he
has continued to capture the imagination of those who have studied him
and his role in the assassination. Thus the judgments have all been
ix
x PREFACE
pronounced with the clarity and bias that hindsight seemingly provides.
Yet, despite his popularity in literature and history, biographical studies of
Brutus have not been plentiful.
Already for Max Radin, writing Marcus Brutus back in 1939, the
challenge was to present a living man and not a symbol. That man, in
Radin’s conclusion, was a conflicted personality; his desire to follow where
Cato led forced him to pursue a career that was ‘essentially repugnant’ to
him. We might disagree with the conclusion today, but still the approach
was more imaginative than that of Gérard Walter’s study (Brutus et la fin
de la République), published in France the year before, which largely retold
the story of Brutus from the ancient evidence, with little or no attempt
to evaluate the material on which its conclusions were based. Since then,
scholarship has moved on. Martin Clarke’s The Noblest Roman, published
in 1981, aimed to present an account of Brutus based on the ancient
evidence, as well as to trace the course of his posthumous reputation. To
this day, Clarke’s work remains one of the best and most accessible books
on the topic. But it is still too brief on certain points of detail, and especially
so on the sources for studying Brutus’ life, his political activity and ethical
conduct. Appearing in the same year, Erik Wistrand’s essay on ‘The Policy
of Brutus the Tyrannicide’ went some way towards providing an explana-
tion for the political agenda behind the assassination. However, for serious
scholars of Brutus, the best contributions are only available to readers with
some command of German.
Matthias Gelzer’s 1917 entry for the Real- Encyclopädie presented a
picture of Brutus which was particularly sympathetic to the times in which
he operated. From this authoritative article, Brutus emerges as an essen-
tially admirable man, yet one who had little political vision for the future.
More apologetic still was Walter Stewens’ 1968 essay on the political career
of Brutus (Brutus als Politiker), which included an examination of the prin-
ciples for which he had acted against Caesar. Prompted by what he saw
as an unoriginal take on the life and career of Caesar’s assassin, however,
in 1970 Hermann Bengston produced his own collection of essays ‘On
the History of Brutus’ (Zur Geschichte des Brutus). It did not claim to be
a biography. Yet, in covering the sources for studying Brutus and by ques-
tioning a range of topics pertinent to an understanding of his life – that is,
his relationship with Caesar, his conduct after the assassination, as well as
the panegyric and propaganda surrounding him – it offered a far more
penetrative analysis than anything that had gone before it.
In more recent decades, there have been several works which,
although not dedicated to Brutus per se, have significantly advanced our