The basic facts of the case are well known: Brutus, Cassius, and some of their friends stab Caesar to death. Civil war ensues in which Octavian (later Caesar Augustus) and Mark Antony team up against the assassins and chase them to Greece. First Cassius and then Brutus commit suicide rather than face defeat and capture. How did an idealist, philosopher, and "patriot" like Marcus Brutus get into this story.
Plutarch and other historians all say the same thing: if anyone involved in the assassination acted in good faith and with high moral intentions, it was Brutus. He was uniformly considered to be idealistic (especially on the matter of Roman "republican" ideals) and "constant" -- the latter being a polite way of saying stubborn or stiff-necked. Brutus was the nephew and the son in law of Cato the philosopher (marriage to cousins was normal). Instead of pursuing a military career, which would have been normal for a Roman of his class, Brutus studied philosophy. He specialized in classical Platonism, but he was learned in all the contemporary schools of philosophy. Brutus' family had been friendly with Caesar, and Brutus' father had been proscribed and executed by Caesar's great enemy, Pompey. Nonetheless, for ideological reasons, Brutus fought on the side of Pompey in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey -- Brutus thought that Caesar was the greater threat to the Republic. Despite this, Caesar thought so much of Brutus that he gave orders that Brutus should be spared or allowed to escape in any battle.
Preuzeto sa http://www.mmdtkw.org/VBrutus.html
Post je objavljen 22.03.2006. u 00:01 sati.