Brutus

The Noble Conspirator

Kathryn Tempest

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780300231267
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

This award-winning biography delves beyond the myths about Ancient Rome's most famous assassin: "A beautifully written and thought-provoking book" (Christopher Pelling, author of Plutarch and History ). Conspirator and assassin, philosopher and statesman, promoter of peace and commander in war, Marcus Brutus was a controversial and enigmatic man even to those who knew him. His leading role in the murder of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 BC, immortalized his name, but no final verdict has ever been made about his fateful act. Was Brutus wrong to kill his friend and benefactor or was he right to place his duty to country ahead of personal obligations? In this comprehensive biography, Kathryn Tempest examines historical sources to bring to light the personal and political struggles Brutus faced. As the details are revealed—from his own correspondence with Cicero, the perceptions of his peers, and the Roman aristocratic values and concepts that held sway in his time—Brutus emerges from legend, revealed as the complex man he was. A Choice Outstanding Academic Title Winner

CHAPTER 1

BECOMING BRUTUS

Image and Identity

In the centre of Mediolanum in Cisalpine Gaul (ancient Milan) there once stood a bronze statue of Brutus, probably erected in his own lifetime. The Emperor Augustus, upon seeing it, was said to have frowned at the effigy of his former enemy; after all, Augustus was Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted son, and Brutus had killed Caesar. Yet for others, the statue was laden with symbolism. Brutus was ‘the founder and defender of our laws and liberties’, cried one impassioned advocate towards the end of the first century BC, as he pointed to the statue and lamented the state of Italy, where he thought freedom of expression was being curtailed. From this point of view, the assassination had been a glorious deed: philosophy and principles had joined forces with military strength to remove a dictator. This had been Brutus’ particular achievement: to be remembered not just as a man of action, but as a man of virtue. Of all the men who colluded to kill Caesar, it was said that Brutus was the only noble conspirator.¹

Throughout his life, Brutus’ reputation was important to him.² Thus, although the bronze statue from Mediolanum has not survived, we have other images which help us construct a clear idea of how Brutus broadcast his identity as a defender of liberty.³ Of these representations, the most fascinating has to be that struck onto the obverse of a coin which was issued in late 43 or early 42 BC to celebrate the Ides of March (Plate 1). It shows a man approaching maturity but still relatively youthful, with a full head of thick, slightly curly hair, and a short beard on his chin. Beneath a straight forehead are his deep-set eyes, prominent nose, well-defined cheeks and full, pursed lips. Steely faced and resolute, this Brutus stares coldly into the future as he begins a new chapter in the history of Rome’s civil wars and bloodshed; his military status and intentions are highlighted by the title of imperator (‘commander’), abbreviated to ‘IMP’ on the surrounding legend. Described by Barry Strauss as having ‘leading-man looks’, ‘intelligence’ and a ‘forceful personality’, to some historians Brutus’ low forehead and heavy bones are features which betray his narrow mind and obstinacy. He is simultaneously ‘young and old’. ‘It is not easy to think of him as the bold and inspiring leader in the fight for freedom’, concluded the art historian Jocelyn Toynbee.⁴

Yet, if such efforts to tease out Brutus’ leadership skills and personality from a portrait seem to us a pointless exercise in physiognomy, we should begin by remembering that image was, as it remains today, a forceful mode of visual communication. Roman portraits – whether in the form of sculpted busts, statues, or minted on coins – did not just depict a man’s physical appearance; they could advertise his ancestry, political agenda, offices and achievements to a far wider audience than the written or spoken word. Far from the idealised statues of Classical Greece, Roman republican portraits aimed at verism: images were made to appear true to life and were intended to reflect the real character of the man represented. Writing at the turn of the first and second centuries AD, Pliny the Younger – a Roman orator, author and magistrate – suggested that such portraits aimed to encapsulate their subject’s moral and ethical qualities too, and that it was not unusual for a man’s features to be highlighted or even improved upon to this end.⁵ It is hence no simple matter of enquiry to start by focusing on how Brutus is represented in his portraiture. In fact, it takes us into the heart of his political and social milieu: a man’s image reflected the way he perceived, fashioned and advertised his self-identity.

To discern the full extent of the message the coin was intended to convey, however, we need to look at both sides. For on the reverse is a menacing depiction of two daggers on either side of a pileus: the cap of liberty customarily awarded to slaves when they had earned their freedom. Underneath it, the legend ‘EID[ES] MAR[TIAE]’ – an archaic spelling of the Ides of March – made the jubilant reference to Caesar’s assassination all too clear. Already in antiquity, the coin and its symbolism were famous. As the historian Dio comments: ‘Brutus stamped upon the coins which were being minted in his own likeness a cap and two daggers, indicating by this and by the inscription that he and Cassius had liberated the fatherland.’⁶ The imagery on this coin consequently points to the powerful rhetoric surrounding the death of the dictator. For the victory cry of his assassins was libertas (‘freedom’); Brutus and Cassius claimed to have liberated Rome from the tyranny of Caesar.

One thing we should note immediately, however, is that there is an unnerving contradiction between the message and the mode of Brutus’ coin portrait. Until Julius Caesar’s image had appeared on denarii in the year 44 BC, no Roman coin had ever featured the image of a living man before. The introduction of portrait coinage reflected the unique position of power Caesar had achieved in his lifetime: the very same position of power for which he had been murdered. If Dio saw the irony of Caesar’s murderer minting coins in his own likeness, while supposedly championing the liberation from tyranny, he did not say it explicitly. Then again, it was not the first time Brutus had engaged in such an act of propagandistic self-fashioning: libertas and the freedom from tyranny were at the core of Brutus’ public profile, the roots of which stretched much further back in time than the death of Caesar. We might ask: who were his models? Which historic and current events made strong impressions on Brutus? What were his ultimate goals? Why such deep animosity towards tyranny? We shall consider these questions throughout the course of this chapter. But what is important to highlight right at the beginning of any study of Brutus is that he was always the architect of, and not simply the slave to, his reputation.

Brutus’ Claim to Fame

What inspired Brutus in the creation of his public image was that his family could boast a connection with libertas that went right back to the legendary tales of Lucius Junius Brutus and the expulsion of the kings, said to have ruled Rome from its foundation under Romulus in 753 until 510 BC. For tradition had it that Lucius Brutus had deposed Rome’s seventh and final king, Tarquinius Superbus, and driven him and his clan, including his sons, out of Rome. Our fullest treatment of this story comes from Livy (c. 59 BC–AD 17), who adds that Rome now took her first step towards political liberty.⁷ Power over Rome’s affairs was thereafter concentrated in the hands of the aristocratic families, while two annually appointed magistrates, later referred to as ‘consuls’, shared the responsibility for directing the Senate on a monthly basis.⁸ Lucius Brutus was the first man to hold this office in 509 BC – or so the story went. And while ‘the people were still greedy for the new taste of liberty’, Livy tells us he took an important step: ‘he made them swear an oath that they would suffer no man to be king at Rome’.

It was this moment in the historical tradition that was used to explain Rome’s long-standing hatred of the title rex, the Latin word for king, as well as the political monopoly such a man could establish: a regnum.⁹ Lacking a precise political vocabulary, later Romans described this development by the term res publica (meaning something like ‘the public business’), from which we get ‘republic’ – a word used today to refer both to the constitutional arrangement Rome set in place and to the long period of history it spanned (roughly 509–31 BC). It was an imprecise label and ideas over how the res publica should be managed were hotly contested in the period of the late Republic.¹⁰ What is more, the Romans never wrote down their constitution, so it was a flexible and dynamic system whose institutions evolved over time. Broadly speaking, however, the main pillars of the res publica were the Senate, the executive magistracies, and the popular assemblies. It was a partnership in power between the government and those they governed, best encapsulated in the motto SPQR – senatus populusque romanus, or ‘the Senate and the people of Rome’ (see Plate 2).¹¹ The association between a more open political system and the expulsion of the kings by Lucius Brutus hence did much to link ideas of libertas with res publica, and these stories were used to significant effect by our Brutus, especially in the years after Caesar’s assassination.¹²

To be sure, Livy’s accounts of the early history of Rome need to be treated with a healthy degree of caution. Not only was he writing over five centuries after the events he describes, the historical material with which Livy was working was itself inherently problematic.¹³ Yet the veracity of the tales need not concern us too much here; the fact is that exemplary anecdotes formed the stuff of Roman literature and history, both in the oral and written traditions. Heroes and villains, virtues and vices, patriots and traitors were all showcased as a means of presenting lessons on how (or how not) to behave: they were called exempla and Roman citizens of all classes would have had these stories at their fingertips.

Even before our Brutus made a feature of his ancestry, the story of Lucius Brutus and the expulsion of the kings had been staged in dramatic productions which did much to reinforce its currency in the popular imagination.¹⁴ A bronze statue of the original Brutus was placed among the images of the seven kings of Rome on the Capitoline Hill (Plate 3), his drawn sword ‘indicating how steadfast he was in deposing the Tarquins’, according to Plutarch.¹⁵ Funeral processions, too, included spectacular displays of famous families, with actors representing the deceased man’s ancestors, adorned in their historical insignia of office.¹⁶ The story goes that, probably in 91 BC, an otherwise unknown Marcus Brutus was shamed in court when the funeral entourage of another member of the clan happened to pass by in close proximity. For his opponent, the famous orator Lucius Licinius Crassus, seized the moment and lambasted this Brutus, precisely because he was unworthy of his family name.¹⁷

A Roman noble, in other words, was expected to live up to and even emulate the deeds of his forebears; at the same time, the legends of great families gave significant authority to the individual households who inherited them. Admittedly, not all members of the Junii Bruti after Lucius chose to follow in his footsteps or to flag allegiance to their exemplary ancestor. Yet our Brutus was particularly proud of his claim to fame and the unique reputation it conferred upon him as a defender of the Roman Republic. As a result, he actively sought to nurture a very specific public profile.¹⁸

To begin with, Brutus had a family tree composed for the central hall, or atrium, of his house by the great antiquarian Titus Pomponius Atticus, the friend he shared with Cicero. On his father’s side (the Junii Bruti), it traced his family right back to its alleged origins under Lucius Brutus. But on his mother’s side of the family, too (the Servilii), Brutus had an ancestor of whom he could boast: the republican hero Servilius Ahala, who was famous for killing Spurius Maelius in 439 BC on the grounds that he was aspiring towards tyranny.¹⁹ It must have been a great work of art to judge from Cicero, who had seen the family tree in one of Brutus’ villas. But the grandeur of the atrium was further enhanced by wax masks of Brutus’ ancestors – the imagines traditionally on show in the halls of aristocratic families. Cicero had seen these too, he claims, and they included representations of both Lucius Brutus and Servilius Ahala.²⁰ As the first room a visitor would have entered, the atrium must have made an overwhelming impression. As much as any of the other steps Brutus took to promote his famous reputation, his house was a projection of his political identity.²¹

It was probably for this reason, and especially in the wake of Caesar’s murder, that some of Brutus’ enemies denied his claim to descend from the Lucius Brutus who had liberated Rome in 509 BC. The original Brutus was a patrician, they pointed out: a member of one of the few privileged families who could trace their lineage back to the original senators (patres) who had advised Romulus. On the other hand, our Brutus and his paternal ancestors were from plebeian stock, just like most people. More problematic still, however, was the legend that Lucius Brutus had killed his sons and, with them, his whole family line; so there was no way Brutus could be linked to him unless one got creative with the past.²² Yet before we get too distracted by the question of whether Brutus was related to the legendary hero, we should note that it seems to have been an accepted fact in the intellectual circles of Brutus’ day that family histories were often distorted, embellished or even completely fabricated.²³ Nor did it really matter for Brutus that the Junii Bruti were of plebeian status and not patrician. What is more important for our purposes is the fact that he embraced this aspect of his heritage above any other consi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations and Maps
• Preface
• A Note on the Text
• Introduction
• 1. Becoming Brutus
• 2. Independent Operator
• 3. The Politics of War
• 4. Thinking about Tyrannicide
• 5. After the Assassination
• 6. Reviving Republicanism
• 7. Brutus’ Last Fight
• 8. Death and Legend
• Conclusion: The Many Faces of Brutus
• Appendix 1: Key Dates
• Appendix 2: After the Assassination – Chronology and Sources
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index