Brutus Day 2025 is on Saturday, March 15, 2025: Julius caesar and marcus brutus?

Saturday, March 15, 2025 is Brutus Day 2025. Word of the Day (Happy Brutus Day) Word of the Day (Happy Brutus Day)

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Brutus Day aims to advertise recognition to the fact that unfaithfulness, backstabbing and dirty politics aren’t at all a factor of history, and therefore are as common and tactical within our modern, corporate lives because they were within the forums of the italian capital. Be careful about your back, avoid office politics, and consider your buddies!

Conspiracy to kill Caesar

Around this time, many senators began to fear Caesar's growing power following his appointment as dictator for life. Brutus was persuaded into joining the conspiracy against Caesar by the other senators. (In William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, he also discovers letters placed on his Praetor's chair and a statue of his ancestor, which have been forged by Cassius to make Brutus feel as if he were doing the right thing for Rome. This, however, may just be dramatic license on the part of Shakespeare. There is no real evidence that Cassius ever planted phony notes.

Eventually, Brutus decided to move against Caesar after Caesar's king-like behavior prompted him to take action. His wife was the only woman privy to the plot.

The conspirators planned to carry out their plot on the Ides of March (March 15) that same year. On that day, Caesar was delayed going to the Senate because his wife, Calpurnia Pisonis, tried to convince him not to go. The conspirators feared the plot had been found out. Brutus persisted, however, waiting for Caesar at the Senate, and allegedly still chose to remain even when a messenger brought him news that would otherwise have caused him to leave. When Caesar finally did come to the Senate, they attacked him. Publius Servilius Casca was allegedly the first to attack Caesar with a blow to the shoulder, which Caesar blocked. However, upon seeing Brutus was with the conspirators, he covered his face with his toga and resigned himself to his fate. The conspirators attacked in such numbers that they even wounded one another. Brutus is said to have been wounded in the hand.

After Caesar's assassination

Marcus Junius BrutusAfter the assassination, the Senate passed an amnesty on the assassins. This amnesty was proposed by Caesar's friend and co-consul Marcus Antonius. Nonetheless, uproar among the population caused Brutus and the conspirators to leave Rome. Brutus settled in Crete from 44 to 42 BC.

In 43 BC, after Octavian received his consulship from the Roman Senate, one of his first actions was to have the people that had assassinated Julius Caesar declared murderers and enemies of the state. Marcus Tullius Cicero, angry at Octavian, wrote a letter to Brutus explaining that the forces of Octavian and Marcus Antonius were divided. Antonius had laid siege to the province of Gaul, where he wanted a governorship. In response to this siege, Octavian rallied his troops and fought a series of battles in which Antonius was defeated. Upon hearing that neither Antonius nor Octavian had an army big enough to defend Rome, Brutus rallied his troops, which totaled about 17 legions. When Octavian heard that Brutus was on his way to Rome, he made peace with Antonius. Their armies, which together totaled about 19 legions, marched to meet Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. The two sides met in two engagements known as the Battle of Philippi. The first was fought on October 3, 42 BC, in which Brutus defeated Octavian's forces, although Cassius was defeated by Antonius' forces. The second engagement was fought on October 23, 42 BC and ended in Brutus' defeat.

After the defeat, he fled into the nearby hills with only about four legions. Knowing his army had been defeated and that he would be captured, Brutus committed suicide. Among his last words were, according to Plutarch, "By all means must we fly; not with our feet, however, but with our hands." Brutus also uttered the well-known verse calling down a curse upon Antonius (Plutarch repeats this from the memoirs of Publius Volumnius): Forget not, Zeus, the author of these crimes (in the Dryden translation this passage is given as Punish, great Jove, the author of these ills). Plutarch wrote that, according to Volumnius, Brutus repeated two verses, but Volumnius was only able to recall the one quoted.

------------- Brutus had shown that he had, to use a word of Cicero, 'the courage of a man and the brains of child'. He had acted out of idealism; otherwise, he would have preferred to remain Caesar's friend and be consul in 41. But killing the tyrant did not mean that the republic was restored - Caesar had defeated the Senate at Pharsalus and it was beyond recovery. On the same day, the murderers had to occupy the Capitol, where they would be safe - at least for a while.

who is a modern day person like Brutus?

All men.

How does Brutus rationalize his actions?

Brutus has insomnia (II.i.4, 62). He delivers a nighttime soliloquy in his orchard concerning his fears of Caesar's ambition and his foreseeing tyranny after the coronation, unless he join in the assassination plot. It's "no personal cause" (II.i.11) and rather abstract for a motive, but "Brutus is one more study of a man who undertakes a role for which nature never intended him" (Goddard, I 308). Brutus likens Caesar to a serpent's egg: we'll "kill him in the shell" (II.i.34), or abort a tyrant fetus. The instruction "Fashion it thus" (II.i.30) "is to acknowledge that there is no plausible complaint to make against Caesar: 'Fashion it thus' means to make up your own anxious fiction, and then believe in its plausibility" (Bloom 108).

Brutus' young boy servant Lucius (the name is etymologically connected with "light") brings in a letter that was thrown in the window and that cryptically calls for action and demands of Brutus, "see thyself" (II.i.46). Brutus ruminates a while on this. "Once again, psychomachia, the struggle for control of a soul, is figured here in an image of civil war" (Garber 411). As instructed, Lucius consults the calendar and reports, "March is wasted fifteen days" (II.i.59) -- which implies that it is the 16th, a notion troubling enough for some editors to change the line with no textual authority but that some lines earlier, Brutus had declared tomorrow the ides of March (II.i.40). Is Shakespeare intentionally blurring the matter (or did "ides" really refer to the central days of the month rather than one specific calendar day)? Brutus then hears a "Knock within" -- an interesting stage direction seen also at a key moment in Macbeth.

Cassius and the cloaked conspirators gather. Brutus insists he hasn't slept in a month and, while Cassius and Brutus talk quietly apart, a few of the conspirators quibble about which way is east and where the sun will come up (II.i.101ff). So these Romans who would usher in a new day for the Republic can't even figure out basic geography. "They promise a new spiritual morning before they have even learned where the material sun comes up!" (Goddard, I 317). Casca's pointed sword almost visually indicates that the sun rises at their command. Dopes.

Cassius proposes they all swear an oath (II.i.113). Brutus insists there is no cause for it since they are acting honorably and do not need the additional motivation. The two disagree on the issue of including Cicero in the conspiracy, and on killing Mark Antony along with Caesar. Brutus thinks, "Our course will seem too bloody" (II.i.162); they should think of themselves as sacrificers, not behave like butchers (II.i.166); but "God meat or dog meat, we might retort, the effect on Caesar will be just the same" (Wells 195). "The lofty character of the end intended, the preservation of the liberties of Rome, blinds Brutus to the low character of the means proposed" (Goddard, I 312). Brutus also may get off on taking authoritative charge here; as foremost in moral prestige, he may not want to share the limelight with an equal like Cicero. Some more strained and self-contradictory rationalizing about their plot follows, amounting to this syllogism: "(1) The spirit of men contains no blood. (2) We wish to destroy the spirit of Caesar. Therefore (3) we must spill Caesar's blood" (Goddard, I 318). "Brutus is trying to divide the indivisible, to make murder into something holy. Ceremony in this case is a way of avoiding reality, of sanctifying disorder" (Garber 418).

So there..!