Brutus: Caesar's Assassin by Kirsty Corrigan

Brutus: Caesar's Assassin by Kirsty Corrigan

Author:Kirsty Corrigan [Corrigan, Kirsty]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2016-02-10T16:00:00+00:00


Chapter Ten

Prelude to Civil War

August–November 44 BC

Brutus Departs for Athens

Plutarch narrates an anecdotal event which reportedly took place before Brutus’ departure from Italy, concerning his wife, Porcia: on the point of returning to Rome, distressed at having to part from her husband who was now preparing to leave the country, she burst into tears on catching sight of a painting of Andromache bidding farewell to her husband, the Trojan hero Hector, on his way to battle. The tragic overtones and foreboding contained therein are patent, with the great and noble couple doomed by war in the east. The supposedly strong-spirited Porcia would reportedly return to the painting daily and weep before it. In a similar foreboding anecdote, Brutus maintained that his wife had the mental strength of a man, nonetheless: when a friend recited the famous lines of Andromache declaring that Hector was everything to her, Brutus smiled and said that he would not dream of addressing Porcia with Hector’s well-known words to his wife, in which he ordered her to return to the loom and her maids. This was reportedly because Brutus believed that Porcia, the daughter of Cato, had the same spirit to fight nobly for her country as the men did.¹

Despite his wife’s angst, Brutus, as always obeying his sense of duty above all else, set out from Velia for Athens sometime after his meeting with Cicero, but before the end of August. Ostensibly he was travelling to his designated province, but in reality he was setting out for the east, as decided at the family conference in June. Cassius remained in Italy for another month, but would follow suit in late September or early October, travelling via Asia to Syria.² Crete and Cyrene were presumably chosen as relatively harmless provinces with which to appease the chief Liberators, while getting them out of the way. However, Brutus and Cassius, as became obvious from the family conference, had no intention of being manoeuvred by Antony and the Caesarians. Indeed, away from Italy matters seemed much improved: for, once he reached Athens, Brutus received a warm welcome from the citizens, who showed appreciation for his heroic act of liberation. Plutarch reports that he was even paid public honours as a tyrannicide, including the setting up of bronze statues of him and Cassius next to those of the tyrant slayers, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, in the agora.³ The studious and erudite Brutus was very much at home in this intellectual city, where he had earlier received his educational training. While staying here with a friend, he took the opportunity to pursue his interests, reportedly attending the lectures of two philosophers in the city at the time, Theomnestus and Cratippus, and enjoying engaging in philosophical discussion with them both.⁴ Apparently occupied by such literary activities, it was not realised that he was simultaneously making plans for war. Brutus was secretly recruiting to his cause many of the like-minded young men currently studying in Athens. Notably, among these were Cicero’s son, Marcus, whom



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.