Rome has no king. The country was built by driving its kings out long ago. And now the power has gathered around one man.
His name is Julius Caesar. He has come home from a war, and the city is loud with a festival.
In the street two officials scold the crowd. Not long ago these same mouths were praising another general, they say. The people laugh and drift off.
A Voice Out of the Crowd
The procession was passing along the road. A single voice out of the crowd calls Caesar by name.
“Beware the ides of March.” (Act 1, Scene 2)
The ides is what Romans called the middle of a month. The ides of March is the fifteenth. Caesar has the man brought forward to say it again. Then he calls him a dreamer and walks on.
What Happened at the Games
The procession disappears towards the games. Those left behind could only tell what was happening inside by the sound. Three great cheers go up.
Afterwards a man who was there comes out and tells it. Antony held out a crown to Caesar, he says. Caesar put it back. Antony offered again and Caesar put it back again, three times over.
Each time he put it back, the cheering got louder. So he put it back the next time too. It has the same shape as Richard refusing twice in chapter 27 before taking it. The one difference is that Caesar never took it at all.
He did not take it, and the people are uneasy anyway. What stayed with them was that there had been a crown to hold out. What Romans feared was not the crown but that scene.
Letters Over the Wall
A man called Cassius takes Brutus aside and starts talking. He tells of swimming with Caesar, of Caesar shaking with a fever. The point was that this man is made of what we are made of.
Brutus is Caesar’s friend. Caesar is fond of him too. So Cassius does not hurry. He arranges things so that Brutus will do the thinking himself.
That night Cassius writes several letters. He changed the hand so that they looked like the work of citizens. Rome is waiting for Brutus, they said. He throws them over the wall into Brutus’s garden.
A Night of Storms
A great storm breaks over Rome that night. People say fire fell out of the sky and a lion walked in the street. They read it all as a sign of what is coming.
Cassius walks about in that night and meets people. This sky is telling us what to do, he says. Out of the same sky each man reads a different meaning.
Brutus could not sleep and was out in his garden. A servant picks up a letter from under the wall and brings it in. He reads it as the will of the citizens.
What Has Not Been Done
Brutus sits alone and thinks for a long time. He says himself that he can find no wrong Caesar has done so far. And still he thinks a crown on that head would change the man.
He puts it as a snake in an egg. Once it hatches it begins to bite, so it must be broken while it is an egg. The logic is aimed at somebody who has done nothing at all.
Towards dawn men come to his house one at a time. They arrived with their faces covered. Brutus tells them they should swear no oaths. Men doing what is right have no need of oaths, he says.
That day is the fifteenth of March.
Today, What Has Not Been Done
This chapter ends with nobody having done anything yet. Caesar did not take the crown. Brutus cannot name a single thing Caesar has done wrong. And everything moves as though it were already settled.
Once you start measuring a person by what they have not done, the measuring does not stop. With no evidence there is nothing to argue against either. Brutus called that judgement concern. Inside that concern were the letters Cassius threw over the wall.
When we decide about somebody in advance, we have materials too. Who laid those materials out for us is the part that is hard to see. That is the thing Brutus never learns.
In the next chapter the morning of the fifteenth arrives. And it ends inside the Senate.