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Brutus was indeed a great warrior,

14299[/snapback]

 

Please provide some evidence for this.

 

 

 

there were actually two brutus's around at the time of caeser's assassination, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus who was a roman general and admiral and close friend and adviser to caeser, but also one of his assassins

and Marcus Junius Brutus, he was a cousin of decimus brutus and nephew of caesers enemy marcus portcius cato, who's daughter he marries, he was a supporter of pompey who changed sides after pharsalus, he was made governer of cisalpine gaul and reluctantly drawn into the assassination plot.

 

 

hope this helps a little

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Brutus was indeed a great warrior,

14299[/snapback]

 

Please provide some evidence for this.

 

 

 

there were actually two brutus's around at the time of caeser's assassination, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus who was a roman general and admiral and close friend and adviser to caeser, but also one of his assassins

and Marcus Junius Brutus, he was a cousin of decimus brutus and nephew of caesers enemy marcus portcius cato, who's daughter he marries, he was a supporter of pompey who changed sides after pharsalus, he was made governer of cisalpine gaul and reluctantly drawn into the assassination plot.

 

 

hope this helps a little

True there was 2 Brutus' around but you're confused. It was Decimus that was the supposed govenor of Cisalpine Gaul.

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  • 2 months later...
Brutus was indeed a great warrior,

14299[/snapback]

 

Please provide some evidence for this.

 

 

 

there were actually two brutus's around at the time of caeser's assassination, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus who was a roman general and admiral and close friend and adviser to caeser, but also one of his assassins

and Marcus Junius Brutus, he was a cousin of decimus brutus and nephew of caesers enemy marcus portcius cato, who's daughter he marries, he was a supporter of pompey who changed sides after pharsalus, he was made governer of cisalpine gaul and reluctantly drawn into the assassination plot.

 

 

hope this helps a little

True there was 2 Brutus' around but you're confused. It was Decimus that was the supposed govenor of Cisalpine Gaul.

 

True, Decimus Brutus received his governorship directly after Caesar's assassination. It was during his time as governor that he was defeated and killed by Octavian's forces--which were actually sent as a relief force to aid Brutus in his fight against Marc Antony--at Mutina.

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Does anybodi know what was Brutus motive?I think he didn't have a motive to kill Caesar

 

The motive was to restore the Republic. There may have been jealousy and other emotional responses involved, but it was clear that the reason for the assassination was because they believed Caesar was a tyrant.

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Does anybodi know what was Brutus motive?I think he didn't have a motive to kill Caesar

 

The motive was to restore the Republic. There may have been jealousy and other emotional responses involved, but it was clear that the reason for the assassination was because they believed Caesar was a tyrant.

 

Additionally, Brutus may have been shamed by Caesar's apparent affair with his mother, Servilia. Brutus probably saw assassination as the perfect means to avenge such opprobrium.

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Does anybodi know what was Brutus motive?I think he didn't have a motive to kill Caesar

 

The motive was to restore the Republic. There may have been jealousy and other emotional responses involved, but it was clear that the reason for the assassination was because they believed Caesar was a tyrant.

 

Additionally, Brutus may have been shamed by Caesar's apparent affair with his mother, Servilia. Brutus probably saw assassination as the perfect means to avenge such opprobrium.

 

Also i think he was pushed into it by the other conspirators mainly Cassius who knew he could use Brutus because of his closeness to Caesar

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I read somewhere (I cannot remember where) that Cassius apparently opted to assassinate Caesar not because he was concerned about restoring the Republican system, but due to the fact that Caesar refused to promote his career on the cursus honorum. Basically Cassius murdered Caesar for personal, rather than collective gain.

 

This may indeed to wrong, but I was wondering if anybody had any more information on the matter.

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Obviously personal and societal gain are not necessarily opposite motivations. If you're personally suffering under a dictator's grip, others probably are as well, and it's almost impossible to tell in retrospect which set of injustices is the prime motivating factor.

 

That said, the one feature of the assasination that does help to disambiguate Cassius' motives was the fact that he chose to kill the tyrant at a meeting of the senate rather than having him killed in any of the other places where it might have been much easier. The symbolic value of killing Caesar at a meeting of the senate was to emphasize that the tyrannicide was NOT simply a personal matter. Rather, it was the fulfillment of every Roman's duty (and law since Publicola) and the means by which that servile senate might rehabilitate itself.

 

Further, if Cassius had been motivated solely by personal grudge, why go to the extra bother of getting Brutus and others involved? The grudge could have been settled much more easily by other means.

 

In my opinion, those who think the events of 70-44 BC were all just a bunch of grudges being settled have no understanding of the philosophical and constitutional issues at stake. Like children who think their parents divorce to punish them, these people are simply blind to the motivating factors that are beyond themselves. Real statesmen are motivated by principles, even including principles that benefit oneself.

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Could you recomend me a good source on the life of Cassius Longinus?

 

Unfortunately, I can't recommend a single good biography of Cassius. Smith's Dictionary has a nice entry (aside from its editorializing), but make sure you're reading the entry for C. Cassius Longinus and not his many relatives of the same name, many of whom were disreputable and Caesarian. I don't think the biography mentions it, but Cassius (and Brutus) were both kinsmen of Cato.

Edited by M. Porcius Cato
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I didn't realise that there was so little written about Cassius' early life. One might think that as the man was such a pivotal character during the death of the Republic, ancient historians would have bothered to document his early life.

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Cassius was fairly young when Crassus ignored his advice not to charge into open desert against the Parthians and when Cassius managed to save the remnants of the same army. How young do you want (and why)?

 

It

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Anyway, my point was that compared to the other prominent figures of the late republic, the coverage of Cassius' life seems to be somewhat in the shadows.

 

I tend to agree, but there remain quite a few figures who were prominent during the last generation (perhaps more so than Cassius) about whom we know very little (partly because they didn't keep up their correspondence to Cicero). Lucretius' patron C. Memmius (pr. 58), A. Gabinius (cos. 58), L. Domitius Ahenobarbus (cos. 54), Cn. Domitus Calvinus (cos. 53, 40), the Marcelli, and P. Servillius Vatia Isauricus (cos. 48, 41) were all prominent statesmen during their time, yet our knowledge of them is fairly scant in comparison to our knowledge of Cassius, Brutus, Cato, Antony, Caesar, and the others who managed to capture Plutarch's attention.

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