Who was Brutus's father?

[Gladius Hispaniensis]

Ave

Can anyone please name the father of Marcus Brutus and husband of Servilia? He was apparently killed on Pompey's orders. Does anyone know the reason for that? It's really surprising that Brutus took Pompey's side in the civil war considering this fact.

[G-Manicus]

Marcus Junius Brutus the Elder

[M. Porcius Cato]

Can anyone please name the father of Marcus Brutus and husband of Servilia? He was apparently killed on Pompey's orders. Does anyone know the reason for that? It's really surprising that Brutus took Pompey's side in the civil war considering this fact.

 

A rapacious general--who had shown no respect for the law, who had broken treaties with Roman allies, murdered envoys in cold blood, and had been bragging about butchering a million Gallic men, women, and children--just invaded Italy and was marching on Rome. You think it's surprising Brutus hadn't welcomed him with open arms? I think you need to check your premises.

 

In any case, Brutus' father was M. Junius Brutus (tribune 83).

 

But Brutus' father was only one family influence on Brutus. More remarkable was his descent on his father's side from Lucius Brutus--who had ejected the kings from Rome and killed his own sons when they attempted to restore the monarchy--and on his mother's side from Servilius Ahala, who had killed the aspiring tyrant Spurius Maelius. These relationships were clearly important to Brutus: when he served as one of the tresviri monetales in 54, he issued a coin with L. Brutus on side of the coin and Ahala on the other. According to Cicero, portrait busts of these two heroes of the republic could be found in his house, and Brutus had also commissioned Atticus to draw up a family tree to establish his precise relationships with the two men. Finally, Brutus was the nephew of M. Porcius Cato, whom Brutus admired ferociously and who had unmasked Caesar before anyone else. Thus, against a father he barely knew, Brutus' family tree was nearly bushy with the branches of republican heroes.

[cornelius_sulla]

It's really surprising that Brutus took Pompey's side in the civil war considering this fact.

 

It is amazing to us here in the 21st century the levels of detachment and pragmatism that Roman nobles could achieve when either their necks or their dignitas were on the line. Cato's (Champion of The Republic) influence over nephew Brutus (unfortunate pantywaist) cannot be underestimated in this situation.

[Gladius Hispaniensis]

A rapacious general--who had shown no respect for the law, who had broken treaties with Roman allies, murdered envoys in cold blood, and had been bragging about butchering a million Gallic men, women, and children--just invaded Italy and was marching on Rome. You think it's surprising Brutus hadn't welcomed him with open arms? I think you need to check your premises

Not that I'm at all partial to Caesar, but I don't see how butchering a million Gauls would have struck the Romans, Brutus included, as particularly odious. How many Roman commanders showed restraint in their campaigns? And in any case, Pompey's murder of the elder Brutus was hardly an example of honourable conduct either. If Caesar had murdered envoys, Pompey had also perfidiously put to death a man who had put himself in his power.

Edited April 9, 2008 by Gladius Hispaniensis

[Primus Pilus]

Not that I'm at all partial to Caesar, but I don't see how butchering a million Gauls would have struck the Romans, Brutus included, as particularly odious.

 

This is the main item that I personally disagree with MPC on regarding Caesar. While Caesar may have been a braggart (the evidence being his own writings) I don't believe he ever intended the destruction of the Gauls as a people. More important was his own personal glory and enrichment. If this came at the expense of the Gauls, so be it, but if it came with their willing obsequiousness, the Gauls would not have been lined up and butchered in order to purge their existence. While I'll grant that Caesar was no paragon of virtue and was well aware that at least some of the Gallic tribes would not bow down willingly, for the most part, the Roman people themselves were impressed and thankful for Caesar's war. (3 public votes in thanks from the Senate were also conferred upon him, though two seem to have been largely initiated by Cicero after his recall from Clodian exile.)

 

While Cato opposed the war, and used the plight of the Gallic people as an example of the danger of Caesar, I don't believe that he cared any more for the Gauls or Germanics than anyone else. What he cared about was the danger inherent in Caesar and what he viewed as the illegality of the entire affair. In my opinion, while he unquestionably disagreed with the death and enslavement of the Gauls (and the Germanics... the part of the war along, with the invasion of Britain, that I also view as potentially illegal) the key was legality and the safety of the Republic, not the well being of foreign peoples.

 

While the implication is clearly there that Cato views Caesar's actions as a crime worthy of vengeance from the victims of Caesar's war, I think the latter part is more definitive... From Plutarch Life of Cato Minor ch. 51

"he (Cato) declared that it was not the sons of Germans or Celts whom they must fear, but Caesar himself"

[G-Manicus]

You think it's surprising ...

I think it's hard for folks in our day and age to relate to the family relationships and customs of Ancient Rome, where you had situations like wealthy families agreeing to turn over sons for adoption by other wealthy families, to the inordinate emphasis placed on one's ancestry, to the use of daughter's as political capital, etc. All things that are somewhat alien to us now. It seems as if one's own family was merely a bargaining chip in a Paterfamilias effort to increase his (and his descendants?) station in life. As many decisions regarding family seem to have been made from an almost purely detached political standpoint, I for one do not find it surprising that Brutus would ally himself with his father's killer if he thought that was the prudent political thing to do.

[Northern Neil]

I once heard a rumour that Caesar might have been Brutus' father. Are we to dismiss this as wild speculation? Forgive the very elementary question, but I spend most of my time looking at books to do with Roman engineering and building, and rarely read material on individual figures.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Not that I'm at all partial to Caesar, but I don't see how butchering a million Gauls would have struck the Romans, Brutus included, as particularly odious.

While the implication is clearly there that Cato views Caesar's actions as a crime worthy of vengeance from the victims of Caesar's war, I think the latter part is more definitive... From Plutarch Life of Cato Minor ch. 51

"he (Cato) declared that it was not the sons of Germans or Celts whom they must fear, but Caesar himself"

 

This is actually the point that I intended: if Caesar's army could kill so many Germans and Celts, it was powerful and thus a potential threat to Rome itself--even in the shade of Pompey's shield. Moreover, this potential threat became even more grave given Caesar's demonstrated indifference to prior alliances, to the laws of the republic (both as consul and as proconsul) and given his prior murder of envoys. Thus, in 49 BC, Brutus and everyone else could reasonably fear that Caesar was crossing the Rubicon as another Sulla, whereas Pompey (despite his own history as Sulla's 'teenage butcher') showed no inclinations in that direction.

[M. Porcius Cato]

I once heard a rumour that Caesar might have been Brutus' father. Are we to dismiss this as wild speculation?

 

Yes--it is to be dismissed as wild speculation.

[Ingsoc]

I once heard a rumour that Caesar might have been Brutus' father. Are we to dismiss this as wild speculation? Forgive the very elementary question, but I spend most of my time looking at books to do with Roman engineering and building, and rarely read material on individual figures.

 

Yes, from the earliest account the affair between Servillia and Caesar was in 63 BC a long time after Brutus birth. Plutarchus also mention that Brutus resemble the statue of Lucius Junius Brutus.

Edited April 9, 2008 by Ingsoc

[M. Porcius Cato]

I once heard a rumour that Caesar might have been Brutus' father. Are we to dismiss this as wild speculation? Forgive the very elementary question, but I spend most of my time looking at books to do with Roman engineering and building, and rarely read material on individual figures.

 

Yes, from the earliest account the affair between Servillia and Caesar was in 63 BC a long time after Brutus birth. Plutarchus also mention that Brutus resemble the statue of Lucius Junius Brutus.

 

Whether the affair dates to 63 or 59 doesn't matter much given that Brutus was born in 85ish. I say "85ish" because he was quaestor in 53, when he must have been about 30. Plus, Cicero says that Brutus was born 10 years after Hortensius made his first appearance in the courts, which Cicero places in 95. This ought to put 85 as a firm date for Brutus' birth except that Valleius Paterculus claims that Brutus died at age 37 in 42, which would put his birth at 79 or 78. In any case, Brutus was too old to be Caesar's kid (even if Voltaire did believe the story).

 

BTW, I'm not sure that the affair between Servillia and Caesar can be definitively placed in 63. The source here is the incident in the trial of Rabirius et al, when Cato picked up a letter that Caesar was reading in the Senate. Reading it himself, Cato was disgusted and said "Take it you sod!" What disgusted Cato could have been anything and only Cato and Caesar know for sure what it was, but the story that circulated was that it was a letter from Servillia. Of course, it could have been--or it could have been a letter from some other lover, maybe from the king of Bithynia, maybe a filthy drawing of Cato, a self-portrait of Caesar in tights and a cape with an S on it, etc.

[Gladius Hispaniensis]

This is the main item that I personally disagree with MPC on regarding Caesar. While Caesar may have been a braggart (the evidence being his own writings) I don't believe he ever intended the destruction of the Gauls as a peop

I think you missed my point PP. I don't disagree with what you wrote but my contention is this: When did the Roman public ever feel squeamish about the genocide of a foreign people? Why would slaughtering a million Gauls, or any other nation for that matter, have turned people against him? Cato's censorious comments on this matter were a political dig in Caesar's ribs. I'm not convinced his outrage was genuine in any way.

[Maty]

It's technically possible. Caesar would have needed to be a highly precocious teenager (aged 13-15), but then, he was indeed precocious. I wouldn't put too much on Plutarch's statement that Brutus jnr looked like Lucius' statue, as a) We don't know when the statue was made and it might have been modelled on a later Iunius Brutus, and b.) we don't know where Brutus' family came from. We know Lucius Brutus executed his own sons for treason and died in battle almost immediately afterward, so unless there was subsequent unrecorded male issue from a quickie before the campaign, the line is not direct. This is suggested also in that Lucius was a patrician, but the later Bruti were plebeian, I believe.

[M. Porcius Cato]

We know Lucius Brutus executed his own sons for treason and died in battle almost immediately afterward, so unless there was subsequent unrecorded male issue from a quickie before the campaign, the line is not direct. This is suggested also in that Lucius was a patrician, but the later Bruti were plebeian, I believe.

 

In 493, another L Junius Brutus was a tribune of the plebs (Dion. Hal.6.70.1-89.1; Plut. Cor. 7.1). Maybe the plebeian tyrannicide was actually descended from him? It's interesting that Atticus had another resolution to this.