We all know the story of the Ides of March, 2,050 years ago, when Julius Caesar, was assassinated. Above all, we know Shakespeare’s rendering of the scene.
CAESAR: Et tu, Brute?— Then fall, Caesar!
CINNA:
CASSIUS: Some to the common pulpits, and cry out:
And how
“Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar objects
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war”
And how the victorious
“How many ages hence,” exclaims Cassius
“Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!”
Among the states born later was
Brutus has been a name to conjure with these past 2,050 years, but it had already been a name to conjure with for more than four centuries when Caesar fell. Junius Brutus had been the founding hero of the
Under the monarch Tarquin the Proud, Junius had played a moron to avoid suspicion, and did it so well that he earned the title “Brutus” (dimwit); until the famous rape of Lucrece by Tarquin’s son and her subsequent suicide had provoked him to lead a rising that produced the expulsion of the Tarquins.
Among the lessons Machiavelli drew from the history were that “From his example all those who are discontented with a prince have to learn; they should first measure and weigh their forces…” and “Thus one must play crazy, like Brutus, and make oneself very much mad, praising, speaking, seeing, doing things against your intent so as to please the prince.”
For Marcus Brutus centuries later, being descended from the great Junius Brutus conveyed a noble heritage, which he further ennobled. Among the many whose parents bestowed upon him that illustrious heritage was the great Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth, whose favorite son John Wilkes Booth so disappointed the family. Had the elder Booth lived, he might have ruefully pondered the tradition that the Old Roman Junius had had his sons executed when they failed in their duty to the Republic.
Junius Brutus was also the pseudonym of the most eloquent whig writer of the period between the Stamp Act and the Declaration of Independence. He watched the people’s representatives closely and worried. “We can never be really in danger, until the forms of Parliament are made use of to destroy the substance of our civil and political liberties; until Parliament itself betrays its trust, by contributing to establish new principles of government, and employing the very weapons committed to it by the collective body to stab the Constitution.”
“The Government of England is a government of law,” he wrote in 1771. “We betray ourselves, we contradict the spirit of our laws, and we shake the whole system of English jurisprudence, whenever we entrust a discretionary power over the life, liberty or fortune of the subject, to any man, or act of men, whatsoever, upon a presumption that it will not be abused.”
“Let me exhort and conjure you never to suffer an invasion of your political constitution, however minute the instance may appear, to pass by without a determined, preserving resistance.” He exhorted. “One precedent creates another. They soon accumulate, and constitute law. What yesterday was fact, to-day is doctrine. Examples are supposed to justify the most dangerous measures, and where they do not suit exactly, the defect is supplied by analogy. Be assured that the laws, which protect us in our civil rights, grow out of the Constitution, and that they must fall or flourish with it.”
Yet another in that grand tradition was the “Brutus” who opposed ratification of the 1787 constitution in a series of articles.
“If the people of America will submit to a constitution that will vest in the hands of any body of men a right to deprive them by law of the privilege of a fair election, they will submit to almost any thing. Reasoning with them will be in vain, they must be left until they are brought to reflection by feeling oppression — they will then have to wrest from their oppressors, by a strong hand. that which they now possess, and which they may retain if they will exercise but a moderate share of prudence and firmness.”
de te fabula narratur
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